In recent years media attention to mark the centenary of the First World War has encouraged many amenity groups and heritage societies across Scotland to re-examine the history of this period including developments in housing. In the face of widespread demand for the provision of “homes fit for heroes”, new legislation was introduced in 1919 to promote the construction of well-designed cottages for working class families by local authorities and voluntary sector bodies. Although the total number of dwellings produced was disappointing, the standards achieved for the best of the 1919 Act developments were genuinely impressive and strongly influenced by design principles favoured by the Garden City Movement. The Greater Renfrewshire area provided key opportunities for the introduction of garden city cottage accommodation in Scotland, especially during the years from 1908 to 1918.
Scotland’s Homes Fit for Heroes by Lou Rosenburg (The Word Bank, 2016) provides an overview of the relevant housing experience in Scottish rural and urban locations. Within the Greater Renfrewshire area, local interest in garden city housing was stimulated by a lecture tour undertaken in 1908 by Ebenezer Howard, the founder of the garden city movement. Howard’s Scottish lecture tour included public meetings in Paisley, Port Glasgow and Greenock. The main purpose of the meetings was to raise awareness of the general progress that was being made in the development of Letchworth, England’s first garden city, and in the provision of desirable areas of cottage housing for working class residents based on a form of tenure known as co-partnership (which aimed to combine some of the advantages of renting and owner-occupation).
During the previous year, the Admiralty had decided to build a new Clyde Torpedo Factory on a site that straddled the boundary between Greenock and Gourock. This facility required a civilian workforce of 700 employees, mainly to be provided through the transfer of skilled personnel from the Royal Arsenal at Woolwich in South London. Consultations with the workers in question revealed that many were reluctant to live in traditional Scottish tenements. The Admiralty, however, was not prepared to take direct responsibility for providing the necessary housing.
Before the new torpedo factory was fully operational, the Admiralty tried without success to encourage various commercial interests to provide the desired form of cottage accommodation. When these efforts failed to produce a response, the Admiralty began to explore whether voluntary bodies called “public utility societies” might be able to make a contribution. In the event, three cottage developments were sponsored by newly formed co-partnership societies in the general vicinity of Greenock and Gourock prior to the outbreak of WW1.
The largest of these developments was undertaken in Gourock at Cove Farm about a half mile to the west of the Clyde Torpedo Factory. The Cove Farm site was acquired Major Duncan Darroch in 1911, and by 1913 about 60 cottages had been completed in Caledonia Crescent and Manor Crescent. Also, at Gourock, in Reservoir Road, a smaller terrace of 12 cottages was developed by a group of torpedo factory workers who had attended Ebenezer Howard’s Port Glasgow lecture and been introduced to the basic principles of co-partnership housing. The third development was a short terrace of two-storey cottages built on the east side of Greenock in Bridgend Road. A sizeable parcel of land was provided at a favourable price by Sir Hugh Shaw Stewart, but the site proved to be too distant from the torpedo factory and the scheme was never expanded.
Before the advent of wartime conditions, two additional voluntary sector developments were completed in the Greater Renfrewshire area which were not intended for incoming civilian defence workers. To the south of Paisley town centre, the firm of Brown & Polson promoted a public utility society to provide housing for their local workforce. This body managed to produce a distinctive development of 48 four-in-a-block cottage flats in Falside Road. These properties were designed in an Arts and Crafts manner by T. Graham Alexander in 1911 and completed in 1913. Within the Burgh of Renfrew, the local authority decided to support a co-partnership development by Renfrew Garden Suburb Tenants Ltd. in order to relieve the growing scarcity of working-class housing. A 5-acre site to the east of Paisley Road was made available for the purpose. As many as 70 units of cottage accommodation were constructed in Newmains Road and Beechwood Drive, and initially occupied during the first six months of 1914.
During the war, housing market pressures persisted in the Greater Renfrewshire area despite the recent initiatives of public utility societies. The Local Government Board for Scotland continued to monitor the availability of accommodation for incoming workers and came to the view that further action was required. At the start of 1916, Greenock Town Council was persuaded to build a cottage development of 102 units at Craigieknowes, to the east of the town centre, in order to increase the supply of available accommodation for civilian employees of the Admiralty. Later in the year, the Board decided to build a “model housing scheme” of 98 units in Gourock on a 9-acre site in Reservoir Road with dramatic views across the Firth of Clyde. Given the sloping character of the land, the streets leading off Reservoir Road were designed to follow the natural contours of the site and the positioning of the houses was intended to demonstrate the potential advantages of open planning. This development was one of three model schemes built by the Local Government Board for Scotland during the course of the war, which were consciously intended to set standards for local authority provision once peace was restored. The other developments were located in Lanarkshire at Cambuslang and in East Ayrshire at Glangarnock.
With the passage of the Housing, Town Planning, Etc (Scotland) Act of 1919, local authorities were given a statutory duty to ensure that housing needs in their respective areas were being met. There was a distinct emphasis on the direct provision of low-density cottages for families, strongly influenced by garden city design concepts. Across the whole of Scotland, more than 300 separate developments of “homes fit for heroes” were approved for construction by local authorities under the 1919 Act, before the legislation was officially withdrawn in 1921. At least 15 of the total number of developments were in Greater Renfrewshire. Virtually all of this housing has remained popular and well-maintained for nearly a century. Although it is difficult to single out any specific development as an outstanding example of “homes fit for heroes”, the Victory Gardens area of Renfrew was regarded as broadly representative of the response in this part of Scotland.
Copies of Scotland’s Homes Fit for Heroes are on sale here.
