The Tudor Walters Report on housing was produced by the Tudor Walters Committee of the

United Kingdom Parliament The Parliament of the United Kingdom is the supreme legislative body of the United Kingdom, the Crown Dependencies and the British Overseas Territories. It meets at the Palace of Westminster, London. It alone possesses legislative supremac ...

in November 1918. Its recommendation set the standards for council house design and location for the next 90 years.

The committee

Tudor Walters Sir John Tudor Walters PC (25 February 1866 – 16 July 1933) was a Welsh architect, surveyor and Liberal Party politician. He served as Paymaster-General under David Lloyd George from 1919 to 1922 and once again briefly in 1931 under Rams ...

was the chairman,

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 ...

architect to Letchworth Garden City and Hamstead Garden Suburb was a member.

The background

In 1912 Raymond Unwin published a pamphlet ''Nothing gained by Overcrowding'', outlining the principles of the Garden City. The Local Government Board in 1912 had recommended that:

Cottages for the working classes should be built with wider frontages and grouped around open spaces which would become recreation grounds, they should have three bedrooms, a large living room, a scullery fitted with a bath and a separate WC to each house with access under cover

The published five model plans. Two had an additional parlour, four were terraced and one was semi detached. They had an area to . The

First World War World War I (28 July 1914 11 November 1918), often abbreviated as WWI, was List of wars and anthropogenic disasters by death toll, one of the deadliest global conflicts in history. Belligerents included much of Europe, the Russian Empire, ...

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". Also the Office for Works built the Well Hall Estate in

Eltham Eltham ( ) is a district of southeast London, England, within the Royal Borough of Greenwich. It is east-southeast of Charing Cross, and is identified in the London Plan as one of 35 major centres in Greater London. The three wards o ...

for workers at the Royal Ordnance Factory, at Woolwich. This had been built on Garden City principles, with fine

Arts and Crafts A handicraft, sometimes more precisely expressed as artisanal handicraft or handmade, is any of a wide variety of types of work where useful and decorative objects are made completely by one’s hand or by using only simple, non-automated re ...

details.

The recommendations

The committee expected to

Profoundly influence the general standard of housing in this country and to encourage the building of houses of such quality that they would remain above the acceptable minimum standards for at least sixty years

We regard it essential that each house should contain a minimum of three rooms on the ground floor (living-room, parlour, scullery) and three bedrooms above, two of these capable of containing two beds. A larder and a bathroom are essential.

Housing was to be in short terraces, spaced at at a density of in town or in the country. This was to allow the penetration of sunlight even in winter. There was to be secondary access to the sides of semi-detached houses and by ground floor passages through larger terraces. These terraces should be a maximum of eight houses long. The advantages of cul de sacs were noted as cheap method of providing services and preventing through traffic. The Committee noted the advantages of a varied provision of housing types and not restricting an estate to one social class. Deep narrow-fronted

byelaw terraced house A byelaw terraced house is a type of dwelling built to comply with the Public Health Act 1875. It is a type of British terraced house at the opposite end of the social scale from the aristocratic townhouse, but a marked improvement on the pre ...

s were to be avoided as the rear projection reduced air flow and light to the back of the house. (The middle-room problem). Wider frontages were preferred. A Tudor Walters house had an average frontage of . The living room should be a light room and ideally a through room. Three basic plans were suggested, based on cost and where the cooking would be done: *Living room with range where most of the cooking would be done, scullery with copper to heat the water, a bath and a gas cooker for occasional use. *A separate bathroom, cooking done in the scullery and the living room fire suitable only for occasional cooking *A separated upstairs bathroom, cooking done exclusively in the scullery. Meals would be eaten in the living room. In addition it was suggested that superior houses would have a parlour, as this was a reasonable expectation for the artisan class. A parlour house was to be and a non parlour house to be . In the climate of 1918, 85% of the houses needed to be three-bedroom and 15% to be smaller or bigger. Pre-war the divide had been 40%/60%. The bedrooms should be , and . A parlour of was seen to be adequate – in effect . It was a quiet room for reading, writing, a sick relative or formal entertaining of non-family visitors. It also suggested the use of district heating using waste heat from power-stations, the use of standardised components the positioning of community facilities and integration with public transport and phasing the construction of both.

Table

{, class="wikitable" , +Tudor Walters Committee Recommendations !House with out a parlour !Area sq ft (m²) !Volume cu ft (m³) !House with a parlour !Area sq ft (m²) !Volume cu ft (m³) , - , , , , Parlour , , , - , Living Room , , , Living Room , , , - , Scullery , , , Scullery , , , - , Larder , , - , Larder , , - , - , Bedroom No. 1 , , , Bedroom No. 1 , , , - , Bedroom No. 2 , , , Bedroom No. 2 , , , - , Bedroom No. 3 , , , Bedroom No. 3 , , , - , Total , , , , , , - , colspan="6" , Desirable Minimum sizes- Tudor Walters Committee

The legacy

In 1919 the Government required councils to provide housing, helping them to do so through the provision of subsidies, under The Addison Act (Housing Act 1919). The Housing Act 1890 had merely permitted them to do so. They were to be built to the Tudor Walters standards.

References