Mobilising Housing Histories

Learning from London's Past for a Sustainable Future

Peter Guillery, David Kroll

• Editore: RIBA Publishing
• Anno: 2019
• ISBN:
  9781000702347
• Edizione: 1
• Argomento: Architecture
• Categoria: Architecture générale

The problem of creating affordable, adequate housing for a growing population is not a new one. This book, for anyone with a professional or personal interest in improving housing provision everywhere, aims to inspire by offering in-depth studies of London's housing past and seeks to provide sustainable solutions for the future by linking to wider contemporary historical and social contexts.

This book will influence today's housing debates through showcasing lessons from the past and highlights examples that inform the present. The buildings assessed in these case studies will be measured in terms of their longevity, sustained popularity, livability, average densities and productivity.

The research and case studies from the book provide an invaluable resource for academics of architecture, urban design, sociology, history and geography as well as professionals, policy makers and journalists.

Chapter One
Urban Design in Victorian London: The Minet Estate in Lambeth C.1870 to 1910

DAVID KROLL

The Minet Estate is a mainly residential area of around 60 hectares in south London in today’s London Boroughs of Lambeth and Southwark. This chapter examines the planning and design process of the Minet Estate and discusses the roles and relationships of those involved in creating the housing: surveyors, architects, builders, landowners and developers. The focus is on the main phase of its development, which took place from c.1870 to 1910. The research is based on an unusually comprehensive archive of a Victorian housing estate in London, a detailed study of which has not previously been undertaken. The Minet Estate provides an example of Victorian housing development that is architecturally more diverse than is generally the case with housing projects today. It involved a large number of different small builders, designers and architects, and a level of complexity and sophistication in its planning that is rarely appreciated in the literature. This case study contributes to a more detailed understanding of the planning and design of late Victorian speculative housing, which has proven to be unusually long-lasting, adaptable and desirable – key measures of sustainability.

Why the Minet Estate?

At the time when the Minet Estate was built up in the late nineteenth century, London was still expanding rapidly in area and most new housing was built on ‘green fields’, on land that was previously agricultural. The height of the housing on the Minet Estate varies, ranging from a mixture of terraced, semi-detached and detached houses of two to four storeys to several blocks of flats of four to five storeys. In contrast, most recent large-scale development within Greater London, such as the Athletes’ Village in Stratford and the Millennium Village on the Greenwich Peninsula, takes place on brownfield or greyfield land, and often at significantly higher densities. What, then, can we learn from a past that took place within a very different urban, economic and political context? What are the parallels to the challenges we face today?

Firstly, new greenfield development at densities such as the Minet Estate can still take place today, but usually outside Greater London. In fact, new large-scale housing development at various densities outside the Green Belt has been one of the approaches to the tackling of London’s housing crisis.¹ Furthermore, a highly controversial government consultation proposes to allow councils to allocate land on the Green Belt for starter homes.² In light of these discussions, it is worth remembering a particularly productive period of house building that has left us with such a remarkable legacy.³ The Victorian houses that survived post-war slum clearance are today among the most popular housing types in London and have demonstrated an extraordinary longevity.⁴ The Minet Estate has all those qualities and characteristics that Christopher Costelloe has described as exemplary about ordinary Victorian housing: ‘density, cohesiveness, quality of materials, walkability, generally good public transport, and their infrastructure of pubs, corner shops and public buildings’.⁵ A recent research study on ‘sustainable suburbia’ by MJP Architects underlined Costelloe’s assessment and praised Victorian terraced housing as particularly positive for ‘sustainable’ densities of generally over 50 dwellings per hectare that promote walkability.⁶

The example of the Minet Estate is also pertinent considering that not all new development within Greater London is necessarily high-rise. Current discussions of how to build more housing also involve suggestions to raise densities in existing low-density areas, but in a way that allows them to retain their ‘family friendly’, suburban character.⁷ The Minet Estate is a successful example of such an area with housing at varied densities. It could be an appropriate model in particular for the outer suburbs of Greater London and the commuter belt. The houses built on the estate range from two to four storeys and are examples of the kind of Victorian terraces, detached and semis that are familiar in many areas of London. Unusually for this part of London at the time, the estate also has a number of blocks of flats, which were built around the turn of the century when the estate was running out of available land. The Minet Estate hence comprises an interesting mix of housing at different densities, originally built for varied occupant groups.

