architecture Architecture is the art and technique of designing and building, as distinguished from the skills associated with construction. It is both the process and the product of sketching, conceiving, planning, designing, and constructing building ...

, a semi-basement is a floor of a building that is half below ground, rather than entirely such as a true basement or cellar. Traditionally, semi-basements were designed in larger houses where staff was housed. A semi-basement usually contained

kitchen A kitchen is a room or part of a room used for cooking and food preparation in a dwelling or in a commercial establishment. A modern middle-class residential kitchen is typically equipped with a stove, a sink with hot and cold running wate ...

s and domestic offices. The advantage over a basement is that a semi-basement can let outside light in as it can have windows, albeit ones that are often too high to enjoy a view. Historically this was an advantage as the servants, who traditionally inhabited such a floor, would not have the opportunity to waste time by looking out of the window. The feature also has the aesthetic value of raising the ground floor, containing the building's reception rooms higher from the ground in order that they could enjoy better views, and be more free from the damp problems which always arose before the days of modern technology. Today,

London London is the capital and List of urban areas in the United Kingdom, largest city of England and the United Kingdom, with a population of just under 9 million. It stands on the River Thames in south-east England at the head of a estuary dow ...

estate agents when selling former servant's rooms as modern apartments often refer to the semi-basement as the "garden floor".

References

Domestic work Rooms {{Room-stub