15^th December 2017.

Work has stopped for today. The latest layer of the concrete floor needs to settle some more before the Acrow props can be put in to support the floor above, after which the spine 'wall' comes down and the steel beams go in. How will they do that? By magic, says Boss Builder. This morning Bartek, Sebastian and the boss loaded a skip of all the rubbish and then scrubbed the pavement. Now they have gone for the day. Football this evening and tomorrow, for their Christmas jolly, they'll all going go-carting in the Docklands. Then a knees-up, on the boss. Quite right too.

We did make an unfortunate discovery today, though. The water pipe coming into the house, serving both flats, is lead...Ho hum.

Yesterday's researches in the local archive turned up the following:
14th March 1956. "We are informed that a considerable amount of subletting on this Estate has taken place over many years, presumably with the previous owners' consent. In many instances the main tenant is a lessee of the estate and is holding over on the lease; many of the lettings are of a type which would not have been made by the Council - some having resulted in overcrowding, or at best, a deficiency of sanitary facilities and in many cases as a result of such lettings, an income is available to the main tenant."

Did the previous owners ie Christ Church College, Oxford, give their consent to lettings of this type? Did they ask? Did they care? Or were they only interested in the maximum revenue for their Trust, set up to provide an income for impecunious clergymen? What consequently happened to the impecunious non-clergymen was maybe not their concern. Back to the kind archivist, to ask her.

And a thought: private rentals these days are often as dire as the one Council minutes of 1956 spoke of. Post-war there was huge pressure on London's housing, and now there is pressure for different reasons. But bad landlords do not change. They just take advantage.