As 2023 draws to a close and with so much bad news around housing, I am trying to finish on a positive note. In this post I have drawn together several pieces I have written for the wonderful Municipal Dreams blog https://municipaldreams.wordpress.com which celebrates the fundamental achievements in council housing and the commitment of so [...]
I've long been interested in the development of Garden Cities and #HouseHistoryHour (28 April 2022) offered the opportunity to share some of this information, now available as Moments and forming the basis of this blog. The Garden Cities movement was a response to poor housing in polluted cities and created healthier living environments. The movement [...]
As the centenary year of the Addison Act comes to a close this post briefly looks at some of the events to mark and celebrate the occasion. We’ve already looked at the wonderfully creative work at Bristol, but other events have included conferences and guided visits to some Addison inspired estates. The tour of the [...]
I am delighted to post this with kind permission from Local Learning, whom I was lucky to meet at a recent event where we were both presenting. Their work creatively showcases the importance of Addison and his contribution to 'homes for heroes' centenary in the Bristol area, whilst demonstrating the importance of housing for all [...]
Whilst some may criticise the ‘sameness’ of suburbia of the interwar period 1918-1939, looking more closely we can find numerous decent family homes set in landscaped places and some lovely examples of housing design history, especially those built during the 1930s. Development of suburbia was not of course an isolated event, but part of an [...]
We finished last month’s blog with a book review urging that more be said about some of our great public health pioneers like Dr Christopher Addison. For someone who achieved so much, there is surprisingly little written about him although the Bodleian Library has catalogued his papers and speeches are available via Hansard. I first came across [...]
There are two novels written about the estates we are thinking about in this post, as different in many ways as the estates themselves. The estates are very interrelated and mutually used but they are completely divided by a railway line. Locals tend to refer to each of the estates respectively as ‘over the other side’ [...]
