The Local Historian Volume 45 Number 2 April 2015

By Alan Crosby

This issue of The Local Historian, by accident rather than design, has three articles about housing in the late nineteenth and twentieth centuries, two of them looking—though from very different perspectives—at the history of council housing and council estates. During the past few years housing has become a popular subject for local history investigation. Since 2001 in the journal there have been a number of important articles on the subject, most of them looking at the origins, character and significance of local authority provision, a perspective which has perhaps been prompted by a sense that such housing is now quite firmly in the past and a historical approach is therefore appropriate. While needs has not disappeared—far from it—the dynamic phase of major programmes of development and construction, which began in the last decades of the nineteenth century and became a dominant theme in housing provision after 1918, in effect came to an end with the election of Margaret Thatcher’s first government in 1979. It passed, often unjustly discredited, into history.

Housing is a popular subject not only because of its obvious and fundamental importance to all of us, and the no less obvious fact that it is all around us, but also because it has generated a wealth of documentary and printed material for more than past two hundred years. From the early reports and descriptions produced by pioneering social reformers in the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries, via the powerful and often pitiful accounts of the housing conditions of the poor which appear in mid-Victorian work on sanitary improvement, to the building plans, council minutes and political manifestos of the twentieth century, there is a remarkable range and diversity of material upon which to draw.

In this issue Janet Dunleavey looks at the factors which shaped the local implementation of national policies in post-1918 Worcestershire, showing how the endless tweaking with the financial base of local authority house-building was a crucial element. Andrew Jackson takes a perspective across the whole span of public house-building in Lincoln, during the sea changes of the twentieth century, and places the experience in the context both of public history and of heritage, a notion which would have astonished observers even thirty years ago but now seems perfectly reasonable and unremarkable. In 1961 a seminal study was published: James Dyos’s Victorian Suburb: a study of the growth of Camberwell, for the first time placed middle-class housing firmly on the agenda as a worthy object for study. So long despised by those who on the one hand studied the fine housing of the elite, and on the other by those who researched the miserable hovels of the poor, middle-class suburban housing of the sort inhabited by the Pooters and their ilk was revealed as a fascinating aspect of urban, social and architectural history. Twelve years later came another fine book, unashamedly popular but quite engrossing. Alan Jackson’s Semi-detached London: suburban development, life and transport 1900-39 was the historical study which complemented Betjeman’s Metroland verse, and legitimised the historical investigation of the Tolworths and Edgwares, the Raynes Parks and the Ilfords of the south-east. I devoured it when it was published and I thoroughly enjoy it over forty years later. In this issue Christopher French turns his attention to that most archetypal of suburbs, Surbiton, taking a period which overlaps the respective work of Dyos and Jackson and demonstrates how there is still plenty of scope for careful analysis of the built environment of the middle class a century or so ago.

But despite these richly rewarding studies, one comment which I heard recently suggested that much of what is written about housing (not in this journal, I think, but more widely) lacks a human dimension—in other words, that it focuses especially or even exclusively on the architectural and planning aspects and, because it relies heavily on local and central government sources, it almost inevitably tends to acquire an ‘official’ flavour. This view, which might of course be challenged, could be echoed in other areas of historical study. How much of what is written on education history reflects the reality of the day to day experience of school, and how much is about structures and organisations, government policies and reports? A common criticism of transport history is that it focuses too much on infrastructure and machinery, parliamentary processes and chronologies of opening and closure, and pays far too little attention to the traffic which used roads, canals and railways and to the social and cultural impact of transport change and development.

More widely, we are often reminded of the need for historical objectivity and detachment, those worthy goals often aspired to in principle and so hard to achieve in reality. Take a balanced view, look at both sides of the argument, draw upon sources which take contrasting perspectives, and thereby achieve that disinterested quality which is deemed so essential ... there is nothing wrong with that, of course, but one unfortunate consequence is that the writing itself may become flat and dull, lacking sparkle and vigour. The arguments have less simple clarity, the descriptions are blurred, and (crucially) our enjoyment as readers is potentially diminished. Writing which seeks to be entirely dispassionate can also become dehumanised and mechanical. Sometimes that is unavoidable—especially if the subject matter also allows or requires the extensive use of statistics—but there is a place, and an important place at that, for historical writing with a human dimension. That does not mean fiction or fantasy, but rather a recognition that history is ultimately about people. 

