Council Housing in Plymouth before 1914: ‘the merry homes of England’

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Devon, Pre-1914

As housing emerges as a major election issue, it’s salutary to look to the past and examine some of the earliest debates and issues around social housing – and dispiriting to realise how little we have learnt.

This post looks at the first council housing built in Plymouth after the public duty to ensure decent housing for all was recognised in the 1890 Housing of the Working Classes Act.  Much has changed since the worst days of Victorian slumdom but a closer look reveals some uncomfortable echoes with present-day problems and our continuing failure to fulfil that duty recognised – however falteringly – over one hundred years ago. In the nineteenth century, Plymouth’s population was among the worst housed in the country. The first half of the century had seen three major cholera outbreaks and an epidemic of smallpox struck as late as 1872. The Corporation was slow to act – only adopting the 1848 Public Health Act six years after its enactment under pressure from the Board of Health.

Minor improvements followed but the population remained grossly overcrowded.  In 1890, over 16 per cent of the population inhabited two-room accommodation – a figure exceeded in only five other cities.  In 1902, official returns showed 560 one-room tenements in the borough with four persons or more in each and 388 two-room tenements with seven persons or more.  It was overall, in the words of the local Medical Officer of Health, ‘practically a tenement population’. (1)

An early photograph of Looe Street

Plymouth’s problems were compounded by its geography and patterns of land ownership – the Admiralty was a major local employer and landowner but provided little housing and, in fact, impeded housing development by sitting on land it controlled.  In consequence, local rents were the highest in the country outside London according to the Board of Trade in 1908.(2)

Perhaps those problems of failures of land utilisation, housing shortage and inflated rents sound familiar.

At this time, Plymouth was one of the Three Towns (alongside Devonport and Stonehouse) and had become a county borough only in 1888.  The new Corporation was to be more ambitious that its predecessors however, embarking – in 1895 – on its first municipal housing on land acquired on the town’s eastern outskirts at Prince Rock.

Corporation housing on Laira Bridge Road, Prince Rock

The Laira Bridge Road estate, comprising initially 104 flats and houses with accommodation for 824, opened one year later.  Solid, attractive housing, the estate makes it into Pevsner which describes it as ‘red-brick with timbered gables, a conscious adaptation of the English vernacular idiom’.(3)  Streets named after the members of the Housing Committee can be seen as an example of civic pride or personal self-aggrandisement according to taste.

Radford Avenue, Prince Rock

The estate was intended, in part, to rehouse those displaced by the Corporation’s other major pre-war scheme – a significant slum clearance project in the Barbican area, the town’s historic core.  Seventy houses in Looe Street and How Street were demolished, affecting a population of some 813.

© Mary Hilson, ‘Working-Class Politics in Plymouth, c1890-1920’

The first housing was built on the northerly side of Looe Street – a three-storey slate-roofed terrace of painted brick, concrete floors and staircases and wooden sash windows at the top of the street and a more elaborate, two-storeyed, timber-gabled further down – before 1900.  How Street, adjacent, was completed in similar style.

Top end of Looe Street

Bottom end of Looe Street

The rents in both schemes were described as ‘high as against the wages of the tenants’ but ‘generally low as compared with the figure which could be obtained in open competitive market’ – figures ranged from 4s a week for the cheapest two-room flat to 8s a week for the most expensive four-roomed houses.

In Prince Rock, it was stated that very few tenants were earning more than 30s a week – a reasonable working-class wage at the time – and that most were earning around £1. This report continued: (4)

The occupations of the tenants may be described as those mainly of labourers, fishermen, and people of miscellaneous and more or less uncertain occupation. The distinct artisan class is almost entirely absent.

Over one third of the Prince Rock tenants were said to come from the former slums of Looe Street and How Street and most of the others were ‘from the same congested district…and of the same class’. If this was the case – and there seems to be some attempt to put a positive spin on things – this represented an unusually successful attempt to rehouse an inner-city slum population in Corporation housing.

How Street

By 1902, the Council had spent almost £50,000 on its central redevelopment scheme, a figure reflecting the relatively high cost of land, compensation paid to existing property owners and the extent of ancillary works.  But the death rate in the district had been cut by almost four per thousand and the Council was clear that, ‘although the cost of the scheme has been heavy, the good results to the community’ were ‘very solid and apparent’.(6)

It may seem surprising, therefore, that the Housing Committee also concluded that it couldn’t ‘recommend the wholesale clearance of sites in this manner again, except in extreme urgency’.  This brings us to the vexed question of finance.

