The Sunday Post: In A Broken Dream
To the eyes of any visiting alien, the Heygate Estate in London’s Elephant and Castle could be mistaken for an ancient ruin on a par with Pompeii – a crumbling monument to a deceased civilisation. In some respects that’s exactly what it is, for few councils would countenance social housing on such a spectacular scale in 2015; the difference between the Heygate Estate and the locations that were once prime ports of call on the Grand Tour, however, is that this sprawling concrete citadel was only completed forty years ago. And it’s already on its way out.
Slum clearance and what should supersede the slums was one of the defining policies that characterised the governments of both colours in the thirty years after the end of the Second World War; but there had been some ambitious experiments in this area even before Neville Chamberlain’s grave announcement to the nation in September 1939. The Quarry Hill flats complex in Leeds was a brave Modernist solution to the cheap, basic and insanitary housing that had sprung-up in mid-nineteenth century Northern and Midlands towns to accommodate the influx of country folk into the thriving new industries. In the early 30s, Leeds City Council devised what was then the largest social housing scheme in Europe to provide the industrial workforce with decent living conditions. Quarry Hill flats were akin to a town-within-a-town, boasting state-of-the-art innovations such as a refuse disposal system and electric lighting as well as shops and a community laundry. For the first couple of decades of its existence, Quarry Hill was viewed as a shining example of what could be done to alleviate the slum problem.
The effects of air-raids on the industrial heartlands of Britain gave an urgent impetus to the housing crisis after 1945, prompting the state to turn to visionary architects who were scholars of the Le Corbusier school of production-line homes that spanned the era from Modernism to Brutalism. A series of towers rising above the old terraced mazes looked wonderfully futuristic on paper, but could also be built quickly and cheaply. Thus began a concerted and initially well-meaning project to provide those who either couldn’t afford to buy their own home or had made do with temporary prefab accommodation since the Blitz with comfortable and modern council housing that would seem virtually palatial in comparison to the rat and bug-infested hovels many had been raised in.
The first wave of widespread demolition in the 1950s was undertaken by a Conservative Government and seemed to chime with Harold MacMillan’s ‘You’ve Never Had it So Good’ mantra; it was largely deemed to be a success, even though the notion that tower-blocks could house more people than the streets they replaced proved to be a fallacy, in that planning regulations specified strict space between each respective tower and therefore actually required more land than the old terraced back-to-backs used up. Nevertheless, the ambitions of the project knew no bounds, sometimes even encompassing an entire ‘New Town’ such as Cumbernauld, created as a population overspill for Glasgow. When Harold Wilson’s Labour administration came to power in 1964, the redevelopment of Britain’s cities received another shot in the arm. The demolition accelerated as the growth of the motorways necessitated further inroads into working-class communities, as did the increase of consumerism that gave birth to new shopping precincts in city centres. As a consequence, the urban landscape underwent its most dramatic metamorphosis since the Industrial Revolution.
Even though the partial collapse of a tower-block at Ronan Point in Newham, East London, in 1968 first raised questions as to the quality of this instant solution to the slum problem, redevelopment continued apace across the country, leading to monumental housing schemes on the Quarry Hill model such as Sheffield’s Kelvin Flats, Nottingham’s Hyson Green, Hunslet Grange in Leeds, and London’s Ferrier Estate, Aylesbury Estate, Thamesmead Estate (famously used by Stanley Kubrick as a Dystopian backdrop in ‘A Clockwork Orange’) and the aforementioned Heygate Estate. Although virtually all the slums had been cleared away by this point, the architects and the local councils had become dizzy on the desire to make their cities resemble Fritz Lang’s Metropolis, leading many sound and solid Victorian and Edwardian houses and public buildings to unnecessarily disappear beneath the wrecking-ball merely because they were deemed old-fashioned and were labelled ‘slums’ even when they were far from it. The motivation behind the ongoing demolitions also came into question when bribery and corruption between builders and councillors eventually emerged into the public eye, most infamously in the case of John Poulson, a scandal that cost Reginald Maudling his job as Home Secretary in 1972.
