from The Listener, January 1968, broadcast on the BBC Home Service.
An Experiment in Housing by Michael Bailey
In a field alongside the main railway line, just north of Hatfield in Hertfordshire, a group of sand coloured buildings has been rising slowly from the ground during the past few months. Passers-by have been visibly intrigued. Sliding past in the train I have seen people screw-round for a better glimpse and ask 'what on earth are they?.'
As time went by, I hope it became obvious. But just in case we put up a large hoarding a few weeks ago: 28 award-winning houses for the Cockaigne Housing Group with landscape gardens, tennis court and a day nursery. People had good reason to be puzzled because these houses are unusual - deliberately so. We are a co-operative housing society, and when we embarked this venture four years ago, one of the objectives was to try to create a new initiative in house design. We wanted to forget existing house types with all the prejudices built into them, and try to work afresh the real needs of the family today and type of structure that would answer them. Our requirements were simple: privacy, space, warmth, ease of running, economy in construction and good quality materials and fittings. It was to be a group large enough for a variety of sizes from four-bedroom family houses to one bedroom for single people and to support a number of common amenities we had in mind. But it was to be small enough for the householders to know each other and run the shared property in a neighbourly spirit.
Looking back on them we seem to be achieving our objectives pretty well, the Hatfield scheme is just about the right size. The largest house, a long narrow low terrace dwelling, has three courtyards. One at the front. One at the back and one in the middle. It has four bedrooms, two bath rooms, a well equipped kitchen, full central heating and an abundance of large built-in cupboards. Internal finishes are in clear beech or pine and white painted walls and there are plenty of full length windows and roof lights to let in the sun. The internal layout gives tremendous flexibility so that by means of sliding doors and partitions it can be used as a five bedroom house or an extremely luxurious two bedroom house with nursery and study. The front half can be opened up to give one continuous enclosed space for day time use where the children can be overlooked by the mother from the kitchen and the rear part can be opened up for entertaining. The price is about £7000. The other houses are the same, but smaller and cheaper.
There will be landscaped gardens all round the houses, a tennis court and a common building which will include two large rooms for a day nursery and evening activities and a self contained flat for a trained play-leader or one or two au pair girls or simply for guests. The cost is included in the price of the houses. Next year we shall probably add a paddling pool and a sandpit and later perhaps a small open air swimming pool and a hobbies room for small children. Looking farther ahead, householders might decide to have such things as a mini bus for taking children to school or a weekend cottage on the coast or a sailing boat. Once the group is a going concern, the possibilities are limited only be the members wishes and pockets. Not that a scheme like this should be seen as a way to spend money. In many cases the reverse is true, for example it will not be necessary as so often happens on new housing estates to buy twenty eight lawn mowers, twenty eight television aerials and so on. And if one is to indulge in the luxury of a private pool, it helps to have twenty-right families to share the cost.
The society was formed about four years ago, and most of the members were gathered by putting an advertisement in the personal column of a daily newspaper. We still have not moved in. From which you will deduce that carrying out a £150,000 property development in ones spare time with no organisation and no experience can bean arduous and long drawn out process. And so it has been - though a rewarding one. When we first started we found ourselves in a predicament that has been familiar to most new housing societies - until recently. We had no money and we had no land and without land we could not raise money. Many a weary mile our members trudged in search of a site while the committee looked for money. We wrote to every local authority in the greater London area. They were very polite but preoccupied with their own housing lists. We tried the building societies. They were polite too - but we must understand that in the event of their financing use there must be no new fangled ideas. The houses must be traditional semi-detached houses built of tile and brick. We flirted with one for two City gents and developers, but mutual incompatibility was evident on both sides. We wrote to another big batch of local authorities farther out and this time our luck turned. Hatfield Development Corporation liked the look of us and our ideas enough to take a chance and back us before their board in an application for land. We would pay the market price, but we need not make a down-payment straight away. Thanks to this offer two other officials - the Clerk and the Treasurer of rural District Council - decided to back us before their council for cash.
This was before the Ministry of Housing began to draw attention of local authorities to the virtues of housing societies and indeed at that time I suspect some of them had only the haziest idea of what housing societies were. Our scheme got off the ground, basically because these four officials decided to take a chance on us, though they had neither obligation nor incentive to do so, I can not pay them too high a tribute. It is a paradox that while private industry thrives on calculated risk, public service discourages it. The pressure on a public servant is to conform not to stick his neck out. This must be wrong for public service cries out for courage and imagination, never more so than now in this particular field: the reconstruction of homes, towns and cities in a motorised and densely populated island.
Then we wanted an architect. Have you ever tried to find a good architect, someone youngish and unknown and bursting for a chance to show his talents? In our missionary fervour one of the things we wanted to do was rescue the architect from the toils of callous developers and dull local councils. We wanted to point the way to a new source of patronage: groups of homes for private people taking the place of the almost extinct individual private patron. But how do you find your architect? You can write to RIBA and they will send you a short list of architects who have done the kind of scheme you have in mind. Just the kind of people we did not want, however worthy they might be! You can write to someone whose work appeals to you in some illustrated publication - to find, no doubt, that he has already discovered the crock of gold and is up to his ears in work. As a result of the chance encounter we eventually got plugged into the network we were looking for and a young architect employed in the L.C.C agreed to set up a practice on the strength of our job with a number of friends willing to act as associates. We took a chance by not going to an established firm with a large organisation and we have not regretted it.
Then we wanted a builder. Certain features of our scheme - notably the extensive use of timber joinery - made some builders more suitable than others and over a period of months our architects and quantity surveyors sifted out a short list of five firms about the right size and with the right sort of experience. Their records were examined; their work in progress on other sites was inspected; their financial stability was assured by a firm to whom we paid a fee for making the investigation.
Imagine our dismay therefore when, after about three months of passable performance signs of disorganisation and delay suddenly began to appear. Then, just before Christmas last year, we learned they were going bankrupt. The job came to a halt, with half built foundations exposed to the wintry weather. We attended a creditors meeting and discovered the firms assets were about £15,000 and its liabilities were at least £180,000. This was before we put in our claim - from which we have had nothing. This episode cost our members about £10,000 and several months delay. But we did have one stroke of luck, one of the original tenderers was interested in taking our job over , which saved us from starting from scratch again. They have got on with the job with, as far as i can tell, a competence and honest of purpose that are probably above average in this industry.
We have had some more ups and downs since, but we are moving into the home straight now with our fingers firmly crossed - the first houses should be ready next month. So it will not be long before we old timers retire from the fray and settle down to our jobs and recreations (unless, that is, we stumble on a choice and challenging site close to London). We hope that our effort will attract some attention and perhaps encourage others to try their hand.