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Stepney and the Politics of High-Rise Housing:

Limehouse Fields to John Scurr House, 19251937
Simon Pepper & Peter Richmond
To cite this article: Simon Pepper & Peter Richmond (2009) Stepney and the Politics of HighRise Housing: Limehouse Fields to John Scurr House, 19251937, The London Journal, 34:1,
33-54, DOI: 10.1179/174963209X398135
To link to this article: http://dx.doi.org/10.1179/174963209X398135

Published online: 18 Jul 2013.

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the london journal, Vol. 34 No. 1, March, 2009, 3354

Stepney and the Politics of High-Rise

Housing: Limehouse Fields to John
Scurr House, 19251937
Simon Pepper and Peter Richmond

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School of Architecture, University of Liverpool, UK

High-rise housing, long seen as a postwar disaster, has an interwar prehistory characterised by debate between the advocates and critics of
multistorey ats for social housing. In London, the controversy divided the
political Left (initially rmly opposed to barracks for the working classes)
and Right (willing to contemplate multistorey solutions), while others
argued from a stated position of political neutrality for advanced modern
solutions to urban living. This debate forms the background to a paper that
examines a number of experimental slum clearance and redevelopment
schemes, all featuring high-rise blocks served by lifts. All were promoted by
the Metropolitan Borough of Stepney. John Scurr House (built 19361937),
Riverside Mansions (19251928) and the Limehouse Fields project (1925 but
never built) are examined in this paper, together with the local politics that
shaped events in one East End borough, and the evolution of architectural
and planning ideas that, after World War II, were to shape so much of
Londons housing.

Much of the research into the genesis of high-rise housing in Britain has focused on
the London County Council (LCC) and on the years following 1939.1 The only real
exception has been the attention given to the prewar Quarry Hill flats in Leeds, where
blocks rising to eight floors and served by lifts (our working definition of high-rise
being the necessity for lifts) were used for the first time for large-scale social housing
in this country.2 This papers focus is on the developments promoted by the Metropolitan Borough of Stepney, where the idea of high-rise housing was pursued in a
number of schemes throughout the 1920s and 1930s. John Scurr House, overlooking
the northern entrance to the Rotherhithe Tunnel, was built in 1936 and 1937. Architecturally and socially, it is one of the most interesting of the interwar East End
tenement blocks although now a much truncated six-storey version of the 10storey high-rise scheme originally proposed by its architects, Adshead and Ramsey.
Nothing came of the much larger and more ambitious mid-1920s proposal for
the development of the Limehouse Fields area, which was also to have employed
The London Journal Trust 2009

DOI 10.1179/174963209X398135

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34

SIMON PEPPER AND PETER RICHMOND

10-storey blocks. However, this earlier scheme was described and illustrated in
unusual detail in the Architects Journal by its architects, Harry Barnes and W. R.
Davidge, and by Councillor J. D. Somper, the Ratepayers Association (i.e. Conservative) mayor of Stepney.3 In 1928, the council then under Labour administration
opened Riverside Mansions, a block of six-storey maisonettes near Shadwell dock
basin designed by Culpin and Bowers, architects best known for their advocacy of
low-rise garden city housing. Riverside Mansions (which still stands) can be seen as
an attempt to reconcile Labour Party antipathy towards multistorey tenements with
the imperatives of inner city redevelopment. In interwar London, the issue of flats
versus cottages, to say nothing of high-rise flats versus cottages, had become highly
politicised. This conflict between the Conservatives (in their various interwar London
manifestations) and the Labour Party (then a rising power in London politics)
provides a dramatic background to the rehousing debate as political fortunes rose and
fell in Stepney.
Housing in London was complicated by its administrative structure. The LCC had
an overarching responsibility for provision within the so-called Administrative
County, and was allowed to build outside the county boundary, subject to the
approval of the Ministry of Health. Local boroughs had to secure the approval of the
LCC for their generally much smaller schemes, although here too the Ministry of
Health had the final word and was responsible, through its inspectorate, for the
conduct of public inquiries and the confirmation of compulsory purchase or closing
and clearance orders.4 Thus, policies and politics at borough, county council and
central government levels overlapped. While a politically marginal borough such as
Stepney see-sawed between Conservative and Labour control from 1919 to 1934, the
LCC was Conservative-controlled continuously until 1934. With the exception of two
brief periods of Labour Westminster government in 1924 and 19291931, Conservative
housing policies also dominated the interwar years at a national level after the
abandonment of the Houses for Heroes programme of 19191921. And on the
question of the appropriate form for the housing that was to replace demolished
slums, there was a sharp division of policy between the parties. Labour initially
embraced the vision of two-storey cottages with gardens, which was supported both
by the Garden City Movement and by the official advice of the Tudor Walters report
of 1918. This was coupled with fierce opposition to all forms of multistorey tenements
barracks for the working classes, as they were often called. Conservatives, while
also supportive of the cottage ideal, were generally prepared to contemplate the use
of multistorey housing solutions in the highly congested and highly priced inner areas,
where the initial attacks on the slums were to be concentrated. Here, the Conservatives
kept company with a number of non-political groups including Modernist
architects, housing reformers, gas and electricity suppliers, and promoters of the
concrete and steel industries who had identified the modern flat as the housing
form of the future.5 The modern flat as a vehicle for what might be termed evangelical
modernism was largely the province of private philanthropy and industrial
sponsorship, although the Labour-controlled metropolitan boroughs of Finsbury and
Bermondsey have long been recognised for pioneering social building.6 Whether
Stepneys activities can properly be grouped with those of Finsbury or Bermondsey
remains to be seen. By focusing on the London Borough of Stepney, however, a
hitherto surprisingly unresearched programme of experimental housing activity can
be examined.