Apart from parallels to the present in terms of densities and housing types, a case study of the Minet Estate is also interesting with regard to the general processes of how housing was planned and developed, taking account of the roles and relationships of those involved in production such as surveyors, architects, builders, landowners and developers. Recent UK governments have tried to involve a greater variety of stakeholders in the planning and production of the built environment, as is reflected in legislation such as the Self-build and Custom Housebuilding Act 2015 and the Localism Act 2011. And yet, large-scale housing projects in the UK are generally built up by one house-builder in a centrally managed and planned process. In light of this discourse, it is interesting to note that in the nineteenth century, areas like the Minet Estate were developed by a large number of different stakeholders with wide-ranging influences on matters of design and construction. In the case of the Minet Estate, these diverse influences resulted in considerable variety in the architecture, ranging from variations in style and detailing to those in dwelling type and layout. The lessons that can be learnt are not only relevant to government and planning policy, but also to the growing custom-build movement.

A final point to learn from the Minet Estate is linked to the other points above and concerns the finance of house building. This point is particularly relevant as the London housing crisis is firstly an affordability crisis. In terms of cost, the financial entry threshold to house building for a builder-developer or owner-occupier was much lower on the Minet Estate than it is today because there was no up-front fee for the land. Instead, the land was rented on an annual ground rent. This was an important reason why small builders without large initial capital were able to become house-builders. The case of the Minet Estate suggests that involving a greater number of stakeholders and decision-makers in the production of housing is also a matter of finance, in particular in relation to land costs, which are at a historic high.⁸ Otherwise, initiatives such as localism remain only a token to stakeholder involvement. For custom-build to have a chance at a larger scale, for example, and for people without significant capital like young, first-time buyer families to start building their own homes, financial thresholds to obtain suitable land would need to be lower than at present.

What then makes the Minet Estate more worthy of study than other exemplary late nineteenth-century estates? One key reason is the archival material available.⁹ The Minet Estate archive is one of the most comprehensive archives of a London Victorian housing estate that is accessible to the public, yet it has so far not been discussed in the literature in detail. The estate also presents a suitable case study because decisions taken in the early stages of its development, as well as their influence on the architecture, can be reconstructed from the archival sources. Finally, the Minet Estate is useful as a case study because it was in many respects ordinary, rather than avant-garde, and many of the findings are transferable to other London estates of the period.

While the ‘ordinary’ Minet Estate is not pioneering or experimental like Bedford Park or Hampstead Garden Suburb, it is in some ways quite unusual. For example, the later phase of the development was not purely profit-driven but partly philanthropic, which can be seen in the donation of a public park (Myatt’s Fields) and a library (the Minet Library) by the owner, William Minet. The estate was also probably unusually well managed and resourcefully planned, which has left us with largely very attractive and still very popular residential architecture. Although the housing on the estate accommodated people with varied income levels, many of the larger houses in particular were built for, and initially occupied by, fairly well-to-do tenants. Thus the estate is not representative in every respect. However, the way it was built up by following the then typical English leasehold development system means that there are similarities with other housing estates of the time. Many of the basic conclusions of this chapter are therefore also often applicable to other privately developed Victorian and Edwardian housing estates.

