Internal Planning, Services and Fittings.
The Parlour.
Without any constraints from any overall design criteria the speculative builder erected the houses that he thought would sell. When it came to fitting out the interiors there was also no particular design policy in respect of internal fittings adopted by the speculative developer of houses for the working classes. Items such as the kitchen fittings, door furniture, architraves and skirting boards were taken off the shelf from whatever was available from suppliers at the time. It is not unusual to find different sizes of skirting boards, architraves, doors and/or different door handles in adjoining speculatively built houses, indicating that the builders fitted what they had to hand at the time. This would depend upon the deal they were able to strike with the builders' merchant; price and the period of credit became the main dictators of taste. In a survey of seven Taylor Woodrow houses in Woodstock Avenue on the Grange Park estate in Hayes Middlesex, built over a period of one year, the author found three types of skirting in use. In addition, different styles of joinery are also to be seen within the same house. In the houses inspected internal doors were either of three or four panelled design, without any obvious reason for the difference. Price, not design also determined the range of bathrooms, kitchens, doors and joinery that were fitted.
But all the houses had electricity, and the majority were supplied with gas for cooking. The electric elements used in the cookers were inefficient and took a considerable time to heat up, and thus cooking with electricity was very slow and unpopular. The heart of the kitchen was the cooker and there is very little difference in design between the gas and electrical appliances of the period after 1919 and up to 1939. They were designed by engineers and not designers who copied or adapted previous designs which used solid fuel as the source of heat. A speaker at the Institute of Electrical Engineers in 1926 complained that 'Oven designers are copying an older apparatus, the features of which are dependent upon its having to be stoked with coal and placed so that its hot hob can be accessible for cooking utensils' (78). Gas was not able to compete with electricity when it came to lighting. Not even 'Mr. Therm', the new (1933) slogan of the gas industry, was able to win the fight for gas lighting as the electrical tide became irreversible. Gas switches and flexible connections were offered by the gas companies. 'Gas Light Preserves Your Sight' was a typical slogan but had little effect (79). The Heyworth Committee, set up by the Minister of Fuel and Power in June 1944 to review the gas industry, had concluded that 'The replacement of domestic gas lighting by electric lighting will be universal' (80). Rather surprisingly, gas had held its own in the field of public lighting; the quantity of 'gas sold for this purpose roughly doubling between 1920 and 1937 (81). This was because the gas companies were selling gas at below cost for 'the advertising benefits which would more than offset the costs...the soft yellow-green glow of the lamps and the nocturnal rounds of the lamplighters' (82). Such an approach, which was similar to the lack of design of gas appliances, shows that the industry was still suffering from antiquated and old-fashioned attitudes.
All the houses built by the speculative builder also had interior bathrooms and toilets. In the use that the rooms were put to within a 1930s semi, the established customs continued. The bedrooms were on a separate floor from the living accommodation and bedrooms were now separate from each other and not interlinked. 'The various departments of the household must be distinct, with ready communications by doorways placed wisely to increase privacy' (83). This arrangement met with widespread approval from the Mass Observation volunteers (84). The bathroom adjoining the bedrooms was a popular feature and must have been a luxury compared with the older arrangement of bathrooms being located on the ground floor, on half-landing back additions or not existing at all. The inclusion in the bathroom of a wash basin was thought to be essential by Mass Observation's panel of 1,500 volunteers so that 'the family do not have to wash at the kitchen sink' (85). All the 1930s semis indeed tended to have a wash-hand basin fitted in the bathroom as standard.
On the ground floor the most important room was the kitchen: 'People possessing a convenient kitchen like their home very much more than people with kitchens they dislike' (86). The position and location of the kitchen, like the toilet in Victorian houses, was not deemed to be important and appears to have been squeezed into any out-of-the-way place available. As long as it was served by a back door its outlook and atmosphere counted for little. The kitchen in the semi of the 1930s became the operative centre of the house. Many people liked to use the kitchen as a place to eat, and the smaller suburban house did not have the ground floor accommodation to provide both a large kitchen and a dining room. Thus the kitchenette or dinette was created, which was little more than a living-room with a kitchen in it open to view without the appliances being hidden or screened. Compared with the Victorian and Edwardian kitchens, those in working-class houses of the 1930s were simpler and more compact.
Irrespective of whatever form of cooking was chosen, Mass Observation found that 'Convenient, compact and labour saving kitchens are in demand, people do not like to be cramped in the kitchens, one in three said that kitchens in post-war houses should have been built bigger so that they could cook and eat in the kitchen' (87). Mass Observation said later in the report that 'Working class people no longer want to eat in the room they cook in, what they want is two living rooms. If people's wishes are listened to this will effect a minor revolution in working class housing' (88). Perhaps the most significant change in the kitchen was its social status, reflecting broader changes taking place in society in the 1930s. This was a period of industrial efficiency, streamlined design and impatience with unnecessary informality. The kitchen in the 1930s semi was a warm, bright, busy place where the family would have been happy to eat meals, listen to the radio and live most of their family life.