Plymouth had incurred heavy debts in its programme of municipal enterprise – some resulting from the short thirty-year loans offered by the Local Government Board and some from bank loans.  It was also accused of using earmarked loans for alternative purposes.  As a result, it had been made subject to restrictions on its borrowing. (6)  A private parliamentary act in 1904 regularised its position but required the Corporation undergo external audit.

How Street rear

The Committee had already felt itself compelled to sell off part of its building land at Prince Rock and build ‘housing of a less costly type’ in its central scheme.   Its efforts at this point were concentrated on building tramways (to disperse an overcrowded population) and compelling repairs to existing slum properties.

Even under the restrictive terms offered by the Local Government Board, it was clear (as the Corporation argued) that its housing schemes were virtually self-financing – 1d on the rates met the immediate demand to service debt – and would be fully paid for within thirty years.

There is nothing new, therefore, in the financial short-termism which prevents councils borrowing to invest in much-needed housing or the crude fiscal calculus which proclaims the cost of everything but disregards the value – personal, societal, even economic – of investment in social infrastructure.

It’s good to see the Council recognising and maintaining this heritage.

Nor is there anything new in the housing protest which results.  In March 1900, the Plymouth branch of the Social Democratic Federation convened a meeting to establish the Three Towns Association for the Better Housing of the Working Classes.  Despite the left-wing politics of the Federation, it ‘hoped that the matter would be considered from an entirely non-political and non-sectarian point of view’ and the party worked hard to forge an inclusive, populist alliance.

The origins and dynamics of the current Homes for Britain campaign are a little different but reflect, at least, the belief that the need for good quality housing for all should be a unifying rather than divisive issue.

The problems of creating such an alliance then (as now perhaps) were powerful. Against those in the upper classes (and the more ‘respectable’ working classes) who believed slum conditions were created by slum dwellers, the Federation argued: (7)

The refinement and worthy character which a love of home develops are impracticable to large numbers of people in ‘the merry homes of England’…. If the people were all heroes or angels of perfection they would, of course, surmount all obstacles, and keep themselves perfectly clean; but as they are only human there are some who, discouraged by the disabilities which a grinding capitalist system has imposed upon them, fall into dirty habits.

It’s an argument couched to appeal to those who would denigrate our poorest citizens but it remains a lesson that the makers of Benefits Street and its ilk might profitably benefit from.

Within the Association itself, a major division occurred when the Plymouth Cooperative Society decided in 1902 that its Building Society housing would be built for sale rather than rental. Against those who made the case that this would provide its members security for old age, an opponent argued Cooperators should:

cater for the thousands who would never be in a position to purchase a house. Who, he asked had been paying the interest on the land? Why the poor members, of whom there are hundreds waiting an opportunity to get a decent house to reside in, and here was a chance to help them.

As former philanthropic housing trusts and many housing associations across the country are looking to make money from selling off what they own or building homes for sale to the wealthy, this also has an uncannily modern ring.

Finally, there was the question of what social housing – council housing at this time – should be built.  By 1906 the Corporation had rehoused a little under 1500 of a population (in 1901) of 107,000 and it embarked belatedly on another housing scheme in Prince Rock.

A three-storey block on Harvey Avenue, Prince Rock

Some of these new homes turned out to be hard to let, a fact used by some councillors to oppose further council house building.  The Association investigated and concluded that the rules against the keeping of fowl, rabbits or pigeons offended ‘the Englishman’s love of freedom’.  More practically, the three-storey blocks in particular were criticised as barrack-like with poor facilities – washhouses shared between eight flats and ‘visits to the WCs…in the notice of the whole block’. (8)

A reminder, if we need it, that social housing tenants should never be second-class citizens, excluded from shared space, required to use ‘poor doors’, deprived of the light and views enjoyed by their better-off fellow citizens or – simply – in any way treated as inferior.

There’s nothing new under the housing sun.  The moral, social and economic case for high quality and genuinely affordable social housing remains as compelling now as it was in turn-of-the-century Plymouth. Please support it in this election.

Sources

(1) The quotation – and other detail here – is drawn from Crispin Gill, Plymouth: a New History (1993). The 1902 figures come from ‘The Housing Problem at Plymouth’, Western Daily Press, Bristol, 11 December 1902.

