The £150 Cottage
Letchworth Garden City and the 1905 Cheap Cottage Exhibition
By the late 19th century the cost of building houses in rural areas was very high that it was no longer economical to build houses for agricultural labourers. Part of the problem was the restrictive ‘by-laws’ that allowed only expensive materials such as brick and stone to be used. Landowners would need to recuperate costs from their tenants through rents, but the cost would be higher than the average rural labourer could afford.
To try to change this Mr J. St Loe Strachey, editor of The Spectator and proprietor of The County Gentleman Land and Water magazine, started a campaign for the “£150 Cottage”. This concept would encourage the building of cheaper cottages that could be let to rural labourers for an affordable £8 per year. An exhibition was proposed where entrants could display examples of innovative cottages constructed from a variety of materials.
A quick note about this word ‘cheap’. It had different connotations 100 years ago and would not have sounded so derogatory to Edwardian ears. For example, in the catalogue description, 8-9 Eastholm were described thus: ‘the claim for this cottage is that it combines pleasing appearance with cheapness, comfort and light’. A modern day alternative might be ‘the affordable home’.
Letchworth Garden City offered to host the exhibition. The town was ideal for the exhibition organisers as the bureaucratic byelaws were not applicable in the Garden City. For Letchworth it would provide over 100 new houses and it would be a publicity boost for the town. By the end of September 1905, when the exhibition ended, it had attracted between 60,000 – 80,000 visitors. In 1905, Letchworth was a household name, with press coverage on the exhibition appearing in hundreds of national and local newspapers and magazines. A new temporary stop was created on the Great Northern Railway to accommodate the throng: Letchworth was literally put on the map.
The 8th Duke of Devonshire, who was a keen supporter of the cheap cottage idea, opened the exhibition on 25th July 1905. There were approximately 131 cottages in the exhibition. Amongst these were 5 temporary buildings, situated by the railway line at the west end of Nevells Road, that we believe were knocked down almost immediately after the exhibition closed.
Visitors began their Cheap Cottage exploration at Exhibition Road, now Nevells Road. Most would have joined the road via a pathway from the temporary station. Their first introduction to the exhibition was the group of wooden buildings known locally as The Sheds. These housed exhibition and refreshment rooms. A large, circular, planted arbour provided decoration.
Further to Nevell’s Road, other areas were Icknield Way, Cross Street, The Quadrant and Wilbury Road (then Norton Road). Houses were also built at Birds Hill, Eastholm, Norton Way North, Meadow Way, Paddock Close and Green Lane.
The houses varied in style. Some were more conventional than others, but most were innovative, either in the general style of the house or in details, such as room layout, ventilation or heating. Others drew their inspiration from cottages of the past. This was mirrored in the choice of materials, from conventional brick, to modern varieties of concrete, to traditionally inspired wood.
Many patent companies used the exhibition to illustrate their housing techniques. Most were a form of concrete supported by a metal structure. A far cry from the mass production of concrete that takes place today, many created their materials on site, or sourced them locally. The Concrete Machinery Company had a hand-powered machine, ‘The Pioneer’ that could make a minimum of 150 bricks a day. The names of these companies were often elaborate and explanatory, for example, The Fireproof Partition and Spandrel Wall Company, exemplified that the fireproofing was an important concern at the time. Other tongue-twisters included: The British Metallic Roofing Company, the New Expanded Metal Company and the Wire-Wove Roofing Company.
There was much criticism in the press that many of the houses were more suitable as weekend cottages for up-and-coming middle classes than as housing for labourers. One journalist writing for the Manchester chronicle stated:
‘Later I inspected a suite of rooms adorned with antique pictures, clocks, chests, and crockery, a delightful haunt for an artist, but hardly the place for a weary mother and six children reared on bread and dripping. If, instead of these fancy goods, the builder had remembered to put the gas bracket high enough to prevent one from knocking ones’ head against it, to make the mantelshelf lofty enough to prevent the children sweeping all the ornaments off, and to make the dresser bigger than is required for a baby’s tea service, he would have made a cottage and not a doll’s house.’
This view was shared by the exhibition judges, who stated thus in their report on the exhibition, published in The County Gentlemen, 16th September 1905:
‘Some cottage designers seem to forget that washing days occasionally fall on wet days, that people are sometimes ill, that children are a factor which has to be taken into account, that people now and then come home wet through, that the more easily cleaning is done, the oftener and the better it is done, that human beings require so many cubic feet of air per hour even when dark, and that some of those human beings are six foot high. We have to think of these prosaic things in judging those pretty interiors that are sketched for us by young bachelor artists in the magazines and by amateur spinsters equally smitten by what is called the “arty crafty”.’
The judges were particularly scathing that many cottages did not allow for the prevention of drafts, or paradoxically, for ventilation, particularly to remove the steam from coppers. But perhaps they were most distressed with those architects who chose to place their earth closet near their pantry (but probably not as distressed as the tenants would be).
However, many exhibition cottage designers claimed to have studied hard the needs of the labouring classes. Mr Barratt, who designed 219 Icknield Way and 1 The Quadrant, claimed to have lived with a labourer for some time, ‘to study his requirements’. As a consequence, much thought went into his design, including a separate parlour, so that if the vicar called unexpectedly he would not be treated to wet undergarments hanging up to dry. He also included, a wooden porch, where the husband might smoke his pipe, in peace, of an evening. This, according to Mr Driver, would prevent the temptation to seek peace in the public house. He added that his wife, ‘after she has cleared up and put the children to bed, may join him’.
After the exhibition the cottages were either sold or rented. It is difficult to say with any certainty, but they do seem to have been predominately lived in by middle-class people. It was also the opinion of many of the press and the judges themselves that only time would be a sufficient judge as to the economical value and longevity of the cottages; especially in the case of those that employed more innovative materials. As it happens the survival rate of the cheap cottages has been extremely high, only 7 have been lost (not including the 5 temporary buildings), a testament not just to the builders and designers, but also to the people who have lived in and loved the houses for one hundred years.