Brutal London by Simon Phipps

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1960s, 1970s, Brutalism

There’s been a spate of books on Brutalism recently but I’m happy to recommend Brutal London by Simon Phipps to the many enthusiasts out there. It’s a lavishly illustrated, 192-page guide to 93 of the major examples of the genre in the capital, organised in an accessible borough-by-borough form.

Thamesmead (1967-74), Greenwich

Phipps’ powerful images – the heart and soul of the book – are in the monochrome which is de rigueur for a certain type of architectural photography but it works particularly well in capturing the stark power of Brutalist buildings: in the author’s words, providing ‘a stripped down aesthetic for a barebones architecture’.

However, he adds a brief, thought-provoking foreword and a very useful end section of Building Information.  The latter includes details of when the buildings were built and their architects – this detail can be surprisingly onerous to track down so I’m grateful for his efforts – as well as some extended observations on selected examples. It’s good to see maps included too, not practical for navigation but a useful guide to location.

I’m not an enthusiast of Brutalism as such…before some of you stop reading just there, let me clarify. I do admire the bravura and sheer presence of many of the best examples but, as an historian, I’m more interested in a building’s social and political ‘story’, particularly that of the council housing which forms the mainstay of this blog.  Of course, architecture and design are very far from innocent of social purpose and ideology and, nowhere is this more true than of British Brutalism – ‘widely seen as the architectural style of the Welfare State’. (1)

Phipps himself notes how ‘certain design elements suggest the socially progressive politics of the post-war state made manifest in the minds of architects’.  In a particularly powerful phrase, he commends this ‘forceful, belligerent, conceptually considered and egalitarian architecture of social purpose that manifested itself across post-war London’.

Robin Hood Gardens (1969-72), Tower Hamlets

It’s interesting to note that a majority of the case-studies are of housing – a straightforward illustration of the argument – and salutary to note, as Phipps does, our loss of purpose in this regard with the demolition of the Heygate Estate and imminent destruction of the Robin Hood Estate.  (Goldfinger’s Balfron Tower and Lasdun’s Keeling House have been or will be sold to the private sector – a mark both of Brutalism’s now fashionably cherished status and our contemporary disregard for the high-quality working-class housing that was central to that post-war vision.)

Other flights of eloquence – reflecting his own arts and design background and a predominantly aesthetic appreciation of Brutalist architecture – leave me a little colder but I’m sure will speak powerfully to the movement’s fans.

Phipps adopts the seminal definition of Brutalism deployed by Reyner Banham in his path-breaking 1955 essay. (2)  The New Brutalism (as it was then) is characterised by:

formal legibility of plan, clear exhibition of structure and the valuing of materials for their inherent qualities “as found”.

It’s a broad definition and it allows Phipps to include a number of works that I wouldn’t personally have considered Brutalist. I’ve tended to assume that the use of concrete (particularly the béton brut often thought to have given the style its name) was a crucial component but I’m happy to leave this to be debated by the experts and enthusiasts and grateful that the wider perspective allows us to look anew at a number of significant schemes.

Paddington British Rail Maintenance Depot (1966-68), Westminster

You’ll find the expected showpieces here – the National Theatre, the Royal College of Physicians, the Institute of Education – and a few you may have overlooked – a fire station and British Rail Maintenance Depot, both in Paddington, for example.  In terms of housing, there’s the Barbican, of course, and in the genuinely social housing that interests me, Balfron and Trellick, a number of the wondrous Camden estates of the 1970s, and many others. (3)

Alexander Road Estate (1972-78), Camden

Alton West, Alton Estate (1955-58), Wandsworth

Alton West is included naturally – in Phipps’ words ‘a riposte to the tidy geometries and bland stylings of the Scandinavian-inspired modernists’ who had designed the earlier eastern phase.

Doddington and Rollo Estate (1969-71), Wandsworth

The Aylesbury Estate (1963-71), Southwark

Also in Wandsworth, it’s interesting to see the Doddington and Rollo and York Road Estates covered, built using the Laings Jespersen Large Panel System and generally considered (for good reason given early teething troubles) to be system-built disasters. Other system-built schemes covered include the first system-built housing estate constructed in the country, the Morris Walk Estate built by the London County Council in 1963-1966 using the Larsen-Nielsen system.  The troubled but maligned Aylesbury Estate in Southwark, another built using the Jespersen system and now subject to its own controversial regeneration, is also featured.  No poured, in situ, board-marked concrete here.