(2) Mary Hilson, ‘Working-Class Politics in Plymouth, c1890-1920’, University of Exeter PhD in Economic and Social History, 1998

(3) Bridget Cherry, Nikolaus Pevsner, Devon, Volume 5 (1991)

(4) ‘The Housing Problem at Plymouth’, Western Daily Press, Bristol, 11 December 1902

(5) Mortality statistics are from William Thompson, Housing Up-to-Date (1907), the quotation from the Western Daily Press article cited.

(6) ‘Plymouth Corporation and its Borrowings’, The Nottingham Evening Post, 21 May 1903

(7) AT Grindley, ‘The Warrens of the Poor’, Three Towns Association for the Better Housing of the Working Classes (1906) quoted in Hilson, ‘Working-Class Politics in Plymouth, c1890-1920’.  Other quotations which follow are drawn from the same source.

(8) Ann Bond,  ‘Working-class housing in Plymouth 1870-1914’, Unpublished MRes thesis, Plymouth University, 2014

My thanks to Ann Bond for providing advice and detail for this post.  Ann will know better than me the errors and omissions that remain.

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A Plan for Plymouth: ‘out of the disasters of war to snatch a victory for the city of the future’

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1940s, 1950s

I was in Plymouth at the weekend, impressed again by its magnificent setting and proud civic history.  Almost as exciting was getting a copy of the original Plan for Plymouth in my hands, lent by a friend.

A Plan for Plymouth, written by the planner Patrick Abercrombie and J Paton Watson, Plymouth City Engineer and Surveyor, was published in 1943.  Agreed by the City Council in the following year, it aimed ‘out of the disasters of war to snatch a victory for the city of the future’.

Pre-war Plymouth centre

Temporary market erected to replace shops destroyed in Blitz

I wrote about Plymouth and its plan in this earlier posting.  This time I want to use the Plan itself more thoroughly to give a fuller insight into the principles and aspirations which existed at the birth of the welfare state.

Firstly, you notice the breadth and ambition of these.  This could be, in the words of Viscount Astor, the Conservative mayor of Plymouth ‘no half-and-half affair’.  Plymouth ‘must be rebuilt as a unity on land acquired by the public for this purpose’.

Abercrombie and Watson proclaimed a:

far-reaching scheme for the future of a city…intended to cover the whole of its existence from the comfort and convenience of the smallest house and children’s playground, to the magnificence of its civic centre, the spaciousness and convenience of its shopping area and the perfection of its industrial machine.

Abercrombie himself identified six principal aspects as ‘the background to all human planning effort’ – Industry, Communications, Community Grouping, Housing, Open Spaces and Public Services.  Each is covered comprehensively in the Plan – which is is over 150 pages in length.  Here I can only pick out a few key themes.

Proposed central layout: ‘areas available for reconstruction’ shown in grey and orange, new streets overlaid in red

There could be few illusions then about the scale of the enterprise suggested but one senses more the confidence and belief seen in the simple (in these more cynical times, we would say naïve) view that society and the state – allies not opposites – existed to create community, safeguard the individual and elevate humanity.

Aerial view of the Civic Precinct and proposed approach to the Hoe

The showpiece and centrepiece of the Plan was the redesigned city centre. No one would have wished the wartime bombing but one can’t miss a little excitement in the planners’ voice as they comment that the ‘almost complete destruction of the civic and shopping heart’ provided a ‘site, rarely occurring in urban existence, to replan and rebuild a Centre of really modern design’.

Shopping Precinct looking north

They admitted too to ‘one great – even monumental – feature’: ‘a Garden vista – a parkway, making use, with terraces, slopes, steps, pools, avenues, and other contrasting features, of the varying levels’ running from the station to the Hoe.  This, fully realised, would be a wonderful capturing of Plymouth’s majestic setting.

For the rest, a broadly functional division of services and sectors was envisaged – an ‘orderly and economic pattern which will ensure that the daily civic and business life of the city will function smoothly’.

There could be little further detail but it was recommended an overall architectural treatment for the central area be prepared and that new buildings be approved only if they conformed to its guidelines.

To see the finished product, take a look at the earlier posting or – better still – visit Plymouth.  Sadly, that great ‘Garden vista’ wasn’t completed.  The rest was executed broadly  in line with the original conception and rightly earns Plymouth its designation as ‘our first great welfare-state city’.

Since then the city and its commercial heart have been through some tough times but, with a sympathetic eye and an appreciation for both aspiration and achievement, I think it looks pretty good. At the very least, it’s a ‘must’ for anyone interested in twentieth century architecture and design.

Proposed distribution of population

Housing could rarely be quite so exciting and in design terms the Plan was modest. It certainly saw ‘no necessity to house anyone in lofty blocks of flats’ and envisaged housing on broadly garden suburb lines.  But the scale of reconstruction was well understood.