It wasn’t until the deficiencies in the design of the new concrete estates became apparent as the 1970s progressed – primarily the damp arising from poor-quality cheap materials used in the building process and the potential for juvenile vandalism with so many dark corners to loiter in – that the concept really ran out of steam. Community amenities such as shops, cinemas, sports centres and recreational grounds had either been closed or hadn’t even been included in the original plans, and public transport facilities were often poor for those estates distanced from city centres, generating an Alcatraz-like feeling of detachment. Despite the pleas of residents, maintenance of the buildings was allowed to lapse as the country’s economic decline rendered the great social housing project an expensive and unsustainable operation. Yet the warning signs had been there from the off. The passionately articulate architectural critic Ian Nairn railed against the frenzied mania for bulldozing anything built in the previous century – particularly when grandiose Gothic churches were swept away with the communities they once served. But the damage had already been done.
The mistake made early in this project was to have far-reaching ramifications for the sense of solidarity that had been fostered in the depths of the Luftwaffe bombardment. Rather than ensuring the tight-knit communities remained intact by re-housing families and neighbours along the same lines, these communities were scattered by redevelopment and any sense of togetherness dissipated. This in turn gave rise to the fracture of any common consensus shared by the disorientated residents, something that the isolating design of the estates, where contact between neighbours could be minimal, exacerbated. Councils viewing such estates as a convenient dumping ground for antisocial and disruptive ‘problem families’ didn’t help either, contributing to the bad reputation they rapidly acquired. There was a distinct feeling that the people had been abandoned to their collective fate.
Quarry Hill flats, the granddaddy of the brave new world, was allowed to slide into neglect from the 1960s onwards and by the mid-1970s had been served with a death sentence. It finally disappeared as a Leeds landmark in 1978, spending a decade as waste-ground before eventually being superseded by both the Northern HQ of the DHSS and the Leeds Playhouse. Had the complex been renovated and restored rather than removed, it could have provided a private company with ‘luxury housing’ for upwardly mobile young professionals on an unimaginable scale. But the same fate awaited all of the similarly ambitious social housing schemes that followed Quarry Hill – Kelvin Flats, Hyson Green, Hunslet Grange and Heygate, the latter of which will shortly join the Ferrier and Aylesbury Estates by vanishing from the London landscape.
With the exception of Thamesmead, it’s increasingly difficult to find any traces of this era of social housing in Britain, especially since the decades from the 1980s onwards have seen the wilful erasure of all evidence; the 1960s has become the Architectural Decade That Dare Not Speak Its Name. Yes, mistakes were made, mistakes that inadvertently shattered the illusion of the working-class as a definable social demographic; but the intentions in the beginning were honourable ones of a kind that are all-but impossible to imagine now. The thought that social housing could be rated so highly as to inspire projects on such a mammoth scale is hard to comprehend today. Our elected representatives once cared enough to try and improve our lot? Mind-boggling. Only private housing for the ‘Young Professional’ will provoke building projects of any magnitude these days. And that in itself in not only a damning indictment of how priorities have altered in the last thirty years, but a dispiriting example of how so-called Broken Britain became a social ailment without a discernible antidote.
Petunia Winegum
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May 17, 2015 at 9:49 am -
Not just in the UK.
http://hainhausen.blogspot.de/2011/06/broken-down-dreams-hope-hunger.html
Estate was known in the local dialect as ‘The Glass Palace” and to misquote someone “the day they knocked down the Palais…”
The whole estate was demolished a few months after I wrote that blog page. Yes it was an eyesore, yes it was broken beyond repair and it’s few remaining residents too BUT it had been home for a couple of years, a couple of very ‘interesting’ years and watching the bulldozers and wrecking ball on youtube still made me want to weep.-
May 17, 2015 at 11:21 am -
Fascinating. It’s amazing how such futuristic-looking estates could deteriorate into ‘modern ruins’ in so short a space of time. There’s an argument one or two should be preserved and opened as tourist sites. They do it with medieval abbeys, after all, and a century from now there’ll probably be no evidence remaining that this era of architecture ever existed. Keeping one or two would at least serve as an example of what went wrong.
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May 17, 2015 at 11:38 am -
a century from now there’ll probably be no evidence remaining that this era of architecture ever existed
True, this is what the site looks like now http://www.friesischer-rundfunk.de/Down/Foto/80186_Emden_Barenburg.jpg?i=18907
but in the particular case of the Glass Palace of Emden it was build according to the ‘dutch’ model, and you can’t drive through any dutch town or city without seeing countless, better (?), examples. Meanwhile further Eastwards, the old socialist ‘Plattenbau’ (google image ‘plattenbau’) blocks of the DDR are rapidly becoming sort after objets d’ architecture I’m told…although I’m not quite sure I believe it nor would I want to live 10 stories up on Communist concrete…even German communist concrete….
