Just as the East Riding County Council’s Reconstruction Committee decided on an unusual response to the Addison Housing Act (s.p.b.s), so too did Skirlaugh Rural District Council. The former’s 1920 housing scheme resulted in the building of 12 houses for rural policemen (six as semis), 12 houses for teachers in village schools, two houses for roadmen, two for school attendance officers and one for a school cleaner. Just an aside – in the 1950s it was common to belittle the job of roadman, ‘if you don’t get on at school you’ll just end-up as a roadman’. In fact earlier in the century being a roadman had been a good job to get, this, I suppose, linking to the development of metalled roads and road classifications.
Skirlaugh’s response to the same act was to concentrate on the conversion of the building that had been the workhouse for South Holderness and to divide it into, initially, seven ‘cottages’ (the primary sources don’t make it clear whether these were two-storey units each with an external front door or what today we would call flats). However, this was a disappointing response for the region as a whole as Skirlaugh R.D.C.’s 1917 returns of housing needs had stated that 180 more working class homes were needed across south Holderness. Indeed, in 1921 the medical officer of health for the Skirlaugh R.D.C. stated that he could not declare houses ‘unfit for human occupation’ as there was a shortage of alternative affordable accommodation.
One area of controversy at local authority level was whether local ‘rates’ (predecessor of council tax) should be increased for all to pay for housing for the few. In fact Chamberlain’s Housing Act (s.p.b.s) stated that no local authority was to do this, thus putting a further break on progress.
Meanwhile another four ‘cottages’ were created in Skirlaugh at the ex-workhouse (more on this next time).