Bournville in Birmingham was created by George Cadbury to house the workers at his chocolate factory. He began the estate in 1895, then expanded it in stages, and it is still growing, with related developments in other parts of Birmingham, and even in Telford. The estate was always, on principle, a mix of owner-occupiers, owning their homes on long leases, and tenants, maybe more tenants than owner-occupiers. The houses are mostly semi-detached or blocks of four smaller cottages, with some detached houses and, more recently, some flats.
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| Typical Bournville semi-detached houses, c. 1898. |
George Cadbury believed in green space and grow-your-own fruit and vegetables, each house had a garden with three fruit trees. He built a school, with a carillon on the top, which is still played by the carilloner, a swimming bath, a church and, because he was Quaker, a Friends' Meeting House. The chocolate factory had leisure facilities, including a theatre, for the workers. He built the centre of the original village round a village green, planted with trees and, in spring, covered in spring bulbs. He kept a small piece of woodland, full of bluebells, and there are parks, a small stream which he re-named the Bourne, and a boating pool for sailing model boats
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The carillion, on top of the school (it isn't really leaning,
I was standing in the road) |
.All the Bournville Village Trust estates are run by the estate office, though general utilities such as roads are run by the City council. There are rules, and some of the estate is a conservation area. Residents have a say, a bit, through residents committees. This is social housing which works, Bournville is a good place to live, because it is well maintained and includes a social mix. Birmingham City Council, in return for a grant, has an option on some of the rented properties for people on the council housing list, the rest are managed by the Estate Office.
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| St. Francis Church, 1913, architect, W.H. Harvey, the estate architect. |
The estates became a model for Birmingham council housing estates in the 1930s; red brick terrace blocks of two to four houses with quite generous gardens built round quiet roads and cul de sacs. Its easy Arts and Crafts style also influenced the design of many private housing estate schemes.
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Typical Birmingham between the wars council housing terrace,
Kings Heath. |
I got involved in London social housing by accident, when I bought a small studio on a run-down Southwark council estate, to use as a base for exploring London. The estate was run-down, it looked horrible, but it had a good security system, new front doors, the neighbours seemed nice, and helpful, and it was functioning reasonably well. The estate was built in the 1970s by Arup Associates for Southwark Council. There are many similar estates around the poorer London boroughs such as Tower Hamlets and Tottenham, which I still have to go and explore.
The upmarket Barbican Estate designed by Chamberlin, Powell and Bon was built at the same time.
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| Part of the Barbican Estate. Photo: Luke Hayes. |
The Barbican is very similar in style to many Brutalist 1970s council blocks., What makes the significant difference between upmarket Barbican and downmarket Southwark? Maintenance, security, planting schemes, assessing and meeting the needs of the expected tenants.
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Park Hill, Sheffield, 1950-61.
(RIBA| Library) |
Above is Park Hill, Sheffield, built by architects Jack Lynn and Ivor Smith for Sheffield City Council. This replaced run-down slum terraces, courts of back-to back houses with shared standpipes for water and shared toilets not connected to mains drainage. At the time Park Hill was acclaimed as landmark innovative slum-clearance. The flats were connected by 'streets in the sky', long balconies wide enough to take a milk-float in the days when milk was still delivered. Park Hill became a dangerous slum, due to poor maintenance,lack of social control and unsuitability to the needs of families. It is now being renovated by Urban Splash for mixed rental and ownership with a surgery, nursery, leisure and retail facilities and will probably soon be a go-to destination for young urbanites.
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Le Corbusier, Unite d'habitation, Marseilles, 1947-52
(Wikipedia) |
The model for these Brutalist blocks of flats was Le Corbusier's Unite d'habitation. The first, in Marseilles, was 337 apartments, twelve storeys high, opening off long corridors. It includes, like the Barbican, shops, leisure facilities, even a small children's pool and a running track on the roof, all in a parkland setting, and it is a popular place to live.