The 1935 Social Survey of Plymouth found 25 per cent of Plymouth’s working class living in overcrowded conditions.  Wartime damage, of course, would exacerbate these conditions and the Plan reported with some precision that 8719 new houses were needed immediately to replace the 6833 lost to bomb damage, the 986 to be lost to central redevelopment and an estimated increase of 900 new households.

In the longer-term – as slum clearance and ‘reconstruction of decayed areas’ took effect and re-zoning was implemented – a further 23,986 houses would be needed to decently house Plymouth’s people.

The Plan is reticent on how this housing would be provided, stating only that ‘convenience and amenity should be considered before price’.  It was probably understood that local authorities would play a key role but impolitic or impractical to say more.  By 1954, Plymouth had built 10,000 new council homes.

Stonehouse Reconstruction scheme before and after

The Plan did, however, provide a sample scheme for the area of Stonehouse, intended to show how residential and industrial areas could co-exist with a range of housing types and open spaces.  In the event, these plans were only partially implemented and made little impact.

In practice, the Plan was more interested in ‘Community’ than in the specific details of accommodation. Here it was at its most aspirational.  In ‘the recently built suburbs’, the Plan felt it was ‘a rounding off, an integration’ that was required.  In the new developments, housing the ‘decentralised population’, there was ‘opportunity for latest thought in seemly community design’.  These, it pronounced, must be ‘absolutely first-rate’.

Diagram illustrating the envisaged community groupings separated by their own green belts.

I focus on this aspect of the Plan because nothing, it seems to me, so strongly captures the contrasting spirit of the times.  The Plan was clear that:

it is the community spirit developed from that inherent characteristic of all races in the form of mutual aid which has been mainly responsible for the development of art and knowledge in the best periods of progress in personal industry, craftsmanship and science.

This wasn’t a self-consciously left-wing politics.  It was more a plain belief that we achieve more collaboratively than we achieve in competition and a conviction that individuals are strongest when rooted in and sustained by a supportive community.

It wasn’t even, in its own terms, ideology – not textbook stuff at any rate.  It drew from hard-won lessons – from interwar depression and, more powerfully and more immediately, from a world war which had melded state, society and an ideal of community.

‘Sketch of a typical community centre forming a precinct remote from traffic’

What did all this mean?  It meant the conscious creation of neighbourhood units – of between 6000 to 10,000 people – formed around the catchment areas of infant and junior schools, bounded by distinct borders and possessing a ‘natural gravitation’ towards a centre comprising a church or chapel, a library, a cinema, a restaurant, café or hotel, a laundry and a health clinic.  Plus, a ‘Community Building’ which:

would be under the charge of a first-rate Warden, with theatre and concert halls large enough to accommodate performances by C.E.M.A and similar organisations and should have ample club rooms.

C.E.M.A. – the Committee for the Encouragement of Music and the Arts – had been established in 1940.  It metamorphosed into the Arts Council in 1946.

Perhaps it’s this aspect of the Plan which captures the wartime spirit and its structures – and the expectation that something of its values would persevere into a new world – better than anything else.

The Plan also discusses very fully a viable transport and communications infrastructure – everything from the creation of a ‘parkway’ ring road to the eradication of unsightly advertising hoardings, the agricultural hinterland, and open spaces, the latter to be ‘regarded as not only recreation ground, but as performing the essential structural service of breaking up the urban mass’.

Much of this didn’t materialise, of course, or that which did became more mundane as life’s normal rhythms re-imposed themselves in peacetime. Economics is never kind, in any case.

With hindsight, the Plan’s one great misstep seems to be its confident assertion that  Plymouth’s ‘destiny in the national economy’ was secure – ‘so long as the British Navy exists, Plymouth’s principal occupation remains’.  In the fifties and sixties, 50,000 worked in the dockyards.  Now that number is just 2500.  Still, Plymouth is adapting and it seems a vibrant, forward-looking place.

I can’t resist one final quotation from the Plan. It may have seemed an almost commonplace ideal in its time (and certainly reflects the gendered language of the day) but now it reads as something almost utopian – more News from Nowhere than town planning and very far removed from anything that passes for ‘practical politics’ nowadays.