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May 17, 2015 at 10:00 am -
Having my own childhood home demolished in the 1960s ‘slum-clearance’ programme and seeing the successor developments all fail dramatically, one wonders whether it would not have been better to let housing develop organically, as it had for centuries before, without ‘planned’ interference by authorities.
This would not have inhibited the growing national wealth over the period, which would then have manifested itself in people moving up a property ladder reflecting their increasing wealth, either owned or rented, but with a level of free-market flexibility which would have created housing where there was need, rather than just where there was a political inclination. Housing would have followed work, always ensuring that there was relatively affordable housing in practical reach of that work.
The key problem with planned housing (as with most infrastructure – don’t get me onto HS2), is that it is invariably conducted through a rear-view mirror, as none of the ‘planners’ can have an accurate view of the next 50 years of demand, rather than the fuzzy visions of some social utopia that they employ. Only a responsive market could deliver what is needed, when it is needed and where it is needed, which is what organic development had historically always provided.-
May 17, 2015 at 11:02 am -
Only a responsive market could deliver what is needed, when it is needed and where it is needed, which is what organic development had historically always provided.
A case in historical point: http://www.amusingplanet.com/2015/01/the-crooked-houses-of-lavenham.html
Hate to think what one of those ‘thrown together by drunken Suffolkers’ (ie Norfolkers sans extra toes and with an over fondness for pink) would set you back these days. Lavenham, putting the ‘list’ into ‘Listed Building’ since the 15th Century.
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May 17, 2015 at 10:59 am -
Architects. Now there’s a thing. When I was at Uni, or college as it was more accurately called, we had a relatively new, shiny library devoted to history. It was a dramatic thing, all made of glass, and with shiny, marble-esq floors. I believe it won lots of awards. There were, however, on or two problems of a “practical” kind. For example, in summer it acted like a giant magnifying glass, becoming incredibly hot and stuffy. In winter, the structure would contract in the cold, so that the rain leaked in. There were buckets all over the floor to collect the endless drips. The marble floor meant that every time someone walked about the sound of their footsteps echoed around, disturbing everyone. The last I heard (many years ago) was that the whole thing was mired in litigation…
Meanwhile to the stunning vistas of Leeds. For a long time I used to work on the edge of the City Centre, opposite what was called the Leeds International Swimming Pool, as I recall. Something like that. It was a colossal grey concrete building, obviously designed by a child of 3 with learning difficulties using Lego. The name was rather ironic, because as I understand it, it had been built with the idea of being a fully Olympic and International qualifying swimming pool. Indeed it was a very big pool. There was only one problem. Olympic swimming pools have to be 50 metres long. This one was about 48 metres. Sort of a problem there…Meanwhile inside the dingy concrete hallways there was an endless problem with damp and so forth. It turned out, much to everyone’s surprise, that if you build a building with flat roofs and use a relatively porous material, then the rain gathers, and has a tendency to come in! Who would have thought it! I must confess I have some nostalgia for the old place, ugly as it was, because the cardio room with its excellent rowing machines provided much relief of a lunchtime and evening and kept me sane. I believe, by the way, that the architect and businessman behind the project was one John Poulson, who many readers will recall as behind a torrent of corruption back in the day.
And whilst we are talking of Leeds, a special shout out to the Quarry Hill flats, as mentioned by our learned landlord. Now, I never experienced these monstrosities, but they appear to have been the apogee of Kafka-esq, modernist design. According one of my ex’s, who used to frequent that area whilst going to school back in the day, they had come to the attention of Hitler, who had ear marked them as the headquarters for the SS in the event of completing the successful invasion of Britain. Quite fitting, really. Meanwhile, having been demolished, they have been replaced with what I have to say is arguably the ugliest building I have ever seen, a building so gross that looks like an obscene parody of an Orwellian nightmare. According to my Wikipedia research, it rejoices in the nicknames of ” the Kremlin” and “The Ministry of Truth”. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Quarry_Hill,_Leeds
Whoever thought that forcing people into concrete tubes in the sky was a good idea? Meanwhile, I believe Lord Prescott of Pies was responsible for bulldozing thousands of terraced houses which could have been refurbished at much less cost.
Architects and politicians….-
May 17, 2015 at 11:09 am -
a special shout out to the Quarry Hill flats
Shout out?! You are going to have to stop listening to Radio1, Gildas. I worry about you. Next you’ll be writing about chillaxin’ wid yo hommies down the local tearoom, innit…like.
