Swedish post-war prefabricated houses were a response to the housing shortage in

Great Britain Great Britain is an island in the North Atlantic Ocean off the northwest coast of continental Europe. With an area of , it is the largest of the British Isles, the largest European island and the ninth-largest island in the world. It is ...

following the

Second World War World War II or the Second World War, often abbreviated as WWII or WW2, was a world war that lasted from 1939 to 1945. It involved the vast majority of the world's countries—including all of the great powers—forming two opposin ...

. 5,000 homes were built from kits made in

Sweden Sweden, formally the Kingdom of Sweden,The United Nations Group of Experts on Geographical Names states that the country's formal name is the Kingdom of SwedenUNGEGN World Geographical Names, Sweden./ref> is a Nordic country located on ...

and assembled on site. The first of these houses were built at

Abbots Langley Abbots Langley is a large village and civil parish in the English county of Hertfordshire. It is an old settlement and is mentioned (under the name of Langelai) in the Domesday Book. Economically the village is closely linked to Watford and was ...

Hertfordshire Hertfordshire ( or ; often abbreviated Herts) is one of the home counties in southern England. It borders Bedfordshire and Cambridgeshire to the north, Essex to the east, Greater London to the south, and Buckinghamshire to the west. For govern ...

, in January 1946. The

Housing (Temporary Accommodation) Act 1944 The Housing (Temporary Accommodation) Act 1944 is an Act of the Parliament of the United Kingdom (7 & 8 Geo. VI c. 36) which was passed in order to provide solutions to the housing crisis which occurred at the end of World War II. The Act was th ...

planned the building of 300,000 prefab houses in Britain over the next four years. They were to have a structural lifetime of between 10 and 15 years. In the end just over 150,000 were built. They were a gift of the Swedish government. They are an example of the use of " prefabs'" to deal with the post-war housing shortage in the UK. Many survive to this day and some have become listed buildings.

Origins

Scandinavian wooden prefabricated houses had been introduced to Scotland in 1920, with

Dundee Corporation Dundee Corporation is a public Canadian independent holding company based in Toronto, Ontario, Canada. Through its operating subsidiaries, Dundee Corporation is an active investor focused on delivering long‐term, sustainable value from investmen ...

building 556, Aberdeen Corporation 76 and from 1937 the

Scottish Special Housing Association The Scottish Special Housing Association was established in 1937 to provide good-quality social housing. It had headquarters in Edinburgh's West End, Palmerston Place and Manor Place, Edinburgh, where it employed a large team of architects, enginee ...

350.

Robert Matthew Sir Robert Hogg Matthew, OBE FRIBA FRSE (12 December 1906 – 2 June 1975) was a Scottish architect and a leading proponent of modernism. Early life & studies Robert Matthew was the son of John Fraser Matthew (1875–1955) (also an archite ...

, in 1945 Chief Architect in the

Department of Health for Scotland Department may refer to: * Departmentalization, division of a larger organization into parts with specific responsibility Government and military *Department (administrative division), a geographical and administrative division within a country, ...

was stranded in Sweden for

VE Day Victory in Europe Day is the day celebrating the formal acceptance by the Allies of World War II of Germany's unconditional surrender of its armed forces on Tuesday, 8 May 1945, marking the official end of World War II in Europe in the Easter ...

. However he spent the time designing kits for prefabricated houses which conformed to the recommendations of the 1944 UK government report ''Planning our New Homes''.

References

{{reflist Public housing in the United Kingdom