STEPNEY AND THE POLITICS OF HIGH RISE HOUSING

35

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Slum clearance and redevelopment in inner London

Stepney was still largely an area of two-storey buildings in the early years of the
twentieth century. A vast spread of low-rise houses extended eastwards from the
edge of the City, broken only by the towering masses of dockfront warehouses and
occasional accents from churches, gasworks, hospitals and charitable institutions,
such as the Peoples Palace in Mile End Road. It was a densely built-up area, with
high land costs arising from the number of sweatshops and overcrowded tenancies
crammed into its back streets, courts and alleyways. Politicians and council officials
in the East End drew attention to the scarcity of vacant building sites and the
difficulty of establishing the first foothold for replacement accommodation for those
forced out of their homes by slum clearance. As Stepneys town clerk pointed out to
the Minister of Health in 1923, even houses partly demolished as dangerous structures
still contained tenants by reason of the shortage of housing accommodation
elsewhere.7 However, local shortages did not persuade Stepneys council of the case
for locating replacement housing outside the East End.
The Ministry of Health had already urged Stepney to discuss with the LCC
the possibility of rehousing accommodation on the county councils outer estates.8 In
reply, Stepneys council pointed to:
the impracticability of certain of the inhabitants of the Borough living away from the
Borough, e.g men employed on the docks and wharves living at, say, Becontree Heath on
the London County Council Estate which is one of the estates, we presume, to which
the Minister refers inasmuch as these men must, owing to the nature of their work,
and the necessity of being on the spot to deal with the unloading of ships, which arrive
at all times of the day and night, live close to such docks and wharves. Again, the majority
of the Jewish population of the Borough, it would appear, prefer to live in the Borough
in order to be near the market places where they can obtain Kosher meat and also to be
near their Synagogues. Having in mind these facts, we do not think it advisable to
approach the London County Council as suggested by the Ministry of Health.9

It was a classic statement of the predicament facing the authorities in many inner
areas. Although deteriorating physically and seriously overcrowded, their populations
depended heavily on casual employment in dockland and the rag trade, and were
sustained socially by networks that tied them to the slums.
If Stepney was unwilling to export its population to the outer LCC estates, where
could replacement housing be built? In 1925, Stepney contained only four acres of
land available at what was seen as a reasonable price for new working-class homes.
Split up in small parcels, most proved expensive to develop, and collectively they
housed potentially far fewer people than a single four-acre site.10 Recreational public
open space was in such short supply in East London that when the LCC was eventually
driven compulsorily to purchase just over 20 acres of Hackney Marshes in the
mid-1930s flood plain land that had been considered unsuitable for building until
then the move was highly controversial and bitterly contested.11 Stepneys council
sought to kick-start its own slum clearance campaign in the mid-1920s by demolishing
a large, centrally located area of slums and by rebuilding at a sufficiently high density
to rehouse, not only the clearance site residents, but also a surplus that would provide
accommodation for others displaced by subsequent clearances.

