The key feature of this time was social housing. At the start of the period this was provided by philanthropic associations, such as the Four Percent Industrial Dwellings Company, set up in 1885. One of their buildings is Navarino mansions built in 1903-4. It was aimed particularly at Jewish artisans. Another example is the Guinness Trust estate in Stamford Hill.

Pressure had been growing for some time on the state to take responsibility. The 1890 Housing of the Working Classes Act had given local authorities the powers to build homes, and reinforced existing slum clearance legislation, which gave local authorities the right to demolish slum housing. London County Council built some estates, such as Valette buildings in 1905. More active in Hackney was the Vestry of Shoreditch, which built the first Local Authority public housing in London, the Provost Street housing scheme in 1900. Shoreditch also pioneered recycling - it built a generator to burn refuse which warmed the public baths, provided lighting to its model dwellings and drove the turbines at the electricity station. The vestry also provided disinfectant and delousing for its new tenants!

After the war there was a great shortage of housing, partly due to the halt on house building necessitated by the First World War. For private builders working class housing was seen as unprofitable, and a rent freeze in 1915 removed any incentive for private landlords to maintain their properties, or in some cases to remain landlords at all, and the private rented sector began to decline. There was also a fear that a revolution could occur if the WWI soldiers had to return to the same poor and overcrowded conditions that they had left. Hence the stage was set for full-scale state provision of housing, via subsidies to local authorities. Although at the time it was thought to be only necessary for a short period, due to the abnormal post-war conditions.

As there was little land for new development most new sites were created by slum clearance. New buildings were apartment blocks rather than family homes. The typical thirties slum clearance apartment block in Hackney is of neo-Georgian design, with a steel structure, solid brick walls, concrete staircases and partitions, and timbered red-tiled roofs, such as Whiston House on Goldsmiths Row. Particular concerns of the designers were to allow light and air in and keep vermin out. Providing lifts was difficult and costly, so the highest blocks at this time were four or five storey walk-ups, with balcony access to each flat. Many estates of this period have had lifts added later. Over two thousand of such homes were built in Hackney in the first three decades of the twentieth century.

Well intentioned as the new developments were there were oversights. Using the flats as shops or workshops was forbidden so families were denied vital sources of income from women who had often previously worked from home. The rules also prohibited overcrowding, a reaction to the slums but the restrictions were too tight. Without the money gained from a lodger, or saved from living more to a room, many families could not afford the rents. Tenants also had to be in permanent employment, and many of those in poor families were not. The excellent facilities these new homes had attracted lower middleclass families rather than the working class people they were intended for.

Although increasingly throughout the 1920s and 1930s particular attention was paid to slum dwellers, the number of new homes rarely matched the number of people displaced. Despite the high-density five storey blocks that were usually erected. For example the Provost Estate only housed 83% of the people displaced from the slums on Nile Street that had stood there previously.

Private provision of rented housing between the wars actually declined from 90% to 58% due to slum clearance and sales to new owner-occupiers. Overall however there was a 44% expansion of the housing stock during this time. By 1939 Local authorities had built 1 million dwellings, 10% of the housing stock, but the biggest boom was in owner occupiers, going up by 2.9 million dwellings.

Owner occupied terraced homes of this period generally differ little from the late Victorian period, with the exception of the mock Tudor house which became popular in the 1930s. Another example of housing typical of the period are modern private flats, such as the sleek ocean liner style blocks with their typical metal framed Crittall windows.

Buy related books

Edwardian House Style: An Architectural and Interior Design Source Book, , Hilary Hockman


Period House: An Owner's Guide, Albert Jackson, David Day