With the return of “community” will come the spirit of companionship unknown to the youth of yesterday who vainly sought it in the car or the cinema. If the individuality of the citizen is to be encouraged and moulded into the community, then the right sort of facilities must be found: this plan must give the craftsman, musician and painter with undiscovered talent a chance to show himself.  It must be both economical and sensible to his needs, and not cramped to the niggardly possibilities of today; a plan which allows for a higher standard of living well within our grasp, with its call for space and beauty rather than for mere economy.

 Sources

The description of Plymouth as ‘our first great welfare-state city’ comes from Professor Jeremy Gould.  All the other quotations and illustrations (apart from the two sculptures) come from A Plan for Plymouth, published Plymouth, 1943.

For photographs and more analysis of the city centre redevelopment, read my earlier post which also contains a full list of other sources and references.

For more photographs from my trip, see my Municipal Dreams tumblr account.

A Plan for Plymouth: ‘our first great welfare-state city’

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1940s, 1950s

The Plymouth Blitz, concentrated in seven devastating German air raids over March and April 1941, left Plymouth reportedly the most heavily damaged city in the country and destroyed its medieval centre.

In this bleakest period of the war when much energy was focused on sheer survival, Plymouth City Council looked to the future. Plymouth would be rebuilt but not merely rebuilt – it would be re-imagined: redesigned and reconstructed as a city for a new era in which rational planning served the needs of the common people.

On 1 September 1941 the City Council agreed that a Redevelopment Plan be prepared. That plan – A Plan for Plymouth – was prepared by Sir Patrick Abercrombie, the leading town planner of the day, in conjunction with the City Engineer James Paton Watson.  It was ready by September 1943 and approved by the Council in the following year.

In foreground, Paton Watson, Abercrombie, Lord Mayor Lord Astor and Town Clerk Colin Campbell (1944)

J.D.M. Harvey illustrated the completed plan.

Derry’s Cross

The railway station

So far, so good but history is awash with abandoned blueprints and failed ideas. Plymouth made good on these aspirations.  Firstly, it lobbied Parliament – in conjunction with many other local councils – for the comprehensive planning and compulsory purchase powers vital to large-scale projects enshrined in the 1944 Town and Country Planning Act.

And then it acted. It was the first British city to begin reconstruction in April 1947; the first new buildings opened in 1951.

Abercrombie’s plan was visionary, owing most to the designs of New Delhi and Canberra and the 19th century Beaux-Arts ideals which shaped Washington DC and Paris. The city centre itself would be divided into functional precincts reflecting varied urban roles including retail, offices, culture and civic government.

This was planning on a grand scale but the larger vision was also influenced by more modest indigenous strains, not least the garden city movement which sought to separate homes from industry and recreation from commerce. The Plan envisaged suburbs formed into ‘neighbourhood units,’ each with a centre incorporating schools, a church, a library, swimming pool, cinema and other community facilities. These principles gave humanity to the cold term of functionalism sometimes used to characterise such post-war planning.

However, it was the design of the city centre which was most radical. The war had destroyed old street patterns already strained by modern demands. They were replaced by an orderly grid centred on one grand axis running north-south from the railway station to the grand open space of the Hoe surrounded by a ring road connecting the major transit arteries. To Professor Jeremy Gould this was (1):

an egalitarian grid, spacious, airy, uncomplicated, accessible and gapingly open to all – the very model in stone, brick, glass and metal of the post-war welfare edifice.

The execution of the plan used some of the foremost architects of the day – such as Thomas Tait (who designed the new Dingles department store) and William Crabtree (who had previously designed the Peter Jones and John Lewis stores in London). They were employed by private developers but worked within the controlling vision of the City Architect and Engineer who designated width, height, form and materials. And the city retained the freehold.

Time and the judgment of altered aesthetics are not always kind to plans of such ambition and scale. There may appear some merit to the criticism of those who have complained subsequently of a certain cold uniformity; there is more so to those who note neglect and decline. To Gould, what is needed now ‘above all is a little love’ and this blog at least will give a little love to the vision and original execution of the Plan for Plymouth.

The architects certainly were not so naive as to ignore the potential missteps inherent in such planning. In fact, street elevations were ‘composed en masse as a series of highly contrived symmetries and asymmetries, with major to minor rhythms.’ (2) Corners and terminations were equally carefully contrived to please the eye.  The images below show the real aesthetic quality of Plymouth’s streetscapes – a far cry from the brutalist label sometimes attached.

Pearl Assurance (c) Plymouth: 20th Century City

Derry’s Cross (c) Plymouth: 20th Century City. The western section contained the offices of the new nationalised industries.

