Drawing of new Council houses in a Close,
from a 1921 Willesden Council booklet.
[Source: Brent Archives]
[Source: Brent Archives]
Guest post by Philip Grant
Last
month, a Brent press release announced that work had begun on 149 new Council
homes in Harlesden. It was welcome news, but a drop in the ocean compared with
the need for affordable social housing for local people to rent.
Almost
a year ago, I added a comment to a blog about the Council’s plans for the St
Raphael’s Estate LINK,
saying that Brent’s officers did not know their history, as they said that the
estate was mainly built between 1967 and 1982. I can now share some more
information about that history.
This
year is the centenary of the 1919 Housing & Town Planning Act, seen by many
as the start of Council housing in this country. In following up a local
history enquiry on the subject*, I
revisited a document I had seen in the Brent Archives collection a dozen years
ago. And yes, Council housing in what is now Brent did begin 100 years ago.
In
fact, Willesden Urban District Council had been considering building some homes
for rent before the outbreak of the First World War. By November 1918, it had
prepared plans for an estate at Stonebridge, an idea which had already been
approved by the government under the 1890 Housing of the Working Classes Act.
Although
there was the promise of Government subsidies towards the cost of building
these homes, the Council had to borrow money first. It asked the Norwich Union
Life Assurance company, but they would not make loans for Council housing
schemes. In fact, it was a loan of £20,000 from the National Union of
Railwaymen which got their first estate started!
The site for “Brent’s” first Council
housing estate, at Stonebridge Farm.
[Reproduced from the 1914 edition of the Ordnance Survey 25” to one mile map of Middlesex, Sheet XVI.1]
[Reproduced from the 1914 edition of the Ordnance Survey 25” to one mile map of Middlesex, Sheet XVI.1]
Work
should have begun on the Brentfield Estate (so called after an ancient field
name) in 1919. Interference by various government departments, and the need to
redraw the plans after it was decided that the proposed North Circular Road
would run right through the site, delayed the start until the following year.
The Council’s own workforce began building the roads and sewers in February
1920, and the contract for the first phase of the planned 591 houses was signed
in May, with work underway by July 1920.
All of
the houses on the estate had three bedrooms, and every one included a bath (the
larger ones in a separate bathroom!). They each had a garden, and each kitchen
was fitted with a cooking range (chosen by a sub-committee of the three women
on Willesden’s Housing Committee). Were the rents affordable? After a dispute between
the Council (which wanted to charge less) and the London Housing Board, a
compromise figure of 12/6 (twelve shillings and sixpence) was agreed.
You
can read about the building of the estate, including plans and some pictures,
online in a facsimile edition of a Willesden U.D.C. booklet, with an
introductory note, “Homes fit for Heroes – Willesden Council’s Brentfield
Housing Scheme, at the Brent Archives website LINK .
The
booklet
was
written for the official handover of the first 65 homes in June 1921. 32
families (chosen from more than 1,000 who had applied) had already moved into
the first street to be completed. Priority was given to Willesden
ex-servicemen, with families living in the most overcrowded conditions. The
handover celebrations took place in the grassy square at the centre of the
street, which was pictured in the booklet:-
Drawing of new Council houses in Square,
from a 1921 Willesden Council booklet.
[Source: Brent Archives]
[Source: Brent Archives]
It is
almost 100 years since local people moved into these first Council homes in
what is now Brent. They were designed as good family homes, or as the slogan
for the 1919 Housing Act proclaimed “Homes fit for Heroes”. Using information
from the time, I have located these first homes, in Mead Plat, and they are
still providing decent homes for families today:-
These
original houses, in Mead Plat and Garden Way, are now part of the St Raphael’s
Estate (the name for the Council housing on the west side of the North Circular
Road comes from a Church of England “mission church”, which opened in Garden Way in 1926).
Let’s hope that as many as possible of Brent’s new Council homes will be family
houses, with gardens, which will provide decent affordable housing for another
century!
Philip Grant
* The local history enquiry that
prompted my research came from Cllr. Janice Long, who has a real interest in
Council housing. I was able to tell her that the first Council homes in the
north of Brent had been Kingsbury U.D.C.’s High Meadow Crescent estate in
1924/25, and Wembley U.D.C.’s Christchurch / Lyon Park estate in the early
1930’s.