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SIMON PEPPER AND PETER RICHMOND

At just over 10 acres, Stepneys Limehouse Fields Unhealthy Area represented much
the largest slum clearance undertaken before or after World War I by any London
borough. Only the LCCs Tabard estate in Southwark was bigger, and this was
developed over a period of many years.12 For both architects and council, it was an
opportunity to explore a new approach to high-density, high-rise housing
redevelopment. The approach adopted by Barnes and Davidge involved 10-storey
blocks of what today would be called maisonettes. Despite the provision of lifts,
shops and communal facilities, and an unusually generous allocation of open space,
the Barnes and Davidge scheme prompted furious opposition in Stepney and further
afield. It is worth digressing for a moment to see how the battle lines were drawn.
Major Harry Barnes as he was always known was senior vice-president of
the RIBA, had served briefly as a Coalition-Liberal MP after the war, and later shifted
leftward to become a co-opted and, later still, an elected Labour member of the LCC
Housing Committee. He was a noted author on the problem of the slums.13 Davidge,
his collaborator, had served just after World War I as one of the Ministry of Healths
three housing commissioners for London and the South East, and in 1919 had been
one of three short-listed candidates interviewed for the post of superintending architect
to the LCC.14 Councillor Somper the schemes chief political advocate was a
leading Municipal Reform figure (but in Stepney, Municipal Reformers campaigned
under the banner of the Ratepayers Association, and this is how his politics are
usually described, except when the Reformers were satirised by inverted commas in
Leftist papers and election campaign material). Somper was recognised even by
opponents as an idealistic advocate of firm action against slums. Sompers support
for high-density high-rise rehousing, however, was opposed vigorously by the Labour
Party in Stepney and in London as a whole, the Labour Party being then wedded
firmly to the ideal of two-storey cottages and gardens for working-class housing in
virtually all circumstances.
In 1918, a correspondent in the London party newspaper had called for a pure
Garden City approach to be adopted for London, involving a ring of completely
self-dependent new towns detached from the city not garden suburbs.15 No new
tenements were to be rebuilt and, in the areas marked for demolition, no building of
any kind must be rebuilt . . . every brick must be cleared away and the site returned
to the vegetable kingdom as a park or farm. Herbert Morrison, secretary of the
London Labour Party, was himself a garden city man, and in later life wrote that he
regarded his war as a conscientious objector working in Letchworth as his happiest
times.16 In March 1918 he had headed a delegation to Mr Hayes Fisher (president of
the Local Government Board before Dr Christopher Addison took over) to present
the policy adopted at the partys National Conference at Nottingham. Morrison told
Fisher that Labour supported planned decentralisation into self-contained garden
cities, opposed inner-area rehousing on inner-area sites, and completely rejected
tenements, or monotonous rows of houses, however much red and white and green
there might be around them.17 Such hard-line policies had to be gradually modified
by Morrison as the partys prospect of winning political control of the LCC increased,
and with it responsibility for driving forwards the campaign against the slums.
However, the most extreme pro-garden city and anti-tenement policy persisted in
some parts of London at local party level.

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STEPNEY AND THE POLITICS OF HIGH RISE HOUSING

37

Bethnal Green Stepneys neighbour to the north and west showed that these
were not merely theoretical positions when the LCC proposed in 1919 to revive
their postponed prewar slum clearance scheme for the Brady Street area, and to
carry out the redevelopment using five-storey tenement blocks. Bethnal Greens
Labour-controlled borough council made it clear that cottages with gardens were
wanted on this site, and objected vigorously to the LCCs counterproposal to rehouse
at Brady Street using tenements and to offer many of the site residents rehousing
outside the borough. When the Brady Street scheme went to the first of two public
inquiries, the Ministry of Health inspector found largely in favour of the borough,
and a compromise scheme of mainly three-storey flatted blocks (with maisonettes on
the two upper floors) was imposed on the LCC.18 Shortly afterwards, Bethnal Greens
proposal for the redevelopment of the boroughs Insane Asylum site by two-storey
cottages was, not surprisingly, opposed by the LCC now acting in its role
of approving authority and, after yet another protracted dispute, a compromise
four-storey scheme (again with maisonettes on the two top floors) was agreed for
what continues to be known by the non-PC residents in the area as Barmy Park.19
Bermondsey Council took the strongest anti-flat position of all the inner boroughs.
Labour won control in 1922 and, under the inspirational leadership of Dr Alfred
Salter and his wife, Ada, promoted a garden city solution for the renewal of their
slum areas.20 Bermondseys opposition to flats of any kind brought the borough into
conflict with the LCC, when they opposed the county councils plans for a four- and
five-storey tenement rehousing scheme on the Hickmans Folly site. In 1925, the LCC
and Ministry of Health refused to approve Bermondseys Salisbury Street Improvement
Scheme, which had been planned for two-storey cottages with gardens. The borough
refused to accept the decision, and after energetic lobbying eventually achieved a
compromise that allowed the scheme to be built on garden suburb lines.21
High-rise flats, to people of this mind, were an abomination. While Bermondsey
was locked in dispute with the LCC and the Ministry of Health over Salisbury Street,
the county council was itself embarking upon plans for experimental nine-storey
blocks at Ossulston Street in St Pancras.22 Ossulston Street prompted the Labour
Partys London News to invite readers opinions. A clear majority of the printed
responses were against. The architect and Labour county councillor Ewart Culpin
quoted Neville Chamberlain as saying that they [blocks of flats] would always remain
an abomination.23 Culpin followed this by a lengthy article entitled, Tenement or
Cottage? A Reasoned Case Against the 9 & 10 Storey Block Dwelling,24 which was
illustrated by a diagram showing how the shadow from a 10-storey block could block
out the sunshine from three streets. Those who twenty years ago were engaged in
the fight of the Cottage versus the Tenement, wrote Culpin, and who had since seen
what appeared to be the universal acceptance of our principles, never dreamed that
in 1925 we should again be up against the same problem . . . To realise, therefore,
that not only is the policy of tenements to be continued, but that the London County
Council is proposing nine-story dwellings, that the City of Liverpool and the
pre-election council of Stepney are contemplating 10-story dwellings, is to wonder
whether, after all, civilisation has made any real progress.25 If tenements proved
unavoidable on certain sites, he argued, they should be no higher than three or four
floors and, as always, I make the plea that every other avenue should be explored to