Rereading Alan Jackson’s Semi-detached London recently, I was aware that among its most attractive features is the intermingling of carefully-researched historical detail and the overarching ‘big issues’ of transport development, speculative building and media marketing, with the general and unspecific human stories and the perspectives of commuters and clerks. The desire for suburban comfort and social aspiration is recounted with sympathy and humour. After all, this was the author’s own experience, so there was an instinctive understanding of the nuances and social gradings of suburban living:

‘A piano was almost essential for those who wished to climb the social ladder. Even the poorest families, if they had some ambition, would scrimp and save to amass the necessary £20 or so—hence the contemptuous description of the working-class Conservative: ‘Pride, Poverty and A Piano’ ... Sunday would see the [Edwardian] suburban family dressing in their best clothes, mother in her tightest corsets, the children prickly, stiff and uncomfortable in starched frocks, blue serge and stiff collars. Thus attired, they would process to church, morning and evening, but usually without mother in the morning unless there were servants. In between, they would visit the local parks to admire the floral displays and study the dress and manners of their neighbours. Competition for the best seats on the main promenade was keen. An alternative diversion was a visit to the cemetery, where the graves of close relatives were bedecked with fresh flowers. By no means all the deceased were elderly; many families had lost youngsters to diphtheria, scarlet fever or tuberculosis’.    

Alan Crosby

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By Alan Crosby

Alan Crosby, ‘Zen and the art of local history: reviewing some transatlantic perspectives’, 92-96

This article reviews a recent publication, Zen and the art of local history, edited by Carol Kammen and Bob Beatty, which appeared in the United States in 2014. The book is a major contribution to the theory and practice of local history, not only in America but more generally, and its lead author, Carol Kammen, is one of the most prominent voices in promoting and analysing local history in the United States. This review essay looks at different aspects of her book, showing how he common sense and down to earth approach which she adopts, and the eminently practical and sensible messages which she gives, deserve the attention of readers in Britain who want to know more about their subject and—importantly—want to understand how the subject works and their own part in it.

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By Janet Dunleavey

Janet Dunleavey, ‘Ideal and reality: the principles of the garden city movement and the first council houses in Worcestershire’, 97-114

This article assesses the building of council houses in Worcestershire in the years immediately after 1918, looking at the preliminary stages including pre-First World War plans and proposals, and government policies and the housing situation in the immediate aftermath of the war. Special attention is given to the design and planning of houses and the estates in which they stood. The article then focuses on the question of need, and the way that this was determined at the time, looking in particular at the widely differing estimates produced by the local authorities in Worcestershire. This is followed by discussion on the closely related question of finance, and the challenges faced by housing authorities, all of which had to work in the context of government policy and the detailed control which was exercised by government over all financial matters.

The second part of the article comprises four case studies of contrasting local authorities in the county. These are, respectively: the city of Worcester; Kidderminster municipal borough; Malvern urban district; and Martley rural district. Each case study considers the plans which were put forward, the location, design and layout of the housing, and the financial aspects, including the scaling back of plans which were over-ambitious or unaffordable. The conclusion discusses the problems which were faced by local authorities, and observes that the entry of the public sector into the housing market on a large scale was among the major political and social changes of the first half of the twentieth century. It gives an overview of the personnel involved in housing provision, and emphasises the often considerable contrast between the idealised aspirations of design manuals and the often impoverished architecture and plan which eventually emerged.

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By Andrew J H Jackson

Andrew J H Jackson, ‘The history and heritage of Lincoln’s council estates: local history and ‘critical’ public history in practice’, 115-125

This article considers council housing built during the twentieth century from the perspective of public history, heritage and townscape. It suggests that it is important to highlight the rationale for their construction, now that the ‘understanding of what brought them into being is fading’. The study looks at the city of Lincoln, where council housing provision was extensive and where a series of large and distinctive estates was built on the edges of the urban area between and after the wars. These estates have now been included in a sequence of detailed reports on Lincoln’s townscape and urban environment, bringing their character and identity to the fore. The article begins with an overview of the emergence of council housing in the period before the Second World War, and then discusses the Lincoln estates in turn: St Giles (an interwar development); the Boultham Estate (some interwar and substantial immediate post-war building); and Ermine, in two phases between 1952 and 1958.

In each case, the design features of the estate are explained, with particular attention to the townscape and the mix of styles and sizes of housing. Particular attention is given to the inclusion of commercial, civic, religious, educational and ‘landmark’ buildings which vary the generally low-key architecture of all three estates. The conclusion suggests that local history and public history have very closely shared aims and agendas, and that council housing as a subject of study opens up one of the key links between them.

