History

Introduction

• A brief history
• Historical development of the Suburb
• A Concise History
• Growth and Change
• Henrietta Barnett's planning vision
• Unwin's town planning
• Small scale planning
• Town Planning Act
• Central Square Architecture
• St. Jude's and the Free Church
• The Institute

Henrietta Barnett’s planning vision

Henrietta Barnett’s vision of the Garden Suburb was an architectural as well as a social one. She felt that through careful town planning she could make a better quality of life available to the industrial classes.

Henrietta felt strongly “that the estate be planned not piecemeal, but as a whole,” and so employed Unwin to set out a master plan for the whole suburb, along set design principles, similar to those already in effect in Letchworth Garden City, planned by Raymond Unwin.

• that persons of all classes of society and standards of income should be accommodated and that the handicapped be welcomed;
• that the cottages and houses should be limited on an average to eight to an acre;
• that the roads should be 40 feet wide, and that the fronts of the houses should be at least 50 feet apart, gardens occupying the intervening space;
• that the plot divisions should not be walls but hedges or trellis or wire fences;
• that every road should be lined with trees, making when possible, a colour scheme with the hedges;
• that the woods and public gardens should be free to all the tenants without regard to the amount of their ground rent, i.e., the best for all classes;
• that noise should be avoided, even to the prohibition of Church or Chapel or Institute bells;
• that lower ground rents should be charged in certain areas to enable weekly wage-earners to live on the Estate;
• that the houses be so planned that none should spoil each other's outlook or rob its neighbour of beauty.

As well as improving people’s lives through good design Henrietta Barnett wanted the top of the hill set aside for Churches and places of learning, a visual beacon, a social centre focused on personal improvement.

Provision for personal physical improvement was also considered, at the centre of each ‘block’ of houses, at the end of their gardens, Unwin designed a communal space. This was set out as allotments for the smaller houses, giving them some element of self sufficiency, and tennis courts for the wealthier residents.

This subtle social division is one example of Henrietta Barnett’s realistic pragmatism which made her egalitarianism practical.

The first plan drawn up by Unwin was annotated by Henrietta and shown to potential wealthy investors. Seventy acres were allotted for “the homes of the industrial classes”, five acres for the churches and institute, and eighty acres for the Heath. The remainder was allocated for ‘the richer houses’ and it was hoped that the contributions provided by these wealthy home owners would subsidise the rest of the suburb.

While Henrietta Barnett’s vision for the Suburb was one of leafy roads and playing fields, occupied by the disadvantaged, she was always practical enough to know the limits of this vision, but she was also determined enough to make her vision very powerful.