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May 17, 2015 at 11:16 am -
One thing I will say in favour of Quarry Hill flats is that, from a distance, they were striking-looking, a dramatic landmark when seen from the Headrow, and something I looked at rather awe-struck on childhood trips into the city centre. A little closer, the design faults and lack of maintenance were evident, but the Moscow Lego building that eventually superseded them is indeed hideous. Before the land was completely covered anew, it was still possible to find traces of what had been there; in the early 90s, I remember picking up a crumbling ‘piece’ of Quarry Hill flats from the York Road end of the site and kept it as a rather melancholy souvenir.
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May 18, 2015 at 9:23 am -
Quarry Hill was already falling down in the 1960s and the council had the choice of pulling it down or spending money to keep it up for another ten years, choosing the latter. I must say the kremlin cheers me up, it’s always good for a laugh.
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May 18, 2015 at 12:34 am -
I used to swim laps in the Leeds International pool. One day my car was stolen from the car park. The police found it the next day near Kirkstall Abbey. Probably nicked by one of the monks.
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May 18, 2015 at 4:45 pm -
“Learning difficulties”
Ooh! You said inappropriate words. Listening to the Daily Whinge this afternoon I learnt that the correct term is now “learning disabilities” (which has presumably supplanted “additional needs”; “special needs” is now hate-speech).
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May 17, 2015 at 11:33 am -
I agree with ‘organic’ housing growth. I do not know what Faversham is like now? When we were last there to use Thames barges on hire from the wharf run by Alan Reekie who once owned Thames Barge Ironsides. Faversham was like a layer cake of architectural styles in clear rings. A Tudor centre shading out to Edwardian and twenties. A lovely picturesque town. I read very recently that the wharf and boatyard at Faversham are up for sale or even sold. There is a move to stop fancy, high priced houses being built on this very old traditional boat and ship site. The skill needed to chug up this narrow creek with the rising tide still thrills me to this day. Reekie at the helm. The old diesel ‘cadonking’, just turning over, the rising water lifting the Thames Barge along to the wharf. Turning round to face the Medway was a total art of river craft. The tide forcing the barge round as the river forged its way past the barge at either end. I wonder is this organic growth if it happens? Or vandalism, serving only the well off? The best estate for woods and green spaces, good amenities, gardens parks, swimming pool, youth facilities, compact shopping centre, purpose built churches, good transport links does not always mean good community cohesion. I will not name it, as it might offend!!!! At a study day at one of the many halls there. A visitor said ‘what a lovely place to live’. A chorus of voices said otherwise. The visitor was shocked at what the voices told her. The question is…..how do you provide for those who get given insulting titles like pleb, chav, lower orders, benefits cheats etc decent housing and hope that helps make them be a good part of a community. Not to throw rubbish, to take legal part in local events and not vandalise their surroundings on a regular basis, deal drugs and get fighting drunk.
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May 17, 2015 at 11:42 am -
Horrible developments, yes, but they have to be seen against the urgent need for housing of any sort at the time. Shame is that little groups of prefabs ( as I recall, at least) seemed to be on a more human scale, but were obviously a less dramatic manifestation of civic power.
But there’s still the people, it’s not just loss of community, some of the people are a serious problem no matter where they live. I’ve seen this locally within the past 10-15 years on new social housing developments. A handwringing & very nice official responding to my anger: ‘.. you must understand, they’re victims too.’
I was born & brought up on an early ’30s council estate, on the South side of Reading & in parts it’s still a problem. Once referred to as ‘the (property) polygon of doom’. But it’s still there; built with reasonable space around them, gardens, & capable of improvement over the years by owners, councils & housing associations alike.
I guess we weren’t made to live in hives & warrens. -
May 17, 2015 at 11:47 am -
Ah, yes, the ‘Modernist’ movement. Lovely: “We know what’s good for you…” etc. Very good for the production of Pit Bulls on an almost industrial scale.
My dear old (late) father used to say: “The only to give an architect his head is on a plate.”
All these dreadful buildings and plans are entirely political (Soviet-influenced) and thereby lies the problem…
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May 17, 2015 at 12:03 pm -
You can kinda see the dream though, at least in the case of my own particular tower block
http://ostfriesland-entdecken.de/wp-content/uploads/2013/04/Glaspalast.jpgand why it was called the ‘Glass Palace’.