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SIMON PEPPER AND PETER RICHMOND

the uttermost before this alternative has to be adopted. Against this background,
Stepneys proposal for a 10-storey housing solution at the Limehouse Fields site was
bound to prove highly controversial.
In fact, Stepneys architects Barnes and Davidge were themselves both prominent
garden city men: Davidge was past chairman of the Executive Committee of the
Garden City Association and the author of the housing chapter in the London Societys
blueprint for development after World War I, which vigorously opposed flats in most
circumstances.26 Higher buildings are no alternative to garden cities, declared the
authors when they introduced their own high-rise scheme to fellow professionals.
Given the choice between garden-city development and any other proposal for
housing humanity, no sane man would hesitate in his choice. There are no alternatives
to garden cities, there are only substitutes for them.27 New transport links, they
argued, would eventually connect central London workers with satellite towns,
ringing London round, with islands set in a green sea of fields and gardens. But at
present rates of LCC suburban house-building, we would have to wait until the Greek
Kalends for residents of the central insanitary areas to be rehoused; and they went on
to ask their audience what should be done in the meantime. Are the unhealthy areas
of London to remain untouched until the happy day when we have set a Welwyn
Garden City at every point of the compass? Were nearly a million Londoners to be
expelled so that inner areas could be redeveloped at densities of 20 houses per acre?
Could former slum dwellers afford the daily costs of commuting back to inner-area
employment? Were the slums simply to be ignored as the cold-blooded facts
suggested to some until new peripheral house-building achieved sufficient numbers
to allow a programme of gradual decentralisation? Their answer to all of these
questions was that replacement housing could be provided at a sufficient density to
accommodate everyone only if multistorey solutions were to be accepted.

The Limehouse Fields project of 1925

In their 10-storey proposal for the Limehouse Fields site, Barnes and Davidge tackled
a number of much-criticised features of the normal LCC designs for walk-up tenement blocks. When we think of tired men and women at the end of a long day
confronted with the ordeal of climbing six flights of stairs to reach their homes, one
can understand that the limit of human endurance has been reached. If dwellings are
to go higher than the third floor, lifts must be provided.28 They could best be planned
so as to serve numerous dwellings along an open-access gallery (in state-aided
housing) or an internal corridor (in the private sector mansion blocks). In the scheme
that accompanied their Architects Journal paper, lifts and stairs were provided in five
vertical shafts, which served continuous-access galleries (broad enough to be called
decks) running around three large garden courts (Figure 1). The central shaft contained two lifts, the others one. All were to be attendant operated.29
Another problem with the recently introduced open-access galleries used in postwar
LCC blocks was the constant invasion of privacy as tenants on their way to and from
their flats passed their neighbours combined kitchenbathrooms, toilets and bedroom
windows. In the Limehouse Fields scheme, the non-parlour houses as they were
then described were all planned on two floors, with the bedrooms and bathrooms