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By Christopher French

Christopher French, ‘Housing the middle classes in late Victorian and Edwardian Surbiton’, 126-142

Christopher French has provided an analysis of middle-class housing in Surbiton, one of the archetypal residential commuter towns of the period 1870-1914, which provides a model for other potential case studies. It begins with a detailed assessment of the nature of suburban middle class housing in the period, including the social and cultural pressures which contributed to the flight to the suburbs by those able to afford the move, the lifestyle and the costs of travelling. The paper then considers the building process, introducing such themes as the land market and the significance of patterns of land ownership, and explains a methodology for defining areas of different social class by using the rateable value of properties as an indicator.

This source also allows valuable analysis of property ownership, and reveals the extent of the ‘ownership of houses which were let out for rent income’. Examples of this practice in Surbiton are given, and the family and business histories of some of the individuals concerned are traced using directories, census returns and ratebooks. The great diversity of this class of property-owner is emphasised—some had only one or two houses but the Gilford family, for instance, had 125. The analysis also considers the rents chargeable on these properties, and the social class of their owners. The houses themselves are then described, with advertisements, sale catalogues and the field books of the 1910 Finance Act surveys being used to demonstrate the scale, size and range of amenities provided in suburban residence of different categories. Appendices set out the methodology used in the rateable value exercise, and the potential for converting contemporary values to those of the present day.

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By Neil Robson

Neil Robson, ‘Fervent rejoicing and muted protest: London at the time of King George V’s Silver Jubilee’, 143-157

The Silver Jubilee in 1935 was an occasion for national celebration, and in this paper Neil Robson considers the ways in which London and Londoners marked the event, mostly by rejoicing but with some relatively quiet complaining and criticism. He begins by giving an overview of the circumstances of the jubilee in the context of wider international and national affairs, and then assesses the state of the capital in the middle of the 1930s against a background of economic uncertainties, booming employment in South East England, enduring poverty and conspicuous wealth. The next section is entitled ‘The marketing of King George’, and it considers the way in which the unprepossessing and simple monarch managed to capture the affection of the nation. This section discusses the plans put forward for the celebrations and the commemoration of the 25 years of the reign, and sets this against the background of Empire and its meaning to the nation. The preparations in London are described, as are the various forms of publicity given to the occasion. The article then describes and analyses the public and private rejoicing and the reaction of the crowds to the king and to the event, contrasting this with the comparatively few voices of criticism from individuals and organisations, including the generally enthusiastic response of the Labour-controlled boroughs of inner London. The article concludes with the intriguing question as to whether, by the 1930s, the development of mass national and international communication meant that the local history of such a celebration really existed.

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By Linda Crust

Rex Russell 1916–2014: an appreciation

Rex Russell, historian, friend, family man, lived his entire long and varied life with the constant ethics of his left-wing intellectual background. He was no bigot, no stick-in-the-mud—Rex viewed every aspect of human behaviour with a measured eye and (mostly) with benign tolerance.  He was a solid, kind, honest, generous man who inspired a huge following among Lincolnshire historians. Rex was an active member of the Society for Lincolnshire History and Archaeology for many years and members enjoyed his input in the form of organised outings, particularly to deserted medieval villages, talks and publications. It was a surprise to some members of the Lincolnshire Methodist History Society to learn that Rex, a founder member of the Society, was not a Christian.  He would not pretend to a faith he did not have but he saw in the history of Methodism a massive contribution to the progression of the working man towards education and equality, and regarded the opportunities offered by Methodism as a great enhancement of trust earned by the working populations of two centuries ago.   On my penultimate visit to Rex, when he was in a very weak state, I asked him, “Have you ever been to Tolpuddle?”  ‘No,’ he replied, and metaphorically reared up in the cot-bed where he lay, ‘but I certainly intend to’.  Then he sank back against the sheets looking like a sparse-framed, bearded medieval saint. If I had Rex’s artistic skills I might portray him in a heavenly setting in deeply interested conversation with those old Methodist farm labourers who were martyred for asking for the right to protest.