Lillington Gardens Estate (1964-72), Westminster

World’s End Estate (1969-77), Kensington and Chelsea

Nor in Westminster, where Darbourne and Darke’s Lillington Gardens was praised by some as an example of the ‘new vernacular’ – a point at which you might feel the definition of Brutalism stretched. Down the river in Chelsea, Eric Lyons’ World’s End Estate is also noted. Since both are concrete-built and only brick-clad and since both that possess the Brutalist ‘clear exhibition of structure’ that Phipps values their inclusion is probably justified.

Anyway, buy the book and make your choices – in inner London in particular, anyone interested in modern architecture will find much to pique their interest.  If you love Brutalism, you’ll love the book.  If you don’t, it might at least give you pause for thought. Brutalism may not have been pretty but it does look increasingly attractive – both as a monument to earlier ideals and as a rebuttal to what Phipps rightly describes as ‘the bright vinyl-clad Wendy houses that count for much of today’s banal and mediocre housing’.

Photography (c) Simon Phipps

Brutal London by Simon Phipps is published by September Publishing, £14.99. http://www.septemberpublishing.org/product/brutal-london/ 

You can follow Simon Phipps on Twitter at @new_brutalism

References

(1) Barnabas Calder, Raw Concrete: The Beauty of Brutalism (2016) – an excellent and engaging academic guide to the subject which I’ve previously reviewed.

(2) Reyner Banhan, ‘The New Brutalism’, Architectural Review December 1955

(3) Of those I’ve written about: Alexandra Road, the Branch Hill Estate and the Whittington Estate.

 

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Early Council Housing in Banbury, Part II: King’s Road and the Cow Fair Roarer

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1920s, Pre-1914

I’m pleased to feature the second part of this fine guest post by Jane Kilsby – a wonderful record of the struggle to build decent working-class housing in the early years of the last century and a proper tribute to a man who dedicated his life to the cause.

Banbury was one of the very few shire towns to build council housing before the First World War. That it did so, as last week’s post made clear, owed much to the energy and idealism of Councillor Herbert Payne, the ‘Cow Fair Roarer’. This week’s post takes the story forward: Banbury built some of the finest early council housing in the country but for Payne himself life took a far more sombre turn.

A contemporary map of Banbury; King’s Road is to the centre-left. From OpenStreetMap and used under the terms of this Creative Commons licence.

To secure high-quality design, the Council announced an architectural competition in December 1911.  The Council wanted 40 houses – 20 at no more than £175 each and 20 at no more than £135 each – but they also wanted entrants to avoid monotony and make best use of the land.  A local exhibition on the scheme was so popular that its opening hours were extended.

Early twentieth century municipal housing schemes provided new opportunities and challenges for architects. Some 63 architects from across the country participated in the Banbury competition, attacking (in the words of the Banbury Guardian) ‘the problem of designing a cheap form of dwelling so as to give a maximum accommodation and amenity with a good deal of spirit’. Unfortunately, none of these plans appear to survive.  Mr J Fisher of Wellingborough, the architect appointed to design the new school in Grimsbury, was selected as adjudicator.  The winning design was by Messrs Geoffry Lucas and Lodge of Bloomsbury Square.

Thomas Geoffry Lucas (1872-1947) is best remembered now for his work with the garden city movement, notably in Letchworth where he designed a group of cottages in Paddock Close.  Lucas said of this ‘£150 House’ that ‘although simple, an effort has been made to obtain dignity, and an architectural treatment, without extravagance’. He also designed for Hampstead Garden Suburb and his house at 54 Parkway won first prize in a competition at Gidea Park. Together with Thomas Arthur Lodge (1888-1967), articled to Lucas and later his partner, he designed the art deco Parkinson Building for the University of Leeds and Hackney Town Hall.