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STEPNEY AND THE POLITICS OF HIGH RISE HOUSING

39

gure 1 Limehouse Fields redevelopment proposal, site plan by Harry Barnes and William
Davidge, 1925. Source: Architects Journal (7 Oct 1925). Note that north is to the left, with the
Regents Canal forming the eastern site boundary

on the upper floor and completely private. The access galleries ran past a recessed
porch that sheltered the front door, and what was marked on the plans as a yard
measuring 7x8 ft, containing a coal store and dustbin and perhaps space for hanging
out washing. On facades that received sunlight, the maisonettes were provided with
a sheltered balcony, protected by a small projecting roof. On the access gallery side,
the roof of the yard was extended to form another porch. The porches imparted
a slight Georgian character to the elevations (in the architects words, reproducing
the best features of the domestic work of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries).
The Italianate pantiled roof, the green-painted windows and ironwork, and the
painting scheme that gave the lower storeys in a darker colour, as if it was a base,
were evidently all intended to prevent the scale becoming too overwhelming. In the
final analysis, however, it was not the architecture of the project that made it
noteworthy, but the scale of the project and the provision of a range of social amenities
that, if implemented in full, would have raised the scheme far above the normal
standards of a tenement council estate.
Limehouse Fields was a very big scheme, covering a larger area than Hampton
Court Palace . . . [and] probably the largest combination of dwellings in contemplation
in this or any other country.30 Around the outside of the site and thus less likely
to annoy residents a strip of land, two acres in area, served as a childrens
playground. The ground-floor houses had private gardens, and the upper units

SIMON PEPPER AND PETER RICHMOND

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40

gure 2 Limehouse Fields, view of the courtyard with pavilion containing recreation rooms.
The upper maisonettes on oors 9 and 10 are in the roofspace, with the rooms lit by
dormer windows. The corner turret contains the lift motor room. Source: Architects Journal
(7 Oct 1925)

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STEPNEY AND THE POLITICS OF HIGH RISE HOUSING

41

enjoyed easy access to the playspace on the flat roof, concealed behind a Mansard.
There were three formal courtyard gardens, the mid-sized one containing a bandstand,
and the biggest (one and two-thirds acres in extent) a pavilion with recreation rooms
(Figure 2). Councillor Somper wrote enthusiastically about potential amenities in the
way of gardens both individual and communal playgrounds, drying grounds,
centralised laundries, electric lighting and cooking, and perchance fowl-runs . . .31
Elsewhere it was suggested that small general stores could be included in the scheme,
perhaps even on the higher continuous-gallery system. Somper also subscribed to the
garden city ideal, for he saw this scheme reducing to a minimum the disadvantages
normally incidental to dwellings in flats and most nearly approaching the normal
type of subsidy house which we are accustomed to see on garden-suburb estates.32
The scheme published by the Architects Journal in early October 1925 had been
exhibited in the council chamber in July when the design was formally discussed by
Stepney council for the first time. By mid-summer of 1925, however, Limehouse Fields
was becoming caught up in the political campaigns leading to the November local
government elections. The June council meeting had approved the official representation
of Stepneys medical officer of health, which designated a large part of the Limehouse
Fields houses, courts and alleys as unfit for human habitation.33 A public local
inquiry before Mr E. Leonard, an inspector of the Ministry of Health, was scheduled
for Monday 10 August, at which strong opposition on the part of owners of property
and other interested parties was anticipated.34 The inquiry was, as expected, a rowdy
affair, causing the Architects Journal to comment sourly on certain manners and
customs of the objectors. Truly their behaviour at the inquiry was very rude; but
they certainly made it evident that they are passionately attached to their poor little
homes, and are strongly prejudiced against block dwellings, where they would not
be able to keep pigeons, fowls, and rabbits in a bit of back garden. A 10-storey flat,
such as that proposed for them, they regard with aversion.35
The immediate future of the scheme was going to be determined by the outcome
of the November 1925 local elections. Labour expected to win control of Stepney, and
opposed the nomination of Barnes and Davidge as architects until after the election,
as a means of slowing the momentum of the programme. Councillor Somper and his
Ratepayers Association majority eventually had to concede the propriety of delaying
the formal appointment of architects until after the Autumn elections. November
1925 saw the Labour Party win control of Stepney with a small working majority.