Kitchen dressers, which still were often built-in during the 1920s, were replaced by a free-standing version with a pull-down work-table. If there was a built-in larder, it was little bigger than a cupboard. The range of services, fixtures and fittings supplied or available as a choice was one of the differences between the speculatively built house and the council house. Another was the fact that the speculative builder preferred to supply free standing units, it was cheaper, whereas the council house, built to the Tudor Walters standards laid emphasis on providing cupboards, larders and stores built into the house.
As has been discussed above the other important room was the front room, also known as the parlour or living-room, which was the other ground floor room in the small semi. There were conflicting views put forward by the experts on the necessity of providing a parlour, some of which have already been mentioned. There has been much written on the subject of parlours in working-class houses. In the journal The Garden City it was reported that the tenants were strongly dissatisfied with the replacement of the conventional subdivision of the ground floor by the non-parlour arrangement. 'The workmen and their wives...do not take kindly to this innovation, they like the parlour and they mean to have it (89)'. The Tudor Walters Report argued the case for a parlour to be provided in the small cottage but not if it meant cutting down on the size of the living room and the scullery (90). It was the place for 'privacy, friends to entertain, cosy chats' (91). The 'most debatable point in reference to accommodation is whether the parlour should be provided...The desire for a parlour... is remarkably wide-spread both among urban and rural workers' (92). Within the specification for 'an Englishman's dream house...there is one room for best, for entertaining and special days' (93). Unwin's attempts to remove the parlour met with great resistance. There were few suburban houses built by speculative developers which were without a parlour. It was the room which, although it was not used as much as other rooms in the house, had a social significance. It was a room for both for display and for privacy. The word 'privacy' was underlined in the Mass Observation document referred to above. The front room was also used for the ritual entertaining of visitors. Friends were seen in the kitchenette/dinette. The working classes wanted a parlour or front room; they did not wish to escape from the vulgarity of the last century, where 'The Victorian drawing- room was sentimental-romantic. The world is concerned today with planning. Such a living-room is an expression of man's present economic and social efforts: it is in sympathy with communism, the fascist corporate state, the Milk Marketing Board...the planned capitalism of P.E.P. (94)' The author of that statement, Anthony Bertram, a leading architect in the 1930s, showed that like the winner of the Building Centre design competition mentioned previously he too was out of touch with what the working-class and lower-middle class owner occupiers wanted when they bought a house. The house-buying public was conservative in taste and did not welcome designs that advanced too far their concept of what a house should look like. The Dudley Report said that
In our view...in designing and equipping dwellings, account should be taken in the way in which a house is run and the use which is made of the various rooms. In this matter the housewife is the expert and the local authority should have constant regard to her view... the strongest complaint was that the scullery or kitchen was too small. It was also represented to us by working housewives ...that there was no convenient place in the inter- war house for many ordinary family activities. These include study and home-work for older children,... reception of visitors; and the transaction of minor business necessary in every household (95).
The parlour served as a room for these activities.
(78) W. Wilson, Journal of the Institute of Electrical Engineering, vol.LXIV, (1925-6) ,p. 314.
(79) ibid., p.210.
(80) The Gas Industry, Committee of Inquiry, (November 1945),.Cmd 6699, p.34 The Heyworth Report, para 200 (e).
(81) T. Williams, History of the British Gas Industry (Oxford, 1981), p. 69.
(82) M. Falkus, Always Under Pressure: A History of North Thames Gas Since 1949, (London, 1988), p. 20.
(83) S. Muthesius, The English Terraced House (London, 1982), p. 79.
(84) J. Murray, Mass Observation, Peoples Homes (London, 1941), para 14.
(85) ibid., para 21.
(86) ibid., para 10.
(87) ibid., para 18.
(88) ibid.,para. 20.
(89) The Garden City vol no.1, October (London, 1906), p.187.
(90) ibid. para 86 and 87.
(91) Mass Observation,(FR 1593), The Sort of Home the Englishman Wants (London, 1943), p. 1.
(92) idem, para 86.
(93) idid., p. 5.
(94) A. Bertram, The House, A Machine for Living In: A Summary of the Art and Science of Home making Considered Functionally. (London, 1935), p. 93.
(95) Design of Dwellings, The Dudley Report, (H.M.S.O. 1944), pp.10-11, para 14 and 27.