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The people who turned public toilets into homes and businesses

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Of all the bizarre items up for sale on Facebook marketplace, a “townhouse” with a price of £70,000 stands out as a particularly unusual listing – not least because the property is an old public toilet.

A creative with a vision might see a bright future for the derelict Sheffield loo, similar to others which have become living spaces, galleries, and breweries.

Laura Jane Clark, an architect from London, turned an initially “disgusting” abandoned underground restroom in Crystal Palace in London into a home.

“I had to go back and ask to live in them – I think they were just trying to get rid of me, and they said yes.” Ms Clark, who now lives in Glasgow, went through almost seven years of back-and-forth with the council, determined to stop the loos from being filled in with concrete.

“Luckily people saw my vision and saw the potential,” she said. “It was quite an un…is on the lips of lots of people all over. I don’t know what she’d think about that.”

She purchased the building for £15,000 and spent £55,000 renovating it after being drawn to how “freakishly pretty” it was.

“It is quite overdesigned as Edwardian toilets were, and I always thought, what a cute building,” she said. “It doesn’t feel like you’re in a toilet. It feels like you are in the theatre.”

Public toilet conversions, while increasingly trendy and a unique draw to bars, restaurants and performance venues, are not a new phenomenon.

One of the first venues to join the trend was a sandwich bar which appeared in central London over a decade ago. Music venues, theatres, wine bars, and offices soon followed.

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