Municipal Dreams
Social historian of housing. Author of 'A History of Council Housing in 100 Estates' (RIBA Books) and 'Municipal Dreams: the Rise and Fall of Council Housing' (Verso). I blog at https://municipaldreams.wordpress.com/.
- Not *that* view sadly (taken 2021) but still a lovely sight of trees next to Hadrian's Wall.
- Coronation Park, Haltwhistle, Northumberland, created 1953. It's a modest addition to the public realm but a proper bit of local individual and community 'place making' as the plaque makes clear.
- Haltwhistle Rural District Council's small but useful contribution to public convenience celebrates its centenary this year - and it's still open.
- 1/ Hemel Hempstead Water Gardens, 1957-9, designed by Geoffrey Jellicoe as part of the new town development he master-planned. Grade II-listed as 'an increasingly rare and largely intact example of a town centre water garden, created during the era of post-war renewal and new town developments'
- 1/ Public art in Hemel Hempstead. Mosaic Map commissioned by the Development Corporation and placed on what is allegedly the first multi-storey car park in the UK, 1960. Designed by Rowland Emett and painted by Phyllis Butler of Carter Tiles Ltd.
- A day trip to Hemel Hempstead
- ‘A craggy cliff … that projects and recedes, rises and falls, as it winds alongside Vauxhall Bridge Road’ (Rowan Moore). My post on Westminster's low-rise high-density Lillington Gardens Estate that broke with 60s' high-rise rush to build. municipaldreams.substack.com/p/the-lillin...
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- HT @glosbio.bsky.social. And the link below - pdf - explains the origins and survival of Bedfordshire County Council's scheme of 138 village signs to celebrate the 1951 Festival of Britain ... www.bedfordshire-lha.org.uk/wp-content/u...
- 🚨 New on Substack: The Lillington Gardens Estate, Westminster: ‘civilizing, elegant and exciting’ open.substack.com/pub/municipa...
- As we commemorate VE Day, we should remember the hopes and expectations of servicemen and women for a better, fairer country to emerge from the destruction of war. This is a poster created by and for British prisoners of war in the German prison camp, Stalag Luft III.
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- Towerhill, Gomshall: early post-Second World War council housing built by Guildford Rural District Council
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- Old Fire Station, Shere, Surrey; built for the Shere and Albury Voluntary Fire Brigade in 1885. For more info and some film of the brigade in action in 1899, click on the link. www.sheredelight.com/fiire.html
- Pathfields, Shere, Surrey: council housing built by Guildford Rural District Council - the first built under the 1919 Housing Act, the last completed in the 1930s.
- For @grindrod.bsky.social (who's just visited Padbury) and for my own self-indulgence, a photo - undated - of my grandfather Fred holding the banner of the Padbury Sick Benefit Society,
- This week's new Substack post: Hornsey Town Hall, Crouch End: ‘the quintessential English modern public building of the decade’ municipaldreams.substack.com/p/hornsey-to...
- Given that Runcorn is in the news, here's the story of Runcorn New Town ... born in more hopeful times: municipaldreams.wordpress.com/2024/07/02/r...
- Happy May Day! Bermondsey Metropolitan Borough Council took it seriously as this float in a 1930s May Day parade shows but then the new health centre and free dentistry made a real difference to working-class lives.
- 🚨'Space Syntax: Selected Papers by Bill Hillier' now available open access. Includes papers on architecture as a professional and research discipline through to later papers presenting a theory of the spatial structure of the city and its social functions. uclpress.co.uk/book/space-s...
- 🚨 New on Substack: Hornsey Town Hall, Crouch End - ‘the quintessential English modern public building of the decade’ municipaldreams.substack.com/p/hornsey-to...
- Not too many posts recently as we've been walking the magnificent North Downs Way between Guildford and Dorking. Who knew Surrey was quite so beautiful?
