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Rookeries and no-go estates: St. Giles and Broadwater Farm, or middle-class fear of ‘non-street’ housing

2010; Taylor & Francis; Volume: 15; Issue: 4 Linguagem: Inglês

10.1080/13602365.2010.507526

1466-4410

Dominic Severs,

Urbanization and City Planning

Abstract This essay offers an historical analysis of two kinds of housing. It proposes a connection between the densely packed housing of the poor in nineteenth-century London, the so-called rookeries, and post-war local authority built modernist housing estates. It argues that there are similarities in the spatial character of the two forms, particularly in the complexity of the relationship between the private and public realms, and that this, together with the close identification of both forms with their inhabitants, provoked similar responses in representation and action. The main body of the dissertation is based on historical analysis of two examples, the parish of St. Giles-in-the-Fields, London and, in greater detail, the local authority housing estate called Broadwater Farm, Tottenham, in the London Borough of Haringey. Alternating with historical accounts are descriptions and analyses of form and spatial character, and discussion of the ideologies underlying the responses (that is, the ideas that shaped the housing and urban forms, particularly those offered as alternatives to our case studies). Parallels are drawn between responses to the two forms studied in terms of the 'fear' in the title of the work, with an attempt to clarify where this fear lay and the nature of the responses. Notes The first edition of the map, covering the East End only, was published in Labour and Life of the People. Volume 1: East London (London, Macmillan, 1889). The map was expanded in 1891 to cover all central London, being known as the Descriptive Map of London Poverty 1889. The later version was published in 1902 and is known as the Map Descriptive of London Poverty, 1898–99. The 'courts' primary characteristics are that they are not (usually) through streets, typically too narrow to take traffic and surrounded on at least three sides by buildings. Beames Citation(1852), p. 4. Other contemporary observers: Booth, Hole, Mayhew, Gavin, Engles, Rawlinson, Sims. More recent texts: Evans Citation(1997). Beames Citation(1852), p. 60. Saffron Hill lies to the north of High Holborn, west of Hatton Garden. Walford Citation(1878), p. 197. Ackroyd Citation(2001), p 131–143, quotes Defoe : 'that one parish at St. Giles London hath done us all this mischief'. Fielding Citation(1784), p. 421. Minutes of Evidence Taken Before The Select Committee on Metropolis Improvements (19th July, 1836), p. 35. Such as the Society for the Bettering the Conditions of the Poor and the, later (from 1835), London City Mission. The Times, September 19th, 1853, Issue 21537, page 10, The Cholera by 'A hospital physician'. The correspondent notes of the 1832 epidemic: 'The remark, I well remember, was common, that the cholera seemed to be the besom of the Almighty to sweep away the accumulated moral refuse and filth of the country.' Local authorities could formulate their own bye laws, and have these confirmed by central government, or adopt the model bye laws attached to the legislation which needed no further confirmation. The Common Lodgings Houses (Shaftesbury) Act, 1851; Nuisances Removal Act, 1855; Artisans' and Labourers' Dwellings Act, 1868; Artisans' and Labourers' Dwellings Improvement (First Cross) Act (1875); Housing of the Working Class Act, 1885 and 1890. These all gave (some) local authorities powers to inspect, demolish and build in various circumstances. Dyos & Reeder (1973), Vol. 1, p. 36. Quoting C. G. Stonestreet (1800), Domestic Union of London as it Should Be! Bentham Citation(1995), p. 31. The 'apparent omnipresence of the inspector', p.45. Fletcher Citation(1871), p. 17. Tottenham Local Board of Health (1883), Annual Report of the Medical Officer, 1883 (Bruce Castle Museum and Archive). The M.O.H. does not say whether or how he counts children. For comparison, the 1885 St. Giles's District M.O.H. reported an occupation rate of 11.4 persons per house for the census year 1881 (The Times, August 22nd,1885), p. 11. Broadwater Farm comes in at the bottom end of the high-density range at 140 persons per acre. Gifford (1985), p.16. Newman Citation(1973). For example, the Bronxdale Project, p. 113, Breukelen Houses p.54, Tilden Houses, p. 20. Ibid., p. 63. Newman largely appears to follow the analysis of Jane Jacobs in championing the street as the most effective and widely understood intermediary between the private and public spheres, as well as being a vital 'arena' for social activity. Design of Dwellings (Dudley) Report (1944) proposed a policy of 'mixed housing', the planned provision of different sizes (and forms) of dwellings, established as the 'high-density' element of urban housing. Housing policy in Britain repeatedly swung between ideologically determined foci of re-housing slum dwellers and general provision. However, even in the re-housing phases there remained an ambition (or at least a rhetoric) for social as well as material improvement. Dudley (1944), p. 61, Madanipour Citation(2003), pp. 140–142, Ravetz Citation(2001), Glendinning and Muthesius Citation(1994), p. 47. Indeed, the idea of creating 'community' and 'neighbourhoods' was a significant aspect of policy throughout the seventy years of direct state building of houses. A number of different strains of modernism came to be incorporated in public housing in Britain in the 1950s, ranging from picturesque distribution of 'point' or tower blocks in open space or parkland, to approximations to the zielenbau 'rational' array of slab blocks. In fact literally a cordon sanitaire as this buffer was necessary to meet the requirements of the building height/separation formulae of the building regulations. Glendinning and