Labour control in Stepney 19251931

Labour-controlled Stepney promptly abandoned the Barnes and Davidge scheme for
Limehouse Fields, and embarked on a series of attempts to rethink the project with
different architects. The firm of Culpin and Bowers was first commissioned in July
1927. Ewart Culpin was a Labour stalwart who served as an LCC alderman from
1925 to 1937, eventually rising to become chairman in 19381939.36 He had served as
secretary to the Garden City and Town Planning Association before World War I. A
recognised specialist in low-cost housing design, he was, as we have seen, a frequent
writer on the subject, and had been decorated by the King of the Belgians for his work
on the reconstruction of war-damaged areas of Flanders. Bowers had worked under

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SIMON PEPPER AND PETER RICHMOND

Raymond Unwin for the Ministry of Munitions during World War I, and after this
had served for three years in the Ministry of Health before joining Culpin in private
practice. Culpin and Bowers were already Stepneys architects for two other current
housing schemes. Although the architects were exceptionally well qualified, the
Culpin and Bowers appointment for Limehouse Fields was rescinded almost immediately. The borough engineer and surveyor, Mr B. J. Belcher an architect as well
as a civil engineer was appointed in September 1927, only for this decision to be
rescinded in May 1928, when it was proposed instead to invite a panel of three private
architects as well as the borough engineer to submit proposals without a fee, one of
which would be chosen.37
The competitors now included Barnes and Davidge; B. J. Belcher FRIBA, borough
engineer and surveyor; Culpin and Bowers; and E. C. P. Monson FRIBA. In July 1928,
further reflection and perhaps the refusal of the private architects to compete under
these terms led to the borough engineer once again being named as architect for
the scheme, which was to be carried out by Direct Labour.
All of this gave rise to considerable delay, and it was only in the summer of 1929
that Ministry of Health approval for the first block of flats at Limehouse Fields was
secured.38 The Direct Labour departments tender received its ministry approval on
30 August 1929.39 Almost four years had passed before work started on the first block
at Limehouse Fields, and the Labour Party controlling group on the council were well
into their next term of office, before cost over-runs on the project began to cause
serious concern. The district auditor blamed poor financial control of the job for the
overspending. No such scandal attached to the other big Stepney rehousing scheme,
which was designed from the outset by Culpin and Bowers, and which despite
Culpins published views on the undesirability of high-rise housing for working-class
tenants became something of a local yardstick for Labour standards in inner-city
rehousing operations using multistorey blocks.

Riverside Mansions 19251928

Riverside Mansions was the name given to the scheme of six-storey blocks on the
Milk Yard and New Gravel Lane site, which was completed in the summer of 1928.40
It was located just south of the Shadwell Dock basin, not far from the Prospect of
Whitby public house. Culpin and Bowers had been appointed architects after Labour
won control of Stepney.41 The scheme was opened officially in early summer 1928
with publicity for its on-site shop, club rooms, laundries and drying rooms, as well
as the maternity and child welfare centre with its demonstration suite for the training
of young mothers in childcare skills.42 There was a gymnasium too, which in 1933
became a neighbourhood club run by the Highway Club.43 Later, a childrens library
opened (Figure 3).
The scheme included automatic passenger lifts, with tenant-operated push-button
controls and a keyholder access system.44 The lifts at Riverside Mansions were the
first fruits of Stepney Labour Partys commitment to install lifts on any blocks of
more than five storeys. One-third of the tenants enjoyed ground-floor access to their
front doors. Riversides other tenants reached the upper units from access galleries at
second- and fourth-floor levels, served by three sets of lifts and a large number of
stairs.

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STEPNEY AND THE POLITICS OF HIGH RISE HOUSING

gure 3
1928)

43

Riverside Mansions, Culpin and Bowers, 19251928. Source: Builder (31 Aug

Maisonettes had been under discussion for years and had been used on the top two
floors of a number of LCC schemes. At Riverside Mansions, Culpin and Bowers
followed the Barnes and Davidge proposals for Limehouse Fields in designing what
they described as self-contained cottages here stacked in three tiers. Considering
all of the fuss that had surrounded the earlier scheme, the actual form of Riverside
Mansions maisonettes, on-site facilities, gallery access and lifts was surprisingly
similar in all respects save the actual height of the proposed blocks. So too was the
editorial line of the supporting text, which presented the scheme as a response to
cases where the housing problem has of necessity been tackled under conditions
almost as different as possible from the ideal . . . the object [here] has been to invest
the old, dreary, slum-tenement idea with some of the advantages connected with
recent housing reform. Culpin and Bowers were building only to six storeys, whereas
Barnes and Davidge had envisioned possibly as many as 10. In purely architectural
terms, Riverside Mansions is a curiosity: a big building attempting to look like a
smaller one by losing the top floor in the roof, and by having the mass broken up
with different surface treatments, as fair-faced brickwork alternated with sections of
painted roughcast. Cottage architecture meets the tenement, one might say. But here

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SIMON PEPPER AND PETER RICHMOND

again it was not the architecture but the standard of on-site amenities and the
provision of lifts that were important. Stepneys Labour Party had finally come to
terms with an acceptable model for tenement living.