Rex was fond of telling people that he was born in a workhouse during a Zeppelin raid. This could have been misunderstood as meaning that he was born in poverty, but that was not the case—his parents were master and matron of Hackney Workhouse at the time of his birth. The Zeppelin raid dates his birth to another world beyond the memory of most people now alive. He could remember the vast complex of buildings that surrounded him in infancy and spoke of the workhouse bakery and butchery, the offices and the infirmary. As a child of five or six he moved to Yorkshire with his mother and three brothers as his father sought other employment. Holme on Spalding Moor became the background to Rex’s childhood. His great-grandfather had been head teacher of the village school there and the four clever little Russell boys all attended that school. Rex won a scholarship to a minor public school (Bancrofts, a Drapers’ Company school) which meant that he became a boarder and enlarged his horizons far from the village school. As a teenager he chose to be a commercial artist and trained for this work by winning an Essex County Scholarship to art school. Later, after the war, he gained a degree in history and education at Durham University and used his graphic skills to enhance his many history publications, particularly as a cartographer. He produced wonderfully drawn and lettered maps showing pre-enclosure and post-enclosure parishes. His book on headstones, illustrated by him in pen and ink, showed his skill at copying not only an image but also the feel of an age.

But earlier, before his teaching and publishing life began, the Second World War had broken out. In 1938 Rex married Eleanor (‘Froude’, as she was known). For a time they both worked on the land and that gave Rex the sympathy, which he always retained thereafter, for farm workers and their low pay. Rex joined the National Union of Farm Workers to show solidarity and fight for better pay.  He often addressed people as 'Brother' when teaching, as a term of respect. During the war he served in the Royal Navy but, after the forces and Durham, he found his true vocation in teaching. Rex’s teaching was never one-sided: he preferred dialogue and discussion. He prepared carefully and spoke clearly, and it was a delight to attend his classes. Most of all, he gave generous encouragement, with helpful suggestions and detailed information on sources. Many of his publications were a joint effort with students, and his students invariably wanted to do more work on the subject of local history which they were learning with enthusiasm from primary sources under his guidance. He published numerous articles and books on subjects such as enclosure; allotments; labourers’ movements, Methodism, friendly societies, water drinkers (tee-totallers ... which Rex was not); education in north Lincolnshire; cultural changes in Lincolnshire (from cock-fighting to chapel-building); homes of the poor; deserted medieval villages and the effect of the French Revolution on Lincolnshire. The books were published by the Workers’ Educational Association, to which organisation and the Extra-Mural Department of Hull University he gave a large part of his life. Hundreds of students benefited from his knowledge and enthusiasm and in 2010, when he was a resident in Nettleton Manor Care Home, he was honoured with an award made to him by British Association of Local History for his enormous contribution to local history as a tutor and writer.

Rex and Eleanor had two children, Kleta and Adrian, and spent most of their married life in Barton on Humber.  Kleta now lives in France and has two grown-up children, Mila and Rhéda. Adrian lives in Derbyshire and has two sons, Daniel and Ben. Eleanor, who worked with Rex on several digs when they were already middle-aged, died in 1989 but Rex, though by then an old man, continued to teach and write. In 1994 he surprised his friends by marrying Joan when he was nearly 80 years old. Joan Mostyn-Lewis was, like Rex, an artist and so began, late in life, another happy period. Rex became almost a technophobe. Modern gadgets were not for him. He never took to television and certainly had no wish to own a computer. But for a brief, giddy period in the twenty-first century, he did enjoy videos. He was introduced to the series on English history made by Simon Schama and for several successive weeks he and Joan would arrive by taxi (sometimes on the wrong day) and ask excitedly, “Can we watch that man on the machine again?”. Rex would lean forward in his chair, staring into Schama’s world entranced.

Fifteen years later age was inevitably taking its toll. Rex and Joan were no longer able to look after each other and first Joan and then Rex went into care homes for their last years, Joan to Wales where she was near her daughters Rose and Vanessa and Rex to Nettleton Manor. He died on 15 December 2014 of extreme old age. Farewell, dear riend.                                                                                                                                              

Linda Crust knew Rex for thirty five years as friend and as one of his students, so spent hundreds of hours in his company. She gained a BA (Hons) in Local History from Hull University and has both taught and written about history.  Rex was always willing to read another’s work and comment on it and, even though he had much more experience and knowledge, would welcome others doing the same thing for him.