Muthesius Citation(1994), p. 111, quote Cleeve-Barr, A. W., Public Authority Housing (1958): 'The orientation of blocks of flats in parallel rows, facing east and west… the spacing of the buildings for daylight… [have] been overdone', grouping blocks together can create a 'sense of enclosure'. Dudley (1944), pp. 59, 62. A school, allotments and sports facilities stood between the estate and Lordship Lane to the north when it was completed. Parker Morris (1961), paragraph 120. Parker Morris (1961) paragraph 30: 'In private enterprise housing, open planning is popular with purchasers, for it gives a sense of space, and it can certainly help in producing a very attractive home.' The Builder, Volume XLI (September 17th, 1881), p. 356: The New Peabody Buildings. Tarn (1973), pp. 67, 68. By this time clearance of terraced bye-law housing. L.B.H. Town Planning and Development Committee Minutes, 5th October, 1965, paragraph 2587. 'The Committee were informed that it was the intention to use an industrialised system of building for this scheme, and the Borough Architect submitted a model.' Gifford Citation(1986), Power (1997), p. 196. Power puts the final cost of the estate at £5,600,000, not including the cost of the land which was owned by the local authority and used up until then as allotments Town Planning and Development Committee, 5th October, 1965. This is at the high end of the medium-density range: however, Gifford Citation(1986), p. 16, quotes the density as 140 p.p.a., firmly in high-density territory, giving the site area as 21 acres compared with the council minutes' 28 acres, the difference being the northern part of the site which was taken for building the Broadwater Farm Infants and Junior Schools. The arrangement of the six-storey slabs carries the vestige of a Rational zeilenbau array: except that, of course, they are aligned east-west instead of north-south. London Borough of Haringey Town Planning and Development Committee Minutes, 5th October, 1965. The space standards recommended by the 1961 Parker Morris Report Homes for Today and Tomorrow were made compulsory for local authority housing in 1969, then abolished in the 1980s. Hornsey Journal, Friday, May 11th, 1973: MARRIAGES ON THE ROCKS AMONG THE CONCRETE SAYS REPORT ON HIGH RISE LIVING. Power (1997), p. 209. Gifford Citation(1986), p. 19, quoting the chairwoman of the Tenants' Association describing her arrival on the estate as a tenant in 1980. C.D.P., p. 28. The means of funding the vast building programmes of the 1950s and 1960s had in part depended on local authority long-term borrowings. As rates rose with inflation in the early 1970s, the burden of interest doubled and doubled again for many. Power (1997), p. 199. Extra resources were put into the estate but because these were not distinguished from overall housing spending, exactly what the overall cost of resuscitating the estate could not be quantified. The visit by the Princess of Wales to the estate to open a nursery, in February, 1985, for instance, brought a good deal of positive coverage of the estate. Evidence of this is amply supplied throughout Lord Gifford's report. Gifford Citation(1986), p. 41. Wood Green High Road had suffered a minor riot in the summer of 1981. An inaccuracy, repeated in a number of sources, is that the police were looking for Mrs Jarrett's son. In fact Floyd Jarrett was in custody at the time, arrested on suspicion of car theft. Gifford Citation(1986), p. 92, quoting Chief Superintendent Couch. Gifford Citation(1986), p. 103, 'they would have almost certainly have been killed', claimed Deputy Assistant Commissioner Richards. Gifford Citation(1986), p. 100, quoting Stafford Scott, a member of the Youth Association. Gifford Citation(1986), p. 104: eyewitness interview. The official police report stated that barricades were put up before the police arrived, but all the eyewitness statements taken by the Gifford Inquiry, including those from council officials and a journalist from New Society, accord with the account given here. Gifford Citation(1986), p. 105. Gifford Citation(1986), pp. 142–147. Extraordinary numbers of police were involved, between 1,000 and 3,700 extra officers were employed in Tottenham until mid-December. Daily Mail, 8th October, 1985, Living in Fear. Gifford Citation(1986), p. 127. Power (1997), p. 205. Architects' Journal, October 16th, 1985, p. 49. Unlike the RIBA, which defended the design of Broadwater Farm and resolutely placed the blame on first, the lack of maintenance and secondly, the concentration of poor families on the estate. Power (1997), p. 208. Gifford Citation(1986), p. 32; Power (1997), p. 206. Power (1994), p.215. Power (1994), p 293. 'People who lived on the estates frequently had a far less negative image of the estates than the outside world'. Wright, Thomas Citation(1868). Newman (1971), pp. 19, 20, 46, 223. 'The overwhelming majority of lower-class people hold middle-class goals and aspirations which are dear to them.' Newman (1971), p. 18. 'Co-op City works now because it is far from the site of crime. But how long before the project is recognised as vulnerable—before the criminal extends his range and mobility?' 'The "Homes" of the London Poor', The Builder, Volume XLI (November 26th, 1881), p. 662. The revolutions of 1848, the 1857 Indian 'Mutiny', the Paris Commune 1871, the West End riots of 1886, when the red flag flew in Trafalgar Square, spring to mind. Perhaps the best-documented example comes from the twentieth century and the 1919 Addison Act, when Lloyd George gained the support of Austin Chamberlain, the Chancellor of the Exchequer, for the generous subsidies of the Act by presenting the threat of some sort of syndicalist coup. Swenarton Citation(1981). Gifford Citation(1986). Archive Hour: High Society Citation(2006), BBC Radio 4. The recollection comes from Liverpool and the council's programme of tower block demolition. Hanley, L. Citation(2007), p.128.