Today’s picture, taken from the internet, shows a short section of a street in Hampstead Garden Suburb.
Raymond Unwin (1863-1940) was, arguably, more committed to the ideal of improving working class housing that Barry Parker (s.p.b.). ‘The partners preferred the simple vernacular style and made it their aim to improve housing standards for the working classes’, in 1901 they were joint authors of an influential book ‘The Art of Building a Home’ which reflected their commitment to the Arts and Crafts Movement.
Unwin was appointed chief architect to the newly created Ministry of Health in 1919.
The vision of Raymond Unwin and Barry Parker has influenced areas of new housing and house design through the 20th century although in a very muted fashion often and almost obliterated by ‘new age’ building in the 1960s and’70s. Their influence filtered down in ideas such as;
modest homes should incorporate no underused space (i.e. the working class snobbery of the ‘front room’ aping the middle class ‘drawing, withdrawing, room’), housing areas should be as green as possible with public areas of grass to diversify street frontages, tree-lined streets, domestic utilities should be built into the house design (not consigned to outbuildings) and diversity of estate lay-out plans.
I imagine Parker and Unwin assumed that householders would take pride in their front gardens, this in turn adding to the diversity of the area and its greenery, how saddened they would have been by today’s hard surfacing of ever bit of ground, or the sheer volume of neglect. Perhaps it makes sense, then, for modern housing having minimal garden space despite costing the Earth to afford.
The best place in Hull to see Parker and Unwin’s ideas put into practice is the Garden Village area of east Hull, how much more interesting to walk around than new estates where the only activity is to compare the cars in the front gardens.