London County Council cottage estates are estates of

council houses A council house is a form of British public housing built by local authorities. A council estate is a building complex containing a number of council houses and other amenities like schools and shops. Construction took place mainly from 1919 a ...

, built by

London County Council London County Council (LCC) was the principal local government body for the County of London throughout its existence from 1889 to 1965, and the first London-wide general municipal authority to be directly elected. It covered the area today kno ...

, in the main between 1918 and 1939.

Council-built housing

The

City of London Corporation The City of London Corporation, officially and legally the Mayor and Commonalty and Citizens of the City of London, is the municipal governing body of the City of London, the historic centre of London and the location of much of the United King ...

built

tenements A tenement is a type of building shared by multiple dwellings, typically with flats or apartments on each floor and with shared entrance stairway access. They are common on the British Isles, particularly in Scotland. In the medieval Old Town, i ...

in the

Farringdon Road Farringdon Road is a road in Clerkenwell, London. Route Farringdon Road is part of the A201 route connecting King's Cross to Elephant and Castle. It goes southeast from King's Cross, crossing Rosebery Avenue, then turns south, crossing C ...

in 1865, but this was an isolated instance. The first council to build housing as an integrated policy was

Liverpool Corporation Liverpool City Council is the governing body for the city of Liverpool in Merseyside, England. It consists of 90 councillors, three for each of the city's 30 wards. The council is currently controlled by the Labour Party and is led by Mayor J ...

, starting with St Martin's Cottages in Ashfield Street, Vauxhall, completed in 1869. That year a Royal Commission was held, as the state had taken an interest in housing and housing policy. This led to the

Housing of the Working Classes Act 1890 The Housing of the Working Classes Act 1890 ( 53 & 54 Vict. c. 70) was an Act of the Parliament of the United Kingdom. Background The Housing of the Working Classes Act 1885 was a public health act, not a housing act. It empowered local authoriti ...

, which encouraged the London authority to improve the housing in their areas. It also gave them the power acquire land and to build

tenement A tenement is a type of building shared by multiple dwellings, typically with flats or apartments on each floor and with shared entrance stairway access. They are common on the British Isles, particularly in Scotland. In the medieval Old Town, i ...

s and houses (cottages). As a consequence

opened the

Boundary Estate The Boundary Estate is a housing development in the London Borough of Tower Hamlets, in the East End of London. It is positioned just inside Bethnal Green's historic parish and borough boundary with Shoreditch, which ran along ''Boundary S ...

in 1900, a block dwelling estate of tenements in

Tower Hamlets The London Borough of Tower Hamlets is a London borough covering much of the traditional East End. It was formed in 1965 from the merger of the former metropolitan boroughs of Stepney, Poplar, and Bethnal Green. 'Tower Hamlets' was originally ...

. The first four cottage estates were at Norbury, Old Oak, Totterdown Fields and White Hart Lane.

Homes fit for heroes – interwar policy

In 1912

Raymond Unwin Sir Raymond Unwin (2 November 1863 – 29 June 1940) was a prominent and influential English engineer, architect and town planner, with an emphasis on improvements in working class housing. Early years Raymond Unwin was born in Rotherham, York ...

, published a pamphlet ''Nothing gained by Overcrowding''. He worked on the influential

Tudor Walters Report The Tudor Walters Report on housing was produced by the Tudor Walters Committee of the United Kingdom Parliament in November 1918. Its recommendation set the standards for council house design and location for the next 90 years. The committee Tudo ...

of 1918, which recommended housing in short terraces, spaced at at a density of 12 to the acre. The

First World War World War I (28 July 1914 11 November 1918), often abbreviated as WWI, was one of the deadliest global conflicts in history. Belligerents included much of Europe, the Russian Empire, the United States, and the Ottoman Empire, with fightin ...

indirectly provided a new impetus, when the poor physical health and condition of many urban recruits to the

army An army (from Old French ''armee'', itself derived from the Latin verb ''armāre'', meaning "to arm", and related to the Latin noun ''arma'', meaning "arms" or "weapons"), ground force or land force is a fighting force that fights primarily on ...

was noted with alarm. This led to a campaign known as ''Homes fit for heroes''. In 1919 the Government, through the

Housing Act 1919 The Housing, Town Planning, &c. Act 1919 (c 35) was an Act of the Parliament of the United Kingdom. It was also known as the Addison Act after Minister of Health, Christopher Addison, who was Minister for Housing. The Act was passed to allow the ...

required councils to provide housing built to the Tudor Walters standards, helping them to do so through the provision of subsidies, London County Council embraced these freedoms and planned 8 cottage estates in the peripheries of London:

Becontree Becontree or Both pronunciations are given as Received Pronunciation in the Longman Pronunciation Dictionary, but the form is prioritised (). The dialectologist Peter Wright wrote in 1981 that is the traditional pronunciation in the cockney ...

, St Helier,

Downham Downham is a district of south-east London, England, within the London Borough of Lewisham. It borders the London Borough of Bromley, and is located north of Bromley and south of Catford. Downham was named in honour of Lord Downham, who was ...

, Watling for example; seven further followed including Bellingham. Houses were built on green field land on the peripheries of urban London. The Addison Act provided subsidies solely to local authorities and not to private builders. Many houses were built over the next few years in ''cottage estates''. Following the

Geddes Axe The Geddes Axe was the drive for public economy and retrenchment in UK government expenditure recommended in the 1920s by a Committee on National Expenditure chaired by Sir Eric Geddes and with Lord Inchcape, Lord Faringdon, Sir Joseph Maclay an ...

of 1922, the Housing, &c. Act 1923 ( Chamberlain Act) of 1923 stopped subsidies going to council houses but did extend subsidies to private builders. The first Labour government took office in 1924. The Wheatley Act of 1924 restored subsidies to municipal housing but at a lower level, it failed to make any provision for the lower paid, who were living in the worse conditions, and could not afford to pay the higher rents of the new houses, or to travel to work in Central London from these new peripheral estates. Examples of these were built at the

Downham Estate The Downham Estate is a London County Council cottage estate in Downham, south east London. It is mainly in the London Borough of Lewisham and partly in the London Borough of Bromley. The Downham Estate provides an example of the programme of b ...

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 ...

, Blocks of flats were also built.Chris Roberts, Heavy Words Lightly Thrown: The Reason Behind Rhyme, Thorndike Press,2006 ()

Design of the estates

This was dictated by the topology and the desired densities.

Design of the houses

Most of the houses were brick built, but due to the shortage of bricks and wood in the early 1920s, and the availability of factories tooled up for war work some interesting experimental designs and prefabrications.

Furnishing the house

An advertisement offering to complete furnish an Atholl all-steel house in

for £78.17.11d, gave a full list of what was needed.

References