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May 17, 2015 at 12:26 pm -
I can’t see it at all. There was a convention in the ancient world that the architect responsible for a structure would sleep under it for a period before it was deemed useable. This particularly applied to bridges, but tower blocks have also been known to fall apart, cf. Ronan Point.
Some of the Soviet-era buildings in the Eastern bloc, it was found, were constructed from concrete which had never set properly…
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May 17, 2015 at 12:48 pm -
May 17, 2015 at 2:06 pm -
Indeed, and in Russia itself the legacy of communism can still be seen… Six-storey Khrushchev-era apartment blocks that were thrown together in inconvenient places in and around Moscow among other cities. From Wikipedia:
“After Stalin’s death in 1953, Khrushchev’s regime “embarked upon a mass housing campaign,” to eliminate the persistent housing shortages, and create private apartments for urban residents. This campaign was a response to popular demand for “better living conditions, single-family housing, and greater privacy;” Khrushchev believed that granting the people private apartments would give them greater enthusiasm for the communist system in place and that improving people’s attitudes and living conditions would lead to a healthier and more productive workforce. However, the new apartments were built quickly, with an emphasis on quantity over quality, and in underdeveloped neighborhoods, with poor systems of public transportation, making daily life harder for workers. These apartment blocks quickly became called ‘khrushchyovky,’ a cross between Khrushchev’s name and the Russian term for slums.”
Even in the land of big state and central planning, they couldn’t get it right. The reek of boiled cabbage in the stairwells takes your breath away.
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May 17, 2015 at 12:28 pm -
I’m a great believer that the people who design houses should be made to live in them for at least a decade. Have you noticed that the designers of estates with open plan gardens always inhabit huge mansions with eight-foot hedges and electric gates, for example?
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May 17, 2015 at 12:30 pm -
A perfect example of how socialist idealism cannot be achieved by socialist means.
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May 17, 2015 at 12:46 pm -
“Come the revolution brothers, we’ll all drive a Rolls-Royce, and smoke big fat Havana cigars”
“But what if I don’t want to drive a Rolls-Royce, or smoke cigars?”
“Come the revolution brother… you’ll do as you’re bloody well told!”
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May 17, 2015 at 2:03 pm -
Kingston-upon-Hull was heavily bombed during WW2 – in a somewhat prescient move given what would happen to the place once the fishing industry went for a Burton, the Lufftwaffe used to empty their bombers randomly over the city en route back to base. What has happened since however makes them look like amateurs.
Hull never went in much for many High-Rise blocks, though most of the ones they did construct (in a place called “Orchard Park”) were demolished very recently for no other reason than they do not fit in with moderns mores. We did, however, get a Utopian Dream of municipal Council Estates.
In the early part of the 20th Century, the “Solid Labour” city was bequeathed Gipsyville to the West and Preston Road Estate (originally “East Hull Estate”), and then as the 1930’s commenced North Hull Estate (to the North, obviously) and Bilton Grange (to the North East of ‘East Hull Estate) began – though due to WW2 was to become two distinct developments (‘Old Bilton Grange’ and ‘New Bilton Grange’). The slum clearances of the predominently ‘fishing communities’ began in earnest after the Lufftwaffe had decimated the other areas of the city (particularly the City Centre) and we then got Greatfield (east of what now became Preston Road Estate, south of Bilton Grange, and inheriting the mantle ‘Corned Beef Island’ from the former), Boothferry (west of Gipsyville) and Bricknell (south west of North Hull Estate) plus various other small pockets of council houses – these seem to have been the ‘best built’ in that they are seldom demolished.
As the clearences accelerated, the dawn of the 1960s saw the construction of several new estates. Some of these (the Walker St/Great Thornton St estate just west of the city centre) were in clearance areas, but most notable were ambitious greenfield developments. The idyllic sounding “Orchard Park” (now referred to as O.P.E.) was bolted to the north of North Hull Estate and remained the High Rise capital of the City until recently. “Ings Road Estate” was built to North of the Eastern estates already mentioned and adopting the name of the road that bordered it to the west, though seperated from the other ‘communities’ by the main Holderness Road thoroughfare. To the north of “Ings” was a lovely village called Sutton. Sutton would never be the same again.
