Layout Plans of the Houses.
So where did the plans and designs come from which were used by the speculative builders? In discussions with leading figures for the period who worked for firms such as Taylor Woodrow, Higgs and Hill, and Wimpey the author asked whether their estate layouts or house plans were influenced by any particular architect or existing estate in the 1930s. The answer appears to be that there was no overpowering influence that affected what they designed and built. They copied what had been done before, and amended it to suit their aims of providing small cheap houses for the working classes. 'Speculative builders generally worked from experience and empirical knowledge' and copied what other builders were selling nearby (59). As a leader in the Illustrated Carpenter and Builder said, 'At present the great majority of builders work to plans produced in their own offices...it is undeniable that a sound well-planned house can be erected almost equally well from a series of sketches on the back of an old envelope as from a neatly executed and carefully coloured working drawing' (60). The ability to organise the building process, which is what the developer/builder did is not necessarily accompanied by aesthetic judgement, and, in any event, under the rules of the Royal Institution of British Architects (RIBA) architects could not act as principals of building firms (61). It was said that 'The architectural profession is choked with men whose uneasy, perky, unpractical work justifies the criticism of a public which feels that an architect should not be a builder' (62).
In the 1930s, books of house plans were readily available which also had specifications of materials shown on the plans. The majority of copies of the Illustrated Carpenter and Builder during the 1930s had a plan of a house or bungalow, copies of which could be acquired from the editor. There were house plans in the Ideal Home guidebooks throughout the 1930s. There were also many competitions to follow such as the Cheap Cottage Competition at Letchworth Garden City, which had been organised by The Country Gentleman in 1905 to find a design for a cottage which could be erected for £150, the plans submitted for this competition were published. . At the instigation of The Local Government Board (LGB) in 1917 a competition was organised and judged by the Royal Institution of British Architects to find outstanding designs for post-war housing (64). The specification drawn up by the LGB was out of touch with reality as only one of the four classes of design called for a minimum of three bedrooms and a parlour, and only a fixed supply of water was called for rather than a bathroom or toilet. It was no wonder that The Builder described the conditions 'as archaic' (65). The Tudor Walters Report and the Manual also contained plans. Christopher Addison, the post-war Minister of Health, proposed the adoption of 'new and cheaper types of houses' (66). 'A selection of economical plans based upon the experience of the regional housing commissions' were prepared (67). The Manual in 1920 showed twelve plans for bungalows, cottages and agricultural cottages which followed the recommendations of the Report. Later the Building Centre organised a competition in 1931 that attracted considerable response from house designers. In total, three hundred designs were submitted for houses, but the winning design was unlikely to be attractive to the buyer of the smaller home as it had two particularly unpopular features. First, the bathroom was on the ground floor and secondly there was one large through room serving as the living-room. The bedrooms were bigger than usual because the bathroom had been removed to the ground floor and placed in the hall by the front door, but such an arrangement was unpopular. The plans, shown over the page, show typical layouts of small houses built by two speculative builders in the 1930s, the Victorian tunnel-back and the so called universal plan of the semi.
Equally idealistic and just as unrealistic were the recommendations of the 1934 National Housing Committee. This was formed by Edgar Bonham Carter, Raymond Unwin and a small group of eminent people representing architectural, social and religious interests to considerer the vital problem of national housing. In their A National Housing Policy they concluded that the houses should be built, with an area of not less than 760 square feet, to let at under 10/- per week, inclusive of rates. They also decreed that the house should not have a parlour since it is 'not so necessary for healthy and decent family life as the other rooms.. and the bathroom will be placed on the ground floor...but may serve more readily as a wash-house if placed adjacent to the scullery' (68). Their full recommendations were put to the Ministry of Health in a paper written in June 1934 by Rees-Nicholson, the secretary, and entitled An Exposition of the Proposals for a National Housing Board (69). They advocated the setting up of boards to function through the Local Authorities under the guidance of local offices. They envisaged that this scheme would be funded by the government who would be repaid from the rents. They said that the houses would cost £350, including land, which would be financed at 3.5 per cent by the government over forty-one years. Under their proposed scheme a total of 600 houses a year would be built. Yet there were two major misconceptions with their proposals. The first was that as has been demonstrated the popular taste was for parlours and against bathrooms being sited on the ground floor. Secondly, the committee's financial assumptions also were not attractive to the government. In order to let a house at 8/6p per week net of rates and repay the capital, the total cost of building the houses and buying the land would have had to have been less than £350. At this time, the average house being built by local authorities was probably costing about £450. However, their proposals would have required a bureaucracy to have managed the scheme and to see that repairs and maintenance were carried out. Such an organisation would have been costly. Their ideas could be said to represent an establishment view. The houses they would have built would not have been what was required by the working classes and the bureaucracy established as a result would not have responded to the needs of ordinary people. They ignored the fact that the government was unwilling to fund such a programme when the speculative developer was beginning to perform the task without any cost to the Exchequer. As a further note on the differences between the popular view of housing and the architectural one the Dudley Report said that;
There is a considerable difference of opinion in this matter between those producing agencies which have an interest in the collective architectural effect of the houses they build and the consumers generally, who are principally concerned with the convenience of the individual house.This is not just necessarily a financial choice, it is a reflection of taste (70).
(59) J. Burnett, A Social History of Housing 1815-1985, (London, 1986), p. 26.
(60) Illustrated Carpenter and Builder (3 January 1935), p. 3.
(61) The Architects Registration Act 1931:21 & 22 Geo V, Ch 33, extended this prohibition to all architects registered under this Act.
(62) Illustrated Carpenter and Builder (12 April 1935), p. 815.
(63) J.Cornes Modern Housing in Town and Country, (London, 1905), p.126.
(64) RIBA :Housing of the Working Classes in England and Wales:Cottage Designs 1917.
(65) The Builder, vol cxiv no.3922 (5 April 1918), p. 207.
(66) PRO CAB 27\66CP94 (memo by Addison 11 November 1919).
(67) M. Swenarton,op.cit, p. 157.
(68) S.Gaskell, Model Housing From the Great Exhibition to the Festival of Britain (London, 1987), pp. 94-98.
(69) A copy is lodged with submissions to P.E.P.as document WG13/s.
(70) Design of Dwellings, The Dudley Report (H.M.S.O, 1944), p. 69, para 52.