Paddock Close, Letchworth: the ‘£150 house’ designed by Geoffry Lucas in 1904-05. Now Grade II listed

The roofs in King’s Road are very similar to Lucas’s houses in Paddock Close

Lucas and Lodge were paid a premium of £20 for their winning design.  Their plans for King’s Road are missing – they are not held by the current Town Council or by Sanctuary Housing Association, the current freeholders and managers – but the Banbury Advertiser of 7 March 1912 provides us with a detailed description:

Messrs Lucas and Lodge’s plans for the £175 houses show two-floor structures with gabled fronts at intervals, the bedrooms of the remainder of the houses having dormer windows rising from the eaves.  On the ground floor is the porch and lobby, the front living room measuring 13ft 7in by 12ft 1½ inches.  At the back is a scullery, about 7ft 6 in by 10ft, with larder, copper, coal-house, table-top bath and gas stove, with yard and w.c. at the rear.  On the first floor are three bedrooms, the dimensions of the front room being 15ft 3in by 10ft 3in, those of the two back rooms being 10ft 10in by 7ft 8in and 7ft 6in by 7ft 3in respectively.

The £135 houses were smaller but otherwise of similar design.  The cottages as a whole were constructed as reversed pairs in four groups of ten, each with its own garden.  It was ‘proposed that trees be planted along the road, with grass in the front gardens, and a bed of flowers and creepers against the cottages’.

King’s Road in the 1960s with what appears to be larch lapping on the front elevation. Photograph courtesy of the Oxfordshire History Centre

The Council set out its budget and applied to the Local Government Board to borrow £7685.  An Inquiry into the Banbury Housing Scheme was held on 2 August 1912.  The Mayor, councillors, the Medical Officer, Gilletts’ representatives and others were all on message and the loan was confirmed two months later.  Messrs Bosworth and Lowe of Nottingham were appointed as contractors.

Lucas and Lodge houses in King’s Road, front elevation, in 2016

Three-bedroom Lucas and Lodge house in 2016

Councillors followed the progress of the scheme closely and in October 1913, when the houses were almost complete, the decision on the name was made: the Cow Fair crowd’s choice: King’s Road.  The houses were let at 5s 3d for the three bedroom houses and 4s 3d for the two bedroom houses.

The First World War changed the national politics of housing radically. From this point, Banbury’s housing policy was no different from numerous other towns: good housing was needed and quickly, and the council made use of national government’s substantial help and finance.

A total of 770 council houses were built between 1919 and 1940; 361 of these were in Easington, due west of the town centre, where the Council carried out extensive slum clearance.  The fields northwest of King’s Road, the streets now known as Hilton Road, Park Road, Boxhedge Road West and Townsend were also a high priority for new building.

By July 1926, a commentator in the Banbury Advertiser was able to say:

whatever Banbury lacks, it does not appear that the former shortage of housing accommodation can be levelled as a reproach against the town now.  The council of recent years has taken the bit between its teeth – a ‘bit’ that despite one of our Aldermen’s fears I believe is one that Banbury can chew – and houses are springing up in our midst like brick-built mushrooms.

King’s Road with its red roofs is at the bottom of the photograph. It lies southeast of the medieval village of Neithrop, about half a mile from Banbury Market Place. Photograph by kind permission of Steve Gold.

King’s Road, the council’s model street, was now fully developed.  For six years the forty Lucas and Lodge houses had stood in pretty isolation in their semi-rural setting.  In 1914 the Council had, wisely, and at Payne’s instigation, negotiated with Gillett on an extension of the option period to buy the remainder of the land in King’s Road.  The pre-war experience was invaluable and the Council’s post-war plans began in King’s Road.

By October 1919 land clearing operations had begun at the western end of the road.  The land was cleared and plans were made and a set of 19 ‘non-parlour type’ workmen’s dwellings were built at a cost of £18,050.  These houses were built in the late 1920s.  These houses are of brick and have three bedrooms, a bathroom and large gardens.  Making use of Addison’s 1919 Housing and Town Planning Act, the council sold Local Housing Bonds of £5 upwards at 6 per cent interest.

Semi-detached house in King’s Road, one of the nineteen completed in 1921

A set of twelve semi-detached houses were built speculatively in 1928.