Kingston-upon-Hull City Council had acquired several farms and orchards to the north of Sutton, and Sutton Road (which linked the village to the main Beverley Road thoroughfare which, to it’s west, bordered the North Hull Estate(s)) and the original plan was to create a ‘New Town’. What it became (rapidly) was Bransholme, once proudly trumpeted as ‘Europe’s Largest Council Estate’ (perhaps not anymore tho’). Bransholme was made up of 5 or 6 distinct areas large enough to be individual estate in their own right (plus a private estate to it’s immediate west called Sutton Park), and was built in a hurry. The main part was constructed at an incredible rate between 1967 & 1975, the last leg was a step too far in every respect. “North Bransholme” was out on a limb, but worse still was demand for council housing had been exhausted. Of course the Labour council – reflecting the politics of the time – ploughed on and stuck to the plans, but the Northern extremites were not finished until 1982. I remember this final stretch well, as my Nana & Grandad moved from a 5-bedroomed in the ‘Noddle Hill’ area of Bransholme, to a slightly smaller brand spanker on the North in either late 77 or early 78… I can remember our first visit there, navigating the new roads and my Dad – a copper who knew the city like the back of his hand – exclaiming “They must be mad” on that first journey there. He would regularly on his car when there (by physically opening the front door, as the front of the house had no real view such was the unorthodox design of these larger-than-they-looked houses), but I often ‘played out’ as his brother was only 4 years my elder, so I did notice it was next to a building site for most of their residence (they fled the city in ’83 for a rented bungalow near Goole when my Grandad retired from the docks).
The story since this unprecendented planning and construction? 20+ years of demolition and “regeneration”, contracts awarded to companies who have members of the Prescott dynasty on their boards.
In 1987, an area of central Bransholme was demolished – known as the “Misery Maisonettes”, 20 years of damp made a low-rise area of the estate “unfixable” (though it has to be said similar buildings weren’t such a problem elsewhere in the city), that was the first sign the dream was over. In 1995, several entire “Close”s were cleared on North Bransholme. They had only been finished 15 years before, and were in the main brick-built spacious houses, they remain grassed over today. This still rankles with me as utterly disgusting, and more so given the “private estate” that was built to the west of North Bransholme in the mid-90s on. The real sign of ‘things to come’ was in 1998, when two streets in a “good part” of Bransholme – Skilgate Close & Selworthy Close – were cleared and razed, and left as grass with a handful of purchased houses remaining.. all because they had underfloor heating and were this “unecomical”.
Also in the mid-90s, the oldest estates were targeted for “regeneration” as social engineering became an answer to the problems of the modern society. The bulldozers waded in to “modernise” Gypsyville to build private and “housing association” properties, but to a degree were thwarted by resistance of those who had bought their houses under ‘right to buy’. The one-time East Hull Estate (until the entire East of the city became a series of newer estates), now know as “Preggy Road”, was targeted. Initially the “boot houses” were singled out, with the excuse being they were poorly built and had exceeded their lifespan. Once that began, almost all of the estate was eaten away, and they no longer needed the excuse of structural issues. What has replaced these admittedly “low demand” housing is big new PFI-funded “community buildings” – huge police stations, “Academies” etc… and vast expanses of the area continues to be razed to the ground. Soulless.
The worst example of this senseless “Year Zero” approach began in earnest – and fairly quietly – about 10 years ago. The “Ings Road Estate” had been a pretty successful development – it had fostered a decent community, and an estate people were proud to live on. Lots of nice gardens and relatively trouble-free. But – alas – many of the homes (not that the council or the developers ever saw them as such) were the “Caspon” design, with underfloor heating. Community purchase orders were handed out to those who had exercised their “right to buy” their homes, and most of the estate – and thus the community – has now been bulldozed. The dream last just 40 years – but it sums up the entire industry. Slum clearances in the 60s, 60s Estate clearance 30/40 years later. The irony is aside from the High Rise of Orchard Park Estate, most of the High Rise blocks are in higher demand and have a brighter future than the more tradional housing.
Throughout the city are randomly demolished blocks of houses, in some areas are entire razed streets. Some were demolished shortly after extensive modernisation. Municipal housing is a game of dominoes. The “eco-friendly” houses they are building now are just as temporary – wood-framed, thrown up and “sold” to mortgage companies for people who, if they do pay off their mortgage, will probably find themselves back to square one.
