Funky Bird Nesting Boxes
Old School Gardener
Wistman’s Wood – Dartmoor, Devon, England; via Nature is Awesome
Old School Gardener
The Mackworth Estate in Derby is a good example of the more ambitious of the new suburban council estates built after World War Two. Its story – from founding vision to flawed fulfilment – tells us much about the evolution of social housing in the last seventy years.
Henley Green
Derby, an industrial town with a proud railway and engineering heritage, had a strong tradition of council house construction. The Borough Council had announced plans for 1000 council homes in 1919 – the first 16 completed were in Victory Road, more followed in Stenson Road. In the 1930s, new housing estates were developed beyond the city centre in Chaddesden, Sinfin and Old Normanton. By 1940, the Council had built over 7000 homes. (1)
Derby’s earliest council housing on Victory Road
Labour won control of the council in 1928 and regained power in 1934. It would retain control until boundary changes in 1968. …
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Glendurgan- The Maze, Cornwall via National Trust
This event is taking place at Pensthorpe Wildlife Park, near Fakenham, Norfolk
Some of the wonderful planting at Queen’s Lower School for girls, Chester
Old School Gardener
You don’t generally look to Richmond upon Thames for political radicalism and pioneering social reform. But look again – at a street of modest Victorian terraced housing: Manor Grove in North Sheen. This was the first council housing in London. It was built through the efforts of Richmond’s very own ‘People’s Champion’, William Thompson.
Of course back then Richmond was in Surrey and it had been created a municipal borough only in 1890. That, it turned out, was an auspicious year: a young Liberal schoolmaster, William Thompson, was elected to the local council and, nationally, the Housing of the Working Classes Act was passed which allowed local councils not only to clear areas of slum housing but to build new, municipal, housing where necessary.
Then, as now, Richmond was a relatively affluent area but it too had areas of poverty and slum housing. Existing housing supply was, in Thompson’s words…
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