HOUSING ESTATES

The Housing of the Working Classes Act of 1890 empowered the Metropolitan Board of Works to provide housing for the city's poor. The first two estates were Millbank (behind the Tate Gallery) and Boundary Street, which was built on The Jago. The mound in the centre of Arnold Circus was made from the rubble of buildings that had been part of The Jago.

The Housing Act of 1919 required local authorities to furnish housing.

In 1949 responsibility for London council housing was transferred from the London County Council Valuer to the Council Architect's Department.

In 2019 more council houses were built in London than had been the case since 1983.

Becontree Estate

27,000 homes were built in fifteen years.

When it was completed, Becontree was the largest local authority housing estate in the world. It accommodated 115,000 people.

Initially, Ford's Dagenham plant was the principal employer.

Location: Parsloes Park, Dagenham, RM9 5SA

Bellingham Estate

The Bellingham estate in south-east London was built in the 1920s for veterans of the First World War. The heavyweight boxer Sir Henry Cooper grew up on it and trained in the function of room The Fellowship Inn pub.

Dawson Heights

The Labour politician Richard Crossman (1907-1974) served as Housing Minister from 1964 to 1966. He is reputed to have declared that architects should not be wasting pubic money by furnishing new council homes with fripperies such as balconies. Kate MacIntosh, as a member of Southwark Borough's Architects Department, was charged with designing the Dawson Heights estate (1972) in Dulwich. Her riposte to Crossman's lament was to include balconies in the scheme. She did this by making sure that they also served as escape routes. Therefore, the only way they could be removed from the plan was by breaking safety regulations. Therefore, they ended up being built.

Location: Dunstans Road, SE22 0HB

Golden Lane

Golden Lane (1962) was designed by the youthful practice of Chamberlin, Powell & Bon. Within the architectural profession it came to be admired both for the interplay between outside spaces and the homes interior and for the considered details. The firm went on to design the nearby Barbican estate.

Location: Fann Street, EC1Y 0SJ (orange, brown)

Lillington Gardens Estate

The prevailing orthodoxy in the years that followed the Second World War was for a monumental Modernism. This involved towers and slabs being placed in open spaces. By the start of 1960s a reaction began to emerge. The young architects John Darbourne (1935-1991) and Geoffrey Darke (1929-2011) expressed this in their proposed design for the Lillington Gardens (1961-1980) in Pimlico. They envisioned a more human scale of building and the use of natural materials. They were awarded the contract. Their choice to use red brick was derived from the nearby Church of England church of St James the Less.

Location: Vauxhall Bridge Road, SW1V 2LF

Names

Council estates and individual buildings sometimes bare the names of politicians. However, because the property was poorly maintained these daubings passed from being honours into being liabilities.

Rent Strikes

In 1960 the Conservative-controlled St Pancras Council raised rents. Don Cook led a rent strike. However, Communists took over the matter. There were riots. The government banned a number of people from being given local authority housing.

Soon afterwards the Labour Party won control of the council. Cook and his family were then rehoused in Grafton Road.

Location: Kennistoun House, Leighton Road, Kentish Town, NW5 2UT

The Right-To-Buy

In 1977 the Conservative politician Sir Horace Cutler became the leader of the Greater London Council. He espoused the right of council tenants to buy their homes.

In 1979 the Conservatives won the general election. In 1980 the right to buy became law. Those who had been tenants for twenty years were given a 50% discount and those for three 33%.

Those were used the Right-To-Buy Scheme often replaced their front doors. This stamped their individuality upon the property and set them apart from those of their neighbours who had not exercised the right.

Some of those who exercised their right to buy did not appreciate that it would not be a one-off expenditure. They found themselves burdened with a series of new on-going expenses that were yoked to home ownership. As a result, when financial reality dawned, they lost their homes.

In the wake of right-to-buy the social composition of some estates began to change. Young professionals used purchasing ex-council property as a means of getting onto the property ladder. The ethnic composition began to become more enriched.

Dame Shirley Porter

Shirley Porter was elected to Westminster Council in 1974. She became its leader in 1983, stepping down eight years later. The Conservative governments since 1979 have set great store by the boroughs of Westminster and Wandsworth, which they have treated as 'show boroughs' for the 'success' of their politics. In 1994 both were boasting that they had the lowest council tax in England (the fact that local government finances are in large part underwritten by grants from the central government did help somewhat) as the result of their 'enlightened' pursuit of Conservative policies.

In May 1996 following a seven-year investigation, the auditor John Magill billed Dam Shirley Porter, two other Westminster councillors, and three Westminster council officials 31.6m. The six were ordered to repay the money to Westminster Council following the auditor's finding that they had wilfully engaged in an exercise in gerrymandering in order to retain the Conservatives' hold on power in the borough.

Magill's inquiry focused on a decision made by the council's housing committee in July 1987. The committee expanded the council's designated sales programme for selling off council-owned houses and flats. The policy became focused on eight of the borough's wards and was intended to turn them from Labour marginals into Conservative strongholds.

Roehampton

In 1950 Robert Matthew, the London County Council's Chief Architect, regained responsibility for housing within the Council's territory. He established a new division that included Stan Amis, Peter Carter, Alan Colquhoun, Bill Howell, John Killick, John Partridge (1924-2016), Colin St John Sandy Wilson. The Architects Department was divided into the anarcho-aesthete admirers of Le Corbusier, such as Sandy Wilson, and the Swedophiles e.g. Oliver Cox (1920-2010). As a result, its internal condition could be fractious.

The L.C.C. acquired the grounds of four large houses that bordered Richmond Park. Upon this it developed Roehampton Lane (subsequently Alton West), an estate with 2000 homes. The designs were heavily influenced by Le Corbusier.

The eleven-storey towerblocks of the East Alton section of the Roehampton development were designed by Cox. They were inspired by buildings that he had seen in Sweden. In part, the design was a reaction to sub-Corbusian slab blocks that had been built by his colleagues on the West Alton portion of the development.

In the opinion of Nikolaus Pevsner, the architects managed to blend his urbanism with the English picturesque. In part, this was achieved by a partial remodelling of the hill that was overseen by Partridge.

In 1956-7 the L.C.C. entertained plans to build a new town at Hook. The scheme was scuppered by the Second World War army commander Lord Allanbrooke who lived near to the site and Dame Evelyn Sharp, who was of the view that the Department had overreached itself.

In 1959 Amis, Howell, Killick, and Partridge left the L.C.C. to set up their own private practice that existed until 1995. Its output included The Albany Theatre in Deptford.

Location: Highcliffe Drive, SE15 4PS

The Tachbrook Estate

The Tachbrook Estate (1931-5) was developed by the Westminster Housing Association to a design by F. Milton Harvey. It occupied a site that had formerly housed Colt's revolver factory. The six- and seven-storey buildings were the first working-class housing to have electric lifts. Additional buildings were constructed after the Second World War.

In 2022 the estate was managed by Peabody.

Location: Aylesford Street, SW1V 3RN (purple, yellow)

Website: www.peabody.org.uk/neighbourhoods/westminster/tachbrook-estate/about

Thamesmead

In 2014 Peabody acquired most of Thamesmead.

Location: SE28 8AS

David Backhouse 2024