One of the twelve non-council houses in King’s Road in 2016

Finally, six more houses were built by the Council in 1929.  Councillor Monks’ remarked upon the:

extraordinary number of applications for these houses – 20 or 30 people have applied to me personally.  The Borough Accountant said he had about 50 applicants for the six 2 bedroom houses.  24 of the applicants were single and wanted to get married.  Only three houses could be offered, as the other three were offered to tenants in condemned properties.

The six council houses built in King’s Road in the late 1920s, photographed November 2016

The Council used ‘off the peg’-type designs available from the Ministry of Housing and the houses built in the 1920s have no remarkable architectural features.  They are solid, popular and durable, however, and King’s Road today is an unassuming, pleasant street with mature lime trees at its western end.  A residential street of less than 100 houses, it represents Banbury’s early municipal housing policy in microcosm and, you could say, a lasting memorial to our hero, Herbert Payne.

King’s Road in 2016. The forty Lucas and Lodge houses are on both sides of the road.

Let’s return to Herbert Payne and see what happened to him. He continued to serve on the Town Council for most of the Great War.  With local politics deferring to the national good, he sounds calmer and more conciliatory.  He had been re-elected as an independent in 1912 and became friends with the Liberals.  Housing activities were not on the agenda and, within the Council Chamber, Payne’s contributions were confined to the fine details of the Education Committee’s accounts and incremental improvements to the town’s sewerage system.

He continued with the cutlery business he had started in 1905.  Trading from his premises and home in Bridge Street, a stone’s throw from the Cow Fair, his customers were caterers, hotels and boarding houses.  He travelled the country extensively.  His turnover for 1915 is recorded at £3,000.

Herbert Payne, wife Florence and daughter Kathleen. Photograph with the kind permission of JR Hodgkins

He was, of course, young enough to join up.  He didn’t.  He was a pacifist to his core.  He was granted an exemption on conscientious grounds and in August 1916, the County Tribunal (on appeals for exemptions from military service) exempted him for a further three months on business grounds, with leave to apply again.

Payne’s career was all about making a difference to people’s lives and he did not give up easily.  Perhaps he thought he could change things, even in the War.  He took it upon himself to challenge the way the Oxfordshire County Tribunals were set up.  He lobbied hard for the County Tribunal to include employee representatives.  He went as far as organising and speaking at a public meeting – held in the Town Hall in full view of the military – to prepare a resolution for two representative trade unionists to be nominated for the Tribunal.  The handbills declared ‘ Attested Recruits, whether accepted or rejected, specially invited.  Ladies invited.’  In the Council meeting that followed, Payne presented the resolution that it was ‘imperative that [the County Tribunal] should have the confidence especially of the class from which the recruits are most likely to be drawn’.

By the time of the next appeal, casualty figures were catastrophic.  These were very dangerous times and, perhaps with some naivety, Payne told the County Military Tribunal that he refused to do non-combatant service but would be willing to do certain types of work of national importance.  The Tribunal ordered him to work on a farm.  He didn’t.

Details of the local appeals are set out in forensic detail in the Banbury newspapers, often on the same page as the lists of those who had fallen.  It’s impossible to know what his fellow councillors thought about Payne by then.  Some Town Council meetings start with expressions of sorrow for a councillor who had lost a son killed in action.  In any event, the knives were out for Payne.

His last Council meeting was on 2 April 1917.  True to himself, he spoke at length in congratulating the Medical Officer on a reduction in the infant mortality rate and badgered his fellow councillors on what further steps were being taken by the Water Company to improve the condition of the water supply.

A month later, he was arrested in Derby.  Handed over to a military escort, it is understood that he was sent to Winchester Prison.  Leading pacifist and conscientious objector, Fenner Brockway, remembered talking to Payne at the Martyrs Memorial in Oxford and that the next time they saw each other was in prison. (2)  He came home to Banbury in 1919.  There was no return to the Cow Fair crowds; he spent much of his time with the Congregationalists.  JR Hodgkins says that ‘he was a broken man and that the War had broken his heart’.  He died three years later, at 40.

Herbert Payne’s plain and unkempt grave is in Banbury Cemetery, Southam Road.  He is buried with his wife Florence who died in 1936. The inscription reads ‘Herbert Payne who fell asleep 23rd March 1922’.