Systems of Estate Development in the Nineteenth Century

While it is difficult to define what constitutes a typical Victorian estate, certain generalisations can be made. As a fundamental distinction, speculative housing estates of the period were developed in one of three ways:

1. By contracting builders directly to construct the houses
2. By selling the land as freehold to builders
3. By letting the land as leasehold to builders

Each of these systems of estate development had an impact on the resulting architecture and on the degree to which the estate owner influenced the development. As a context to the Minet Estate case study, it will be useful to touch briefly on these different methods of development.¹⁰

The first of these three methods – to contract builders directly to build all the houses on an estate – was uncommon in the late nineteenth century because of the high risk and initial investment involved. Exceptions can be found, such as some of the houses built on the estates developed by Archibald Cameron Corbett. But even with the financial resources of one of London’s largest developers of speculative housing at the time, Corbett abandoned his experimentation with direct contracting of building work and reverted to the leasehold and freehold development that was standard for housing estates in late nineteenth century London.¹¹

FIGURE 1.1,
This map of the Minet Estate was begun in 1843 by Messrs Driver, the estate surveyors, and updated until about 1890 to record all leases. It was an essential estate-management tool. A smaller separate plot to the top right was sold off in 1872.

In this more conventional practice, rather than financing the building of the houses themselves, the estate owner spread the financial risk to a number of different builders by letting individual building plots as leasehold or by selling plots as freehold. The pattern of dividing the land along roads into small adjacent plots (large enough for the construction of a house) was ideal for these systems: a small speculative builder could raise the funds for building a house on one of the plots; larger builders who were able to raise sufficient capital could take on a number of plots and sometimes entire streets, or occasionally even a number of streets. Large house-builders who purchased, developed and built whole estates, however, were rare until the inter-war period, when it became easier for builders and also buyers of houses to obtain finance.¹²

The third method – to develop an estate by letting land to different builders as leaseholds – was very common in the nineteenth century, but was in decline towards the end of the century and seems to have been hardly used after 1914.¹³ Land was leased to speculative builders in the same way as it would have been leased to farmers when it was in agricultural use. The estate owner would charge an annual ground rent which was paid by those who owned the leasehold at the time. After the lease fell in, often after 99 years, the land returned to the freeholder, often an heir of the estate owner who agreed the lease.

By letting land as leasehold, the estate owner usually had a longer-term interest in the development, and it was therefore in his interests to retain a higher degree of control over the planning and design of the housing. This control could range from a detailed masterplan to a more indirect influence consisting of the management and approval of the builders’ own designs. The long-term financial return from a leasehold development was ...

Indice dei contenuti

• Cover
• Half Title
• Copyright
• Title
• Contents
• ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
• ABOUT THE SPONSORS
• ABOUT THE CONTRIBUTORS
• FOREWORD
• PREFACE
• INTRODUCTION
• HISTORICAL OVERVIEW
• 1. URBAN DESIGN IN VICTORIAN LONDON: THE MINET ESTATE IN LAMBETH C.1870 TO 1910
• 2. 'MILES OF SILLY LITTLE DIRTY HOUSES': THE LESSONS OF VICTORIAN BATTERSEA
• 3. RENEWABLE PRINCIPLES IN HENRY ASTLEY DARBISHIRE'S PEABODY ESTATES, 1864 TO 1885
• 4. RESIDENTIAL FLATS: DENSIFICATION IN VICTORIAN AND EARLY TWENTIETH-CENTURY LONDON
• 5. SOUTH ACTON UNSUSTAINED
• 6. GENTRIFICATION: THE CASE OF CANONBURY, 1850 TO 1975
• 7. HIGH-RISE HOUSING IN LONDON, C.1940 TO C.1970
• 8. 'WE FELT MAGNIFICENT BEING UP THERE': ERNŐ GOLDFINGER'S BALFRON TOWER AND THE CAMPAIGN TO KEEP IT PUBLIC
• 9. OUT-OF-SYNC ESTATES
• 10. RECENT APPROACHES TO THE SUSTAINABLE RETROFIT OF VICTORIAN HOUSES
• 11. LESSONS OF THE PAST FOR MY ARCHITECTURAL PRACTICE
• REFERENCES