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Conservative control 19311934

Labour held Stepney at the 1928 election, when it increased its majority substantially.
However, in the November 1931 local elections, control was narrowly lost to a coalition of Municipal Reformers and Ratepayers Association candidates in the rout that
followed the collapse of Ramsey MacDonalds Labour government. By then, the
Limehouse Fields scheme was in deep difficulty, despite the fact that much of the
work now took the form of reconditioned houses (with a much-reduced density of
occupation) rather than clearance and redevelopment. The public explanation for the
slow progress was the difficulty of getting onto site to start the new phases, and the
reason given for this was the old problem of finding sufficient local sites for replacement housing. The Conservatives determined to make one more effort to start the
slum clearance programme, and proposed a decanting scheme on land bounded by
Branch Road and Rose Lane. It was this scheme that generated Stepneys second
interwar high-rise proposal and that eventually led after yet another change of
political control in 1934 to the building of John Scurr House.
Branch Road was located near the main basin at the end of the Regents Canal, but
close enough to Limehouse Fields to be used to rehouse people from its clearance
sites.45 Preliminary proposals had been approved and submitted to the Finance and
Parliamentary Committee in March 1933, in order that detailed plans and drawings
might be prepared.46 The planning process was then thrown into disarray when,
following the district auditors criticism of the councils building operations, in the
summer of 1933 Stepney Council resolved to remove all of their housing design from
the borough engineer and instead to make use of a panel of architects appointed by
the Finance and Parliamentary Committee.47
The borough engineer had been heavily criticised for cost over-runs in connection
with the delayed Limehouse Fields housing scheme and an extension to the Limehouse
Library, both carried out by Stepneys Direct Labour organisation. The housing
scheme was 1736.16s.2d in excess of the estimates of 9392.15s.0d, and the library
extension came in 5193 over the estimate of 12,244 and ran for 75 weeks instead
of the estimated 30 weeks.48 Henceforth, the engineer was to work on roads and
drainage, leaving building design to a panel of architects that had been drawn up
following consultation with the president of the RIBA and enquiries of other
metropolitan borough councils. Adshead and Ramsey, Harry Barnes and Partners,
Culpin and Bowers (later restructured without Bowers and renamed Culpin and Son),
Charles Dunch and Son, Ian B. M. Hamilton, E. C. P. Monson, T. Smith Shearer,
S. Cameron Kirby, Louis de Soissons and Major Douglas Wood were all on the
original list, with the name of Messrs. Joseph added by amendment of Alderman
Somper, now chairman of the Finance and Parliamentary Committee.
A few years later, Stepney was to become the most notorious of Labours London
pocket boroughs, with an unsavoury reputation for backhanders, town hall jobs for
the boys, and dubious nominations for council flat vacancies. As the wags unkindly

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STEPNEY AND THE POLITICS OF HIGH RISE HOUSING

45

said, SBC (Stepney Borough Council) really stood for Sons, Brothers and Cousins.49
This makes it appropriate to record that Stepneys panel contained many of the
leading names in housing architecture. Barnes and Culpin, as we have seen, were both
political architects, so it is worth noting that the two Labour men were appointed by
a Conservative council. Adshead and Ramseys best known work had been for the
Duchy of Cornwall estate in Kennington, where Louis de Soissons had also built in
addition to his celebrated contribution to Welwyn Garden City. Hamilton was one
of the new breed of university-trained architects now making their mark in work for
housing associations. Together with Stanley Ramsey, Ian Hamilton served on the
Ministry of Healths Committee on the Construction of Flats for the Working Classes
(chaired by the former LCC chief engineer, Sir George Humphreys), where they
rubbed shoulders with Launcelot Keay, city architect and director of housing at
Liverpool, and George Topham Forrest, superintending architect of the LCC. Other
councils were appointing panels to avoid the delays that surrounded competitions,
and to avoid disputes over the award of commissions at a time when fee bargaining
was strictly prohibited by the RIBA. The architects on the panel were listed
alphabetically and were to be awarded contracts in this order subject to the specialised
experience in the class of work to be undertaken. The first two practices on the list
were Adshead and Ramsey and Harry Barnes and Partners. Adshead and Ramsey got
the Branch Road commission, and Harry Barnes that for the British Ropes site.50
Adshead and Ramsey were asked to prepare plans for a high-density decanting
scheme and came up with two proposals, the first including blocks up to 10 storeys
in height, and the second limited to six storeys (Figure 4). They presented them as
alternatives. In retrospect, it may have been a tactical error to present such obvious
alternatives, although it was probably done to emphasise what were seen as the
manifest advantages of the high-rise scheme, which got more flats onto the site. The