Hodgkins pays tribute to Payne as a vigorous and successful pioneer of housing reform.  He ends his chapter on Payne with the hope: (2)

that one day Banbury can find the time and spare the energy to mark his memory.  Since his death, things have been going ‘Payne’s way’ all over the country.

They have indeed.

Sources

(1) Contemporary quotations from the press, unless otherwise credited, are taken from the Banbury Advertiser between 1905 and 1930 held by the British Newspaper Archive

(2) JR Hodgkins, Over the Hills to Glory: Radicalism in Banburyshire 1832-1945 (1978)

My thanks to the Oxfordshire History Centre of Oxfordshire County Council for their generosity in allowing the use of the credited images.

Early Council Housing in Banbury, Part I: King’s Road and the Cow Fair Roarer

Tags

Pre-1914

I’m delighted to feature this week and next another guest post – a fascinating piece of social, political and housing history from Jane Kilsby in Banbury.  Jane worked in housing management for councils and housing associations across the country for over twenty years before settling in Banbury three years ago. Thanks also to her husband Steve, another former housing professional, who first spotted the significance of the King’s Road houses. 

It’s amazing what turns up on eBay these days, isn’t it?  Recently, I bought this postcard: (1)

It’s a tribute to Herbert Payne, local councillor and advocate of social reform in early 20^th century Banbury. Forty houses were built by Banbury Borough Council in King’s Road in 1913 and they came about largely as a result of Herbert Payne’s powerful commitment to the benefits of good housing for working people.

King’s Road in November 2016

Banbury is 64 miles from London; a prosperous market town with a large rural hinterland.  On the edge of the Cotswolds, much of its early prosperity was from the wool trade; later it became a centre for cattle sales, horse trading, weaving, printing, engineering and comfort food of all kinds.  Cakes, custard, cheese, chocolate and coffee have all played a large part in Banbury’s employment and charm.  Banbury lies more or less in the middle of England; it’s a long way from the sea and transport improvements in the 18^th and 19^th centuries made a dramatic difference to the size of the town.  The Oxford Canal connected Banbury to the Midlands in 1778 and the railways invigorated Banbury’s trading links to the North of England and to Paddington. The M40 maintains Banbury’s role as a distribution centre today.

Banbury is a hardly a hotbed of reform and revolt but its famous nursery rhyme provides an air of innocence which belies some notable instances of radicalism in its history.  The townspeople, strongly Puritan, destroyed the original Banbury Cross and, later, Cromwell’s men smashed Banbury Castle to smithereens.  In the 1840s there were agricultural workers’ riots.

With the coming of the railways, Banbury’s population grew by about 40 per cent between 1851 and 1881.  Rapidly constructed terraces and much older agricultural workers houses made of the local ironstone rubble left a legacy of sub-standard property.

Rag Row in Neithrop – a notorious slum pictured in about 1890. These houses lasted at most forty years. Photograph courtesy of Oxfordshire History Centre

Banbury was one of the boroughs reformed by the Municipal Reform Act of 1835. The councillors and Town Clerk came from the local elite and, between them, the Liberals and the Conservatives busied themselves with matters of great importance such as new lighting for the Town Hall in time for the Hunt Ball.  They received regular reports from the Medical Officer of Health on the extent of insanitary housing but did nothing about it.

But the wider world was changing.  Campbell-Bannerman’s Liberal landslide in February 1906 brought about a period of social reform and, with 29 Labour MPs elected, there was some impact on local affairs, even in Banbury.  A Banbury branch of the Independent Labour Party (ILP) was formed in 1906; Herbert Payne was among its early members.

One of the first ILP meetings, in September 1906, in Banbury took as its topic the ‘House Famine – its cause and cure’.  ‘The workers of Banbury are waking up’, it declared: (2)

In Banbury there was a scarcity of houses suitable for working men and high rents appeared to be the order of the day, and yet no attempt had so far been made by the Town Council to provide houses for the workers and their families, notwithstanding the utter failure of private enterprise.

The proposal to run two ILP candidates, one of them Herbert Payne, in the next Borough elections was met with acclaim and housing became a hot topic as the ILP renewed its case for municipal homes:

These cottages will be let as near cost as possible and would not cost a penny to the ratepayers.  Private builders are making fortunes.  Why then should it be a failure for the Council to build?