As for the City Centre of the “City Of Culture 2017″, it’s in the very bad state indeed. I attended a Stewart Lee show at the City Hall on Tuesday. As I left I walked down King Edward Street & Prospect Street, formerly the hub of a bustling City Centre. Thanks in some part to the St Stephens project of 10 years ago, every other shop en route was vacant with even the rats (pawnbrokers) deserting the sinking ship. Every bar was closed & derelict. The biggest and busiest nightclub of the city – First Leisure’s “Lexington Avenue” – demolished and for years just a fenced off site. The Spring Bank area is primarily populated by Kurds & East Europeans (but let’s face it, they haven’t driven out “The English” have they? Better than more dereliction). But the residential areas of the city are in perpetual “development” – no wonder Prescott’s pal Mandelson was mysteriously made “High Sheriff of Hull”. Yet despite high profile Labour figures presiding over the city – Prescott, Mandelson and Alan Johnson MP – what good has it done?-
May 17, 2015 at 3:29 pm -
‘High Sheriff of Hull’ – even that title makes him sound like some medieval robber-baron!
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May 17, 2015 at 4:53 pm -
Actually, having just watched the BBC programme on Deptford (thank you Hieronymous) I will add that to right now private Victorian houses in West Hull are being bulldozed to create new “Eco-Homes”… the houses which withstood the slum clearances of nearby Hessle Road were always quite cheap but a lot of them were bought up 15/20 years ago by mysterious London-based “investors” and left to rack & ruin. The price paid for compulsory purchase signifficantly more than what they sold for to these anonymous business people (from the council purse, of course), and the area is being transformed… to a combination of generic new-builds some of which are ‘housing association’ and some of which a sold by eternal mortages. All very good for “the economy” I am sure you’ll agree (home ownership really will become an illusion in the next 20-30 years, the banks own the houses) – and makes the presence of Mandelson all the more suspicious.
The price of a new-build “Starter Home” in West Hull (tiny rooms, tiny plot, dubious construction) is presently £131,000. Mortgages are a lot easier to obtain on these properties over older houses, especially for the hapless first-time-buyer. Will they ever actually “own” the property by paying off the mortgage?
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May 17, 2015 at 2:53 pm -
The Secret History of our Streets produced by the Open University had an excellent episode on the destruction of Deptford High Street (available on player at http://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episode/b01jt9bv/the-secret-history-of-our-streets-series-1-1-deptford-high-street). Worth watching before attributing any honourable motives to the planners.
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May 17, 2015 at 5:01 pm -
Well, I’ll be darned Petunia! I had thought of writing this myself – for you wouldn’t know, but I started my independent adult life in a bed sit in St Agnes Place – looking out of the window at the rat covered wasteland that was to be the Heygate Estate. I watched row after row of Victorian villas pulled down ( momentarily lapsed when the ‘Kennington Preservation Society’ was formed to stop the demolition of what are now very desirable million pound Georgian mansions a mere stones throw from Westminster; and forcing the council to renovate them as council houses – subsequently sold by the tenants and now occupied by more than a few MPS) and for quite a while employed myself buying up the contents at 50 quid a time, as the tenants now aspired to G-plan furniture and wished to rid themselves of their chesterfields, button back nursing chairs and grandfather’s clock – wouldn’t look good in their new Heygate eyrie.
In no time at all, the parking places on the Heygate filled up with Jaguars and other exotic cars, and ‘tenancies’ gave way to illegal ‘sub-tenancies’ – the proximity to the West End was of great appeal to the local gangsters and their offer to give you ‘a grand’ to ‘move out’ was apparently irresistible. The walkways that joined the various buildings became the province of the ‘hangers on’ – and you would need your head seeing to, to walk those walkways unless you really wanted to be divested of all your worldly belongings.
What had been a community not too dissimilar to that idealised by Eastenders today, became a hell hole for those who had stayed – marooned in boxes in the sky, too terrified to step outside their front door. Not that staying in was a much better option – a friend was burgled in one of those flats by men who abseiled down ropes secured to an empty flat further up the tower – she never really recovered from the shock.
I forget Grass hopper – you wouldn’t know that the ‘old woman in the attic’, was once the chatelaine of The Elephant Repair Centre….remind me to tell you of the day Ronnie Chipperfield brought his elephants round. If you ever get up here with my gin and tonic that is….-
May 17, 2015 at 5:30 pm -
An elephant repairer? Sounds like that should have been one for the ‘lost lexicon of England’ list that proved so popular over Christmas. And the G&T is on its way (laced with Calpol to ensure a quiet night is guaranteed for all).
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May 17, 2015 at 5:54 pm -
And the G&T is on its way (laced with Calpol to ensure renal failure is guaranteed ).
