Bristol homes still an inspiration
As the original people's poet gushes about the glories of the South West for the BBC West of England Light Programme, surprisingly, he has a council estate in mind.
"I drove for a last time, before speaking tonight, around my favourite parts of Bristol with a friend," he says. "Bristol was looking at its best. Sunset behind the Avon Gorge and the new Sea Mills estate, with a surprising beauty showing off in the evening sunlight. And vistas of trees and fields and pleasant cottages that the magic estate has managed to create..."
Move on 70 years, and the sunlight is still reflecting off the white rendered faces of the estate's concrete houses as they step down the hillside towards the gorge.
They may not look quite as shiny and new as the houses which Betjeman marvelled at, and most people may drive past without giving the council estate a second glance these days. But there is something special about the Sea Mills Garden Suburb.
The streets radiate out from a central square, ordered and uniformed, like a half-forgotten dream of the kind of suburban utopia that excited town planners and architects into sleepless nights between the wars.
It is difficult to imagine how revolutionary this little planned piece of paradise once seemed, when council tenants were first brought out of Bristol's city tenements, crowded courtyards and slum terraced streets. Overnight, they found themselves living in homes with large gardens and village-style greens.
In recent years it has seemed like the glories of council housing have been forgotten – 'council estate' has become a byword in the national lexicon for deprived areas – places of crime and degeneration. In short, our council estates have become something of which to be ashamed.
But this week Bristol City Council unveiled plans to build the city's first new council housing for more than a generation.
The Government is giving more than £3 million to the city council to build 46 homes on 11 brownfield sites in Lawrence Weston, Brentry and Sea Mills.
Work must start before March next year and the new homes are expected to be ready for new tenants by next autumn.
New council homes being built in Sea Mills is particularly interesting, as this was the site of Bristol's first major council estate in 1920, and the Sea Mills Garden Suburb was a real success story – with generations of residents as well as John Betjeman's warm words.
After the initial flush of success with Sea Mills Garden Suburb, the city undertook a flourish of council house building through the 1950s and 60s, which brought us the great sprawling suburbs of Hartcliffe and Withywood – developments that soon became the subject of criticism for being soulless; for failing to achieve the village community atmosphere of Sea Mills.
The story of the council estates began in the trenches of World War I. After the horrors of the war, there was a growing shift in public opinion. People felt the surviving heroes should not have to return home to the slums they had left behind four years earlier.
Aware of the great social upheavals caused by a disgruntled working class in Russia in 1917, the powers-that-be realised something dramatic had to be achieved if Britain was to avoid a similar revolution.
In 1919 the government of the day passed a housing subsidy act to encourage local authorities to clear slums and build new council housing estates. Further acts of parliament followed in 1923, 1924, 1930, 1933 and 1935 and these were to transform much of Bristol – especially southern Bristol, where great swathes of new suburbs would be created.
In 1919, the housing shortage in the city was estimated at 8,000. A committee was set up, which initially considered five 'village suburbs' – in Bedminster, Fishponds, Horfield, Westbury and St George, but in the end, it decided to construct just 5,000 estate homes.
Work soon began on four new estates, which covered 700 acres in total across the city – Hillfields at Fishponds, Knowle West, Shirehampton and Sea Mills.
Current Sea Mills resident, John Roberts, says the estate was a utopian vision back in the 1920s, and has aged remarkably well.
"I can remember the first time I walked through the suburb, being struck by the wonderful sense of openness and space," he says. "Everything was carefully designed to enhance the lives of the residents.
"Take a look," he adds, pointing down the street. "Look at the spaces they kept between the properties, so everyone could enjoy a view up to the woodland to the north.
"They produced what they called 'street pictures' – everything was designed to create a special vista. They painted suburbia in their plans like artists painting scenes. They made use of what they called 'visual stops' – natural outlines on the horizon or the trees on the brow of the hill, which would act as a focal point to the end of each street.
"The houses themselves were based on a pared-down Georgian cottage style – which became known as Stripped Georgian. Although the houses are quite plain, they have some nice details, such as the Georgian-style door surround.
"All the facilities the community could need were planned into the suburb – rows of shops, a library and even blocks of allotments between some of the streets. It's remarkable what they created here."
Further estates at Bedminster and Knowle went up between 1920 and 1939. Horfield was started in 1925 and Southmead in 1931.
For many families, the idea of moving into three-bedroom houses, with running water, a boiler, a bath and a gas cooker – was pure luxury.
About three-quarters of all the council houses and flats built in the city up to the outbreak of World War II, were for general housing need rather than slum clearance. But later, new houses, centred on Filwood Park and Southmead, were built for tenants whose home had been deemed unfit for habitation.
Most of the houses on the estates were parlour-type, with two rooms downstairs. A survey carried out in the 1940s described the houses built in Bristol South: "All the council houses included a bathroom and WC either upstairs or downstairs (the latter is generally preferred by large families), a larder and a coal shed, as well as a scullery for cooking and washing.
"The living room, which is fairly large in non-parlour houses, has to be used as a nursery, as well as for eating and sitting."
But by 1935 the reputation of Knowle West had already become so poor, that families had started refusing to move into the area.
To try to combat the descending deprivation, the council initiated the city's first "regeneration" project – with plans drawn up for a municipal social centre and for a new street that was meant to act like a traditional village High Street.
The result, Filwood Broadway, was designed to contain local shops and a cinema.
After the war ambitious new estates began to appear at Lawrence Weston, Hartcliffe, Withywood and Stockwood.
These were super-estates, as large as many whole towns, and built with sufficient shops, schools and churches to be almost self-contained.
The council maintained an active and often substantial programme of council house building up to 1980, with the number of council houses peaking at 47,000 in 1981.
But with the shift away from social housing under Margaret Thatcher's Conservative government, and with the influx of the "right to buy" schemes that allow tenants to purchase their council homes, the stock has gradually declined – it was down to 29,325 by 2005.
By the 1980s, a new view was also beginning to emerge that councils should be enablers, not providers, of new council homes.
It meant that affordable homes for people on benefit or low incomes would now be provided more and more by housing associations which were controlled and funded much more strictly by central government.
Bristol City Council today manages around 28,600 properties – made up of 60 per cent flats and 40 per cent houses. A total of 14,322 people are currently on the council housing waiting list, many of whom have been waiting years for a home of their own.
But with a new wave of building now planned, perhaps a new chapter is about to begin in the story of council housing in the city?
Comment on this story