On 1 November, the two ILP candidates were elected.  With victory declared, Payne and William Timms were lifted up in chairs, cheered and paraded around the town, finally coming to rest at the ILP committee rooms, then in Parsons Street.

Herbert Payne was born in Uppingham in Rutland in 1882.  Nothing is known about his education except to say that he did not attend Uppingham School.  He came to Banbury in about 1901, working at Mawles, a large ironmongers in the Market Place. Dismissed for talking politics in the shop, he set himself up as a commercial traveller, selling cutlery, and that was his business for the rest of his life.  He lived in a terraced house in Queen Street, now Queen’s Road, later moving to Marston House, 37 Bridge Street, now demolished, where he had his business premises.  He was 24 when elected to the Town Council.

Payne was a respectable radical, a Congregationalist, a pacifist, a teetotaller and a vegetarian.  Above all, he was a great speaker, described as someone who could really hold a crowd, with a voice full of resonance and power.(3) It was not long before his opponents began to call him ‘the Cow Fair Roarer’.

The Cow Fair was the favourite meeting ground for local politicians. Cows were tethered and sold in the street until 1931. The Town Hall with its tower is in the background.

Payne lost little time in making his presence felt at the Town Hall.  In February 1907, his motion to increase the wages of Corporation workmen was agreed unanimously.  At the same meeting, he demanded the Council appoint a ‘Housing Investigation Committee…to enquire into…the sufficiency or otherwise of the existing supply of dwelling-houses’ for local working people. Furthermore, he requested that it look into the work of other councils under the 1890 Housing of the Working Classes Act and whether Banbury itself should build.

After a lively debate, Payne got what he wanted.  The Banbury Advertiser mentions that this Council meeting set a record, lasting three and a quarter hours.  The reporter must have been exhausted.

Payne kept up the pressure, chivvying the Town Clerk for news of progress inside the Council chamber and agitating outside it.  In Boxhedge Square in Neithrop, an area notorious for its squalor, stench and unruly behaviour (4 ), Payne roared to a large crowd about ‘the rotten and bad houses with foul drains, leaky roofs, small windows and dirty walls…only inhabited because the people had nothing better to go to.’

Payne’s campaign was supported by the local Co-operative movement and railwaymen.  Mr T Jackson, secretary of the Banbury Branch of the Amalgamated Society of Railway Servants, told the Council in December that many of his members:

who were sent to Banbury had to wait weeks or even months before they could bring their wives and families to the town owing to their inability to procure houses at a rent suitable to their earnings.

Local businesses added their own pressure.  An open letter from W Braithwaite, the president of the Banbury Borough Development Association formed in 1907, suggested that some firms had declined to set up in Banbury due to ‘the present and prospective insufficiency of housing accommodation for their workpeople’.

A house in the Tan Yard, photographed c.1903.  Banbury Borough Council issued a demolition order on it in June 1914 (from Barry Trinder, Cake  Cockhorse (the magazine of the Banbury Historical Society), vol 3, no. 6, 1966

The Medical Officer and the Inspector of Nuisances also reiterated to the Council the dire facts of Banbury’s housing situation.  The population was 13,483 by 1911 and the number of inhabited houses was 3085.  Rents for workmens’ dwellings ranged from two shillings to six shillings a week.  The former were mostly unfit for habitation – some had no backs and many were overcrowded – but six shillings was more than most workingmen in Banbury could afford when the average wage for unskilled men was 15 to 20 shillings a week.  The Medical Officer often stated that he would have condemned more houses had there been any possibility of alternative housing for the residents to move in to.

It was to be six years before King’s Road was built.  Most councillors were hesitant and they were anxious about costs – they wanted expansion but didn’t want to increase the rates.  Some of them were landlords and they worried that a larger pool of accommodation for working men and their families would reduce their rents.

Payne too was adamant that any house building should be done with a minimal impact on the rates. In 1908, he tried to persuade the Council to back the campaign of Huddersfield and other councils for land tax reform which would encourage landowners to sell land for housing:

Land is being held in Grimsbury and Neithrop – if people chose to hold their land idle, let them pay what they ought to pay for it in taxation.

The debate rumbled on.

