Either Side of the Fireplace: Planning Alcove Wardrobes in Bacup's Older Homes

Walk into almost any stone-built terrace or older semi around Bacup and you'll spot the same shape: a chimney breast pushing out into the room, with a recess tucked to its left and right. Estate agents call them alcoves. Most of us call them the place where the telly stand, a lamp and three boxes of Christmas decorations currently live. They are, in reality, the best fitted-storage opportunity in the house — provided you plan around a few awkward truths about how old Lancashire homes are actually built.

Start by admitting the alcoves aren't the same

The single most common mistake is assuming that two recesses either side of a chimney breast are mirror images. They rarely are. In the mill terraces off Rochdale Road and up towards Britannia, it's normal to find one alcove 30mm deeper than the other, a back wall that bows out by a centimetre over two metres, and a skirting board that's been replaced at some point with something thicker than the original.

Measure each alcove separately, and measure it in three places: top, middle and bottom. Measure the width at floor level and again at picture-rail height. Then check the chimney breast itself — how far it projects, whether it's plumb, and whether the plaster has blown anywhere near the corners. If your house is one of the older stone properties where the breast sits proud by 350mm or more, the alcove is deeper than you think in the middle and shallower at the edges, because the breast face is rarely a true plane.

Take photographs with a tape measure held in shot. Whoever quotes your job will thank you, and you'll avoid a factory cutting boards to a number that was never right in the first place.

The flue is not a cupboard

Here's the part that catches people out. A chimney breast isn't solid — it's a stack of flues, and those flues need to breathe. Even a disused, capped chimney draws moisture-laden air up and out, and that airflow is part of what stops damp taking hold in an old stone wall. Seal it off completely with a wardrobe carcass pressed hard against the brickwork and you invite condensation, musty smells and, eventually, salts blooming through the plaster.

So the rule is simple: keep a gap. Design the wardrobe so its back panel stands 20–25mm clear of the chimney breast face, and put a couple of small ventilation grilles — the sort you'd fit in a cupboard door — high up in the side or top of the unit. If the chimney is genuinely live, serving an open fire or a wood burner, do not build against the breast at all without proper advice; heat and clearance distances matter, and a joiner isn't the person to sign that off.

If the flue has been swept, capped and vented at the top, a discreet grille is usually all that's needed. If it's been sealed at the top with no vent at all, get that sorted before the wardrobes go in, not after. It's a ten-minute job for a roofer and a two-day job to undo once a wardrobe is screwed to the wall.

Symmetry versus a layout that admits reality

There are two honest approaches, and both look good.

Symmetrical: matching wardrobes either side, with a full-height unit on one side and a shorter one on the other so the room still reads as a pair. This suits the squarer front rooms of the older semis around Stacksteads, where the breast is central and the alcoves are near-identical. It gives you a calm, hotel-ish tidiness that photographs beautifully when the house eventually goes on the market.

Asymmetric: one tall bank of shelving and hanging on the deeper side, a low bench-and-drawer unit on the shallow side, with the chimney breast left exposed and painted. This works best in the narrow front-to-back terraces where a full-height wardrobe on both sides would make the room feel like a corridor. It also respects a fireplace you actually use, rather than hiding it behind joinery.

There's no rule that says a pair must match. In fact, on a wonky wall, a deliberately uneven layout often looks smarter than two units fighting to appear identical and failing by 15mm.

Pipes, meters and other things you can't move

Look inside the alcove before you order anything. Central heating pipework often runs up the corner nearest the breast, heading for a radiator that may itself be mounted in the alcove. Boxing pipes in is fine — but leave access, and don't bury a valve behind a sealed panel.

The same goes for the gas meter, the stopcock, and any electrical consumer unit that some previous owner decided belonged in the understairs-or-alcove black hole. A removable back panel or a small hinged hatch costs very little and saves a great deal of swearing later. If a radiator is staying, plan the wardrobe around it rather than on top of it; a wardrobe in front of a radiator gives you warm jumpers and a cold room.

What to sort before you ask for a quote

A short pre-quote checklist, tailored to these homes:

• Measure both alcoves at three heights and two widths; note any bowing.
• Photograph the chimney breast face with a spirit level against it.
• Confirm the flue status: live, capped and vented, or sealed with nowhere to breathe.
• Trace the pipework and locate the gas meter, stopcock and any electrics.
• Decide whether the radiator stays, moves, or goes.
• Note the skirting height and whether cornice or picture rail will interfere with a full-height run.
• Check floor level across the alcove — old flags and suspended timber floors can drop 10mm side to side.
• Decide on symmetry honestly, based on how wide the room feels, not how it looks on a plan.

Do that homework in 2026 and you'll get a quote that reflects the building you actually live in, rather than an idealised version of it. Alcove wardrobes are one of the few fitted-storage jobs where a bit of measuring patience genuinely shows in the finished result — and where the alternative, a gap you can see daylight through, is very hard to unsee.