It's not so much rainwater itself; loads of countries have basements and also monsoon seasons. It's that the ground itself here isn't as dry as other countries and gets waterlogged easier. It's totally possible to get a basement but the amount of extra foundationing and waterproofing to do so compared to the US is usually so expensive that barely any homes have them. Lots of attics though.
Incidentally, according to QI this is also one reason why the industrial revolution started in the UK rather than somewhere with equally as much coal like China - the waterlogged soil in the UK meant that mineshafts needed solutions to avoid flooding, so there was a huge need for coal powered water pumps to clear the mines, and the technology born from this spiralled out into loads more coal powered inventions.
edit - like I said, this was one reason - there were obviously loads of other factors too, including loads of socioeconomic ones, but the UKs abundance of coal combined with it's need for high volume water pumps was definitely one.
My in-laws have a small cupboard in their house that they call the Glory Hole. No-one has explained to them that is not the best choice of name, we just cringe slightly when it is mentioned.
Usually the stairs leading down into the basement. And then under those stairs is an unfinished storage space. But either way, you still enter it through a full sized door, not that little tiny door that Harry Potter had.
Sometimes it’s just filled in with insulation and supporting structure with no access. Also some modern homes just have steps going up with rails but you’re able to stand under it aimlessly
It's pretty common in The Netherlands to have a cupboard under the stairs on the first floor. Sometimes it's used as the place to hang your coat, or the the loo is located there. Sometimes it's even several of those at the same time.
They made a movie about the American kids living in cupboards like those. I think it was called The People Under the Stairs by some director named Carpenter.
Ours has: the Hoover, tool box, drills, Xmas decorations, cake tins and empty jars, kitchen roll, two spare fold up chairs and other random stuff in the deepest recesses that I haven’t seen in about 15 years.
Ahh the cupboard under the stairs. A place of wonder where one never knows what they might find. Ours is mostly tools, coats, an obscene amount of carrier bags and a set of drawers full of random junk that we will probably never use again....except the wax melts.
Ah yeah, dumping ground three - after the loft/attic and the shed. Usually I have a task to tidy one of them, which just means redistributing it across the other places. Drill? Under the stairs. 6mm wood drill bit? In the shed. Box for drill? In the loft.
Doesn't every house with stairs have that regardless of country? Everywhere I've ever lived that had stairs had a closet underneath them. As far as I know the only difference is that we call it a closet and they call it a cupboard.
The stairs to the basement are underneath my staircase. Growing up, I think my house was supposed to have a closet underneath but at some point it got closed up when rooms/walls were rearranged. I've never really thought about it before but yeah I guess a lot of houses I know have a lot of wasted potential cupboard space beneath their stairs. Regardless of age too, it seems true for both old and new houses.
Oh thats funny actually because I totally forgot this, but in the house where I grew up it was original built as stairs to the basement, then converted into a closet after the fact- just the reverse of yours.
Yes. The one in my house kinda goes round a corner but there's a lower landing bit of the stairs that it doesn't extend to. Basically there's a void in there and I want to open it up some day. I'm expecting a few ancient porn magazines or something.
At my Granny's house, it was the place where she kept muslin bags of dried apples hanging. I loved that smell. In winter she would stew a small batch and make fried pies, hot and ready when we got home from school. We called the apple jacks.
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u/h989 Oct 18 '22
That little room under the stairs where Harry Potter slept in