The white Portland stone which faces many of the city centre buildings is criticised for its dullness but was originally envisaged as a neutral background to highly coloured shop fronts, displays and signs. Some buildings were built – in deliberate contrast – of red and brown brick. There is beautiful detailing too, not fussy and often overlooked, which challenges those who have accused the design of blandness.

Dingles (c) Plymouth: 20th Century City

Martins Bank (c) Plymouth: 20th Century City

Whilst slower, more organic – messier – growth might have given a more comfortable and ‘human’ feel to the Plan, Plymouth didn’t have this option. Instead the council chose boldly not only to face but to embrace the future and create a new city (3):

Plymouth represented the architecture of the future – clean, bright, democratic and, most of all, optimistic.

Much of the architecture remains stunning and captures still the optimism of the era.

National Provincial Bank (c) Plymouth Man. Bronze doorways, granite-clad columns and a Venetian glass façade – a fitting termination to Royal Parade.

Pearl Assurance House (c) Plymouth Man. Part of the grand gateway to Armada Square from Royal Parade and the Great Square in front of the Civic Centre.

Civic Centre and Council House (c) Plymouth Man. 14 stories high, lavishly finished, the Civic Centre ‘expresses the aspirations of a confident authority at the height of its powers’.

Dingles (c) Wikimedia Commons. Thomas Tait, the architect, also designed the pylons of the Sydney Harbour Bridge.

In the affluent fifties and sixties, such optimism may have seen well-placed. 50,000 worked in the dockyards, Plymouth was doing well. Now that number is just 2,500 and the city has fallen on harder times. The future envisaged in the 1940s didn’t quite materialise and the city is having to reinvent itself once more.

That, in a sense, is true of the city centre too. Straitened finances combined with an antipathy towards the modernist architecture of the post-war period led to serious decline. But Plymouth is resilient and that is changing. A new generation is overseeing a ‘scale of regeneration’ claimed as ‘second only to the post-war regeneration period’.(4)

The Coop in its heyday. The only store to occupy a whole block of the Abercrombie Plan.  The underside of the canopy was originally painted bright yellow whilst the interior contained a domed banking hall and a stage for dance bands in the cafeteria.

The Coop lives on but there was a time when up to 25 per cent of the adult population were members.

The Coop building in 2011 (c) Steve Cadman Twentieth Century Society.

As is the way, the transformation envisaged in what the Council has named ‘A Vision for Plymouth’ will depend far more on tourism and culture than traditional staples but it will, at least, both respect and revive Plymouth’s heritage as ‘the twentieth century city’ –  ‘the greatest built example of post-war British planning and architecture’ (5)

There are more listed fifties’ buildings in Plymouth than anywhere other than London. Jeremy Gould and the Architecture Centre Devon and Cornwall are fighting for it despite recent funding cuts. English Heritage is defending it as a city ‘as representative of its time as Bath and York.’ (6)

This is great. But the task for all is to ensure that the label Twentieth Century City is not an epitaph to the past but a call to the future which captures the dynamism and idealism of former generations and gives momentum to the present.

PS I’ve written a second post on the Plan for Plymouth which includes additional detail and illustrations from the Plan itself.

Sources:

(1) Quoted in ‘Plymouth: a pearl on the seashore,’ The Independent, 21 February, 2010

(2) Jeremy Gould and the Institute for Historic Building Conservation, ‘The architecture of the plan for Plymouth’, September 2006.

(3) and (4)  Plymouth: Twentieth Century City, Heritage Trail Buildings Guide

(5) Plymouth City Council, A Vision for Plymouth

(6) Simon Thurley speaking at the launch of Jeremy Gould’s book, Plymouth: Vision of a Modern City, 8 June 2011

The essential online source is Plymouth: Twentieth Century City.  My grateful thanks to the Architecture Centre Devon and Cornwall for making available the text and photos of this site and their hard-copy Heritage Trail Buildings Guide. Visit the city and support their efforts.

The online Encyclopaedia of Plymouth History contains information on A Plan for Plymouth and much else beside.

A wonderful documentary film on the Plan, The Way We Live (1946) is available on YouTube.  Its director, Jill Craigie, met Michael Foot, MP for Plymouth Devonport, whilst shooting the film and they married three years later.

Commentary and stills from the film and the images of the original artwork included above can be found at cyberheritage.co.uk.

My thanks to Plymouth Man for allowing use of some of the images to be found in his informative and well-illustrated celebration of postwar Plymouth on Flickr.

Other contemporary images above are taken with permission from Simon Cadman’s Twentieth Century Society Flickr page on Plymouth.