I know she can be a pain with her constant banging and ‘mistaking’ your pint pot for the chamber pot but….there are kinder ways than ruining perfectly good gin and tonics with paracetamol OTC medicines…anything containing the letters ‘NHS’ is a good starting point. *wanders off humming the Night Nurse jingle*
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May 17, 2015 at 6:02 pm -
The Elephant Repair Centre
Of “Patch Your Pachyderm” and “Mend your Mammoth” advertising slogan fame?
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May 17, 2015 at 7:46 pm -
We finally discovered a truth, and that is that high rise is for the affluent, not the needy. Affluent residents keep the lifts free of graffiti and puddles of urine, have a concierge, pay for the upkeep of the grounds etc. Plus, they don’t want the shoddy standards of construction that bedevilled the 60s, leaky windows, lack of insulation, heating systems that don’t work or cost a fortune to run, etc etc.
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May 17, 2015 at 9:11 pm -
I would like to thank all the contributors to this thread for some thoroughly engrossing reading.
The Blocked Dwarf reminded me of my first, and last brutalist housing. http://www.studentenwerkbielefeld.de/typo3temp/pics/afd8f3a155.jpg
Two people in 13,7 m^2. I really must have been in love.
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May 18, 2015 at 8:06 am -
Two people in 13,7 m^2. I really must have been in love.
Towerblock Studentenwohnheim/Dienstwohnung with communal toilet ,showers and kitchen down the ‘Flur’ (‘corrdior’)? As a couple? 600 DM rent a month? Living off Pennymarkt cheese slices, nutella on rye bread & Javaanse Jongens rollups or Roth Haendle when I had cash? Cold beers from, and at, the kiosk? Yep been there, done that. Some of the best memories and not just cos we mated like bunnies all summer and drank amounts normally resulting in alcohol poisoning.
http://i18.photobucket.com/albums/b116/horta/ofwohnheim_zpso62f0xc7.png
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May 18, 2015 at 8:15 am -
So many of the ‘luxury’ flats and so-called penthouses currently being erected in our cities face exactly the same future. They may not be as high as the tower blocks but what many buying them don’t realise is that they have been designed to last only 30 years. It’s in the small print of the design specification.
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May 18, 2015 at 9:43 am -
Sheffield’s monstrous carbuncle, Park Hill, is home to a Preservation Listing nowadays… probably not all of it… it was a bit big.
http://i1381.photobucket.com/albums/ah211/huntsman1999/1960_zpsjtaoahem.jpg
America tore down the Bronx in the late 70’s. They always are a decade or two ahead. There’s some great footage of monstrous blocks awaiting the dynamite in the movie “Koyaanisqatsi”. -
May 18, 2015 at 12:55 pm -
“it’s increasingly difficult to find any traces of this era of social housing in Britain”
Er, no.
There’s plenty of it left in Glasgow, despite a few well-known explosions :
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/uknews/scotland/10038791/Glasgow-Red-Road-tower-block-demolished.htmland the ministrations of the totally awesome “lobster claw”:
https://youtu.be/K3s_jhWWMCM -
May 22, 2015 at 7:14 am -
I’d love to have seen the Barbican mentioned in the article. ‘Tower blocks’ are taken as showing the failure of a particular type of architecture. Yet these big modernist schemes seem to work pretty well when their tenants are not the unemployed and drug addicts. Certainly you can’t buy a flat for a million there now. I think we are blaming architects for other social problems.
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May 22, 2015 at 9:30 am -
Employed and drug using tenants are often less trouble I imagine.
I recall that many years ago.. must have been the late 80’s a former “council” tower block in London (Chelsea I believe) had been bought up and was being gentrified. They put a sort of pagoda-tip on the flat roof I recall. My friend at the time was employed by a company involved. It must have been one of the first to be adapted that way. I think the same trick was tried on some blocks near where I grew up, where the outside cladding was changed to bright multi-colours instead of urine-cement. I think those blocks are still standing too. There were brand-new council estates of traditional houses that became just as run-down as the towers though, but again they seem better now. I recall Petunia reflecting on the dislocation of societies (neighbourhoods) by the slum clearance policies and maybe what has happened is that a couple of generations are completely at sea with no anchor, but then gradually the area “puts down roots”. It’s probably a subtle process.
Rich people in expensive flats do of course have a personal interest in maintaining their high-value environment.
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May 22, 2015 at 9:37 am -
That should have been “late 70’s” !! That was why it seemed so remarkable at the time… a carncil tower block for posh people? Why would they wanna live in one of them??!!
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