JR Hodgkins mentions that Payne never enjoyed good health and it is tempting at this point to speculate that at times he was not particularly well.  Certainly he is absent from several consecutive Council meetings in 1909 and 1910.  By then he must have been working hard on his business which took him away from home for long periods.

It was the Housing and Town Planning Act, passed in January 1910, combined with Payne’s tenacity, which crystallised Banbury’s decision to build.  The Housing Committee also visited Newbury and returned impressed by the ten houses recently built by the local council:

Let at 4s.6d. per week each: these rents are rather lower than those charged by private owners for similar property and therefore there is no difficulty in obtaining tenants.

The death of both the Town Clerk and the Medical Officer – on whom the Council was heavily reliant for facts and advice – in August 1911 delayed progress but Payne, at last appointed to an enlarged Housing Committee, kept up the pressure.

In May 1911, he addressed a mass meeting – the Banbury Advertiser describes ‘a large assembly round the waggonette in the Cow Fair’ – alongside Liberal councillors Ewins and Viggers, and Mr Jackson of the Amalgamated Society of Railway Servants.  They accused councillors of slumbering ‘very peacefully’ and Ewins pointed to the example of Hornsey, which he had visited, where he found that ‘after six years the local authorities had 60 houses and were £360 to the good with which to put up two or three more houses’:

If other towns where land and labour were dearer than in Banbury, could go in for housing schemes and make them successful, why could not Banbury?  Were not Banbury workmen as good, as clever and as hard-working as those in any other place?

Payne and his comrades railed against complacency.  The crowd called for action:

people were in favour of having something practical and useful and why should the Council not build 50 or 100 houses, to start with, to commemorate the coronation of the King?

The question, however, remained where to build.  The Council already owned several acres of land in Grimsbury but there were problems of drainage and flooding.  Eventually the decision was taken to construct a new school and a mechanical sewerage system but no housing.

Thankfully, there were the Gilletts, Banbury bankers, Quakers and local philanthropists. In the mid 19^th century many Oxfordshire farmers had their accounts with Gilletts Bank and, as farming profits fell, the bank acquired fields through forfeiture.  In 1895, Gilletts began a programme of land disposal, creating Queen Street in Neithrop (now Queen’s Road and parallel with King’s Road) by selling parcels of land to builders to build terraced housing for sale.

Queen’s Road.  The bay windows and house names are a token of its respectability.

Gilletts set strict rules on the quality of construction which ensured that Queen Street became an attractive residential area. Payne’s first family home was in Queen Street; his rent was £15 per year. (5)

Joseph Gillett approached the Council with a field northwest of Queen Street that was let out as allotments.  At just a shilling a square yard, the price, £1000, was considered reasonable but the councillors still saw a dilemma – the site was too large.  To everyone’s relief, a deal was struck.  The Council paid £500 for half the land with an option to buy the rest for the same amount three years later.  From then on, the whole project ran smoothly.

The Council elections of November 1911 saw cross-party agreement that ‘housing has become the most pressing requirement of our town’. This was a striking achievement for Payne, a councillor for just five years and still a young man under thirty. Next week’s post looks at the fine new homes which resulted and the personal tragedy which followed Herbert Payne’s early triumph.

Sources

(1) Postcard from Past Time Postcards

(2) Contemporary quotations from the press, unless otherwise credited, are taken from the Banbury Advertiser between 1905 and 1930 held by the British Newspaper Archive

(3) JR Hodgkins, Over the Hills to Glory: Radicalism in Banburyshire 1832-1945 (1978)

(4) Barrie Trinder, Cake & Cockhorse (The magazine of the Banbury Historical Society), Vol 3, no. 6, 1966, pp83-127

(5) Derrick Knight, Once Upon A Time, Queen’s Road: Its Origins, Its Growth, Its Character (2014)

My thanks to the Oxfordshire History Centre of Oxfordshire County Council for their generosity in allowing the use of the credited images.

Londonist Podcast

I was interviewed this week by N Quentin Woolf for the Londonist.  It’s a wide-ranging conversation around council housing, its history and the controversies which surround it. You can find the podcast here:

http://londonist.com/london/housing/londonist-out-loud-and-he-lives-in-a-council-flat