Le Corbusier in turn was inspired by Soviet Communist architecture, the Narkomfin building, Moscow, designed by Moisei Ginzberg and Ignati Milinis, built 1932 for high-rank Communist officials. The block had communal kitchens, creches and laundry facilities, a library and a gym, all in a parkland setting. The communal living facilities were not really popular; tenants quickly constructed make-shift kitchens in the flats. Narcomfin is now in a very run-down, un-loved state, due to poor maintenance and, probably, unhappy tenants.
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Narcomfin House, Moscow, architect Moisei Ginzburg
(Structurae) |
I didn't expect Southwark council to announce that they had plans to demolish the Four Squares estate, get into partnership with a developer, and build 'affordable homes' and other more lucrative schemes. Two of the four blocks had been left to quietly decay for many years and had never benefited from the previous regeneration scheme.
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Four Squares before re-furbishment.
It doesn't look like a slum, does it?
I planted those flowers. |
The residents were all up in arms, fortunately the local Councillors supported them, asking awkward questions about the management of regeneration funds, and the Housing Department reluctantly agreed to re-furbish all four blocks.
So I got to know my neighbours. Some had bought their flats, some were council tenants. We all sat through long, difficult meetings with Council officers and contractors, some had incredible patience, some got upset, some gave up and left.
Several years and many meetings later we are still there, with new windows, a new roof, and looking quite respectable. Residents of the two blocks which Southwark hadn't re-furbished are getting used to a security entry system; the local youth can no-longer run around just where they please. The drug dealers no longer deal, at least not openly, the garages which run all along under the blocks are back in use, earning some income for Southwark.
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Four Squares wrapped in green netting and scaffolding.
There are blocks wrapped up like this all over south London. |
I have quite a lot of experience of urban regeneration, as I lived in two areas of terraced housing in Birmingham that underwent what was called Urban Renewal. This meant re-roofing whole blocks of terraced housing and, in some cases, replacing windows and doors too. My experiences of living in social housing, and urban regeneration,now sent me in search of social housing around London, something I am still exploring. First I explored the Heygate Estate, by Elephant and Castle, which was bitterly fought over ten years ago.
It has all gone, replaced, at the moment, by a heap of rubble and a tower block. Elephant and Castle is all being improved and will probably soon be a fashionable London address. I visited when the people living there had mostly been re-housed, just a few home-owners grimly hanging on. I found some fantastic, imaginative graffiti.
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Graffiti on the Heygate estate, all gone now.
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The Aylesbury Estate is a bit further out fro Elephant and Castle, along the Walworth Road and Albany Road, very near recently re-furbished Burgess Park. These 1970s blocks are mostly eight to ten storeys high, looming forbiddingly, and it is hard to see how they could possibly be improved and made attractive to tenants. Most of that estate is to be demolished.
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| Aylesbury Estate blocks |
It is hard to see why they were built that way, no human scale, no safety, dangerous rat-runs where a child could easily be knifed. Looking back to slum clearance and urgent re-housing needs they might have seemed better than damp, run-down pest-infected terraces but the design don't seem very well thought through to make them safe and to accomodate families with young children. But even here there is quite a lot of social cohesian, and people trying to make communities work
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Plan of the Aylesbury Estate
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So what is my conclusion? That social housing needs regular maintenance just as private housing does. That green, maintained, space is important to social well being. That people need to be listened to and that people can find a voice and get things done if they work together. It's been tough, but, well, I've been lived through three urban renewal projects, they made me believe in regeneration rather than wholesale demolition. There is also a problem with Right to Buy. This initially produced a good mix of tenants with owner-occupiers, who often care more about maintenance and management than tenants who may see themselves as only there temporarily. But as a result of Right to Buy many of the properties are now let out by private landlords at commercial rents. The number of council properties for rent has reduced. It would help the situation if the council wrote a clause into the leases pegging future private landlord rents to council rents.