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By Sarah Rose

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By Alan Crosby

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By Jonathan Healey

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By Michael Winstanley

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By Rosemary Horrox

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By David Hey

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By Neil Robson

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By Heather Falvey

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By Alan Crosby

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By Gerard Moran

COMPANION TO ROAD PASSENGER TRANSPORT HISTORY Public road passenger transport in Great Britain, Ireland, the Channel Islands and the Isle of Man edited by Corinne Mulley and Martin Higginson (Roads and Road Transport History Association 2013 667pp ISBN 978-0-9552876-3-3) £50 inc.p&p from MDS Books of Glossop www.mdsbooks.co.uk (£40 to members of the RRTHA)

This massive volume is intended as a complement to the Oxford Companion to British Railway History (edited by Jack Simmons and Gordon Biddle and published by Oxford University Press in 1997) and the Companion to the British Road Haulage Industry, produced by the Roads and road Transport History Association and published by the Science Museum in 2003. It provides a comprehensive introduction to the history and practice of road passenger transport, with guidance about sources and specific entries on an extraordinary range and variety of topics and subjects. As the editors note, the amount of material available is enormous, this having been a subject of great interest to historians and enthusiasts for many decades and of course it is a very important and enduring industry, but their work has demonstrated that nonetheless there is much that remains to be discovered or clarified—notably, they suggest, the personalities involved in the industry and their role and significance.

The book covers all facets of road passenger transport, throughout the British Isles. This includes not only what we would expect—buses, trolleybuses and trams—but also an eclectic variety of other modes of transport, such as taxis and rickshaws. The period covered is, with few exceptions, 1800 to 2000. Approaches to the subject are appropriately broad-ranging, including vehicles and technology, operators, services, legislation, regulation, customers, cultural dimensions and key individuals, and the often innovative and quirky inventiveness which characterised the industry in is first century is reflected in the range of technologies, from horse-power via steam, electricity and the internal combustion engine to cable haulage, compressed air and gas operation. The format is that of an encyclopaedia, arranged alphabetically and with each contribution attributed to its author. The entries vary greatly in length, from a single short paragraph to a couple of pages, and for each there is a short note of references and further reading, ensuring that the derivation of the information is clearly identified. This gives the book a justified air of authority and a value as a springboard for further investigation.

Among its special strengths is that passenger transport history is set firmly and definitely in its social, economic and political context. This is emphatically not (and I used this phrase deliberately though I know it is possibly patronising) a book aimed at those who collect bus numbers. It is a serious and academically sound synthesis of an immense variety of detail, and it is invaluable for anybody who wants to know more about this crucial dimension to everyday life in the past two centuries. Thus, opening it at random, I found an essay on the London bus strike of 1958, referenced by works on labour relations in the industry and material in the TGWU and Frank Cousins archives at the Modern Records Centre, Warwick University. Another random opening ... a brief article on Eastbourne, the first British municipality to operate its own bus service, developed from 1903 instead of the building of a tramway network.  The subsequent history of the undertaking is traced, ending with the baleful and perhaps inevitable words that ‘In 2008 the council company, weakened since 2006 by competition from Cavendish Motor Services Ltd., was sold to Stagecoach’. A third random opening revealed a neat, succinct and effective summary of the background and provisions of the Road Traffic Act 1930, one of the key pieces of legislation in the past hundred years, introduced to regulate a chaotic, wasteful and often unsafe industry, and in force until deregulation in 1985 reintroduced, in some areas at least, chaos and waste.

This book is a magnificent achievement. Local historians concerned with any aspect of road transport are sure to find it an authoritative and entirely reliable work of reference, and it should remind us that bus services, in particular, are still a woefully under-researched and under-appreciated aspect of the social and economic history of the twentieth century. Railways and to a lesser extent tramways have received plenty of attention, but there is much potential for researching and investigating the tremendous impact of the ‘country village to market town’ bus networks of the interwar period. The book is also, perhaps unexpectedly, very stimulating to read—dipping into its thousands of entries and its wealth of colour and black and white photographs prompts all sorts of thoughts about transport history and its links with the physical and social transformations of the twentieth century, the role of government in local affairs, and the regrettable loss of the local dimension as giant commercial concerns have swept aside the charms and idiosyncrasies of the bus services which some of us remember from our childhood. 

The price of the book may mean that only individuals with a special interest in the subject are likely to invest, but as a work of reference it is essential. It should certainly be on the shelves of every record office and local studies library.

                                                                                                                                               ALAN G. CROSBY

Alan Crosby is the editor of The Local Historian, a Council member of the Record Society of Lancashire and Cheshire and the Chetham Society, and has written extensively on landscape history and related themes including the relationship between landscape and human activity.

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