The Role of the Architect as it Related to the Speculative House.
'The contribution which the architecture profession made to the activities of the speculative builder in this period was small, and to the builder of working-class housing, minimal' (71). Swenarton has said that after 1921, when the scale of fees was cut, the involvement of architects was exceptional and meant that 'the high architectural quality of the immediate post-war 'homes fit for heroes' was not maintained' (72). All the many factors mentioned above led to the usual and accepted practice of small, mass-produced houses built by the speculative builder and designed without the assistance of architects. The lack of an involvement by architects was nothing new in the field of speculative development, for 'after 1850 it is rare to find an architect of any reputation meddling with estate development' (73). Towards the end of the 1930s 'A few of the larger builders, however, actually had architects on their staff...but it is impossible to say how many builders employed how many architects' (74). Many of the architects employed by the bigger builders would have been responsible for the design of the larger capital projects.
The public, the builders and the local authorities seemed to accept that the great mass of houses built by private enterprise should be built without benefit of design or supervision by trained architects. The architectural profession did voice misgivings in the professional journals throughout the 1920s and 1930s about the dangers of developers building without architects being involved. But no dominant architectural idiom and hence no single stylistic message filtered through to the speculative builder of working-class houses from the pages of the architectural press. Some architects were also too arrogant to understand just how desperately poor were the conditions in many working classes houses. In a paper given by William Ansell, F.R.I.B.A., which he read to the South Wales Institution of Architects and which was reported in The Builder of 2 April 1937, he said that 'even the slums in the Welsh valleys had something of dignity in their squalid ugliness that is absent from the work of the building speculators with its cheap fripperies, its pathetic imitations its fidgety unrest...incomplete use of architect's services...realisation of the value of their work...nothing which is visible above ground should be done without their co-operation from the lay-out of roads to the last lamp-post' (75). It is doubted if Mr Ansell sought the opinions of the occupiers of the slum houses on whether or not they preferred to live in a slum in Wales, or a house built by a speculative builder in one of the new suburbs. Priestley understood that social priorities should triumph over aesthetics when he wrote that 'People should come first, their happiness is more important than certain delicate satisfactions of our own' (76). In looking back on the modern movement in 1945, John Gloag said that 'Architects have become social reformers intent upon telling their countrymen how to live, instead of providing them with the best background for living in their own way' (77).
(71) J. Burnett, A Social History of Housing 1815-1985 (London, 1986), p. 25.
(72) M. Swenarton,op.cit, p.141.
(73) J. Summerson, Georgian London (London, 1991), p. 290.
(74) Marian Bowley, The British Building Industry; Four Studies in Response and Resistance to Change (Cambridge, 1966), p. 378.
(75) ibid., p.733.
(76) P.Oliver, I. Bentley, I. Davis Dunroamin', (London, 1981), p. 34.
(77) ibid., p. 40.
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