gure 4 Ten-storey project for the Branch Road redevelopment site (later John Scurr
House), Adshead and Ramsey, 1934. Source: Architects Journal (17 May 1934)

46

SIMON PEPPER AND PETER RICHMOND

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Housing Committee favoured the 10-storey scheme for the same reason and because
of what were estimated to be slightly lower unit costs (and hence lower rents). It also
gave them a flagship building for their clearance programme. When the Housing
Committee report was presented to council, the Labour group divided the council,
and the controversial proposal was deferred to a special meeting of the borough
council called for Wednesday, 21 February 1934.51 The debate was reported at length
in the East London Advertiser.
As soon as the meeting began, Councillor Vogler (Labour) moved that the council
go into committee in consultation with the architects. What went on behind closed
doors for the next two hours can only be guessed, but when the public were readmitted
they were treated to a straight party-political split. Councillor Marns, chair of the
Housing Committee, moved his committees report recommending the 10-storey
scheme. Councillor Vogler moved an amendment to adopt the six-storey scheme,
together with a lift. His speech was quoted at length.
The Labour party did not necessarily oppose experiment, but they did when there was a
danger that it would affect the health and comfort of human beings and citizens of the
Borough. A 10-storey block would not be in harmony with the surrounding scenery and
it would dominate the landscape for a great distance. They had heard about high blocks
of flats in the West End . . . There were not the same number of children as there were
bound to be in these . . . They heard that if the passenger lift broke down people could
be carried in the goods lift, but they could understand that people would have reluctance,
even if the steel lining was taken out, in travelling in a lift which had carried materials
which were objectionable. There was no doubt, too, that there would be many impatient
people who, rather than wait for the lift, would make a dash up the stairs and it was well
known that this involved a heavy strain on the heart.52

Councillor Hurley seconded Mr Voglers amendment, describing himself as the

victim of a five-storey building and predicting that in the rush hours the lifts would
not be able to carry all of those who needed them. Somper responded, stressing the
reduced cost of construction per flat that the architects promised for the 10-storey
block. He pointed out that the council had not asked the architects to plan a 10storey building for them, but how best in their opinion to deal with the site. They
would not only get more light and air, but they would be able to house 100 more
people by building higher.
Councillor Frankel (Labour) said that the more he examined it, the more he thought
that it was the most disastrous housing scheme ever put before the Stepney Borough
Council, and he went on to suggest that this would be the first 10-storey scheme by
architects who had not built a flat for Borough Councils before in their lives. This
was strictly true: most of Adshead and Ramseys work was in housing layout, but
their prewar housing for the Duchy of Cornwall estate in Kennington and their
wartime scheme at Dormanstown in Redcar were both notable. But Frankel pressed
on: The LCC were the greatest housing authority in the world, he said, but it
was by no means certain that they would ever build 10-storey flats, they had turned
the proposal down, time after time. He thought that . . . in a year or two there was
a likelihood of many empty flats in the building. It was not fair for a dying council,
a nearly dead one, to pass this and leave its successor to face its problem.

STEPNEY AND THE POLITICS OF HIGH RISE HOUSING

47

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The debate was closed by Councillor Marns (Housing Committee chairman), who
said that anybody would rather house the people of Stepney in cottages, with gardens
back and front, but there was not space within its boundaries to do it. The moment
one agreed that there was no alternative to flats what did it matter whether one lived
on the first or the 10th floor? There was a roof garden, and he would sooner see the
children playing there than in the streets. It was a veritable sun trap . . .
The 10-storey scheme was carried by 31 votes to 28.53
The Builder reported the outcome of the February 1934 special council meeting and
commented, We hope that this scheme may go forward, for while such a building is
necessarily experimental, the lessons gained may have an important bearing on
Londons housing policy.54 In May, the Architects Journal published flat plans
including the so-called elastic units, which could be modified to give different
combinations of 3+2- or 1+4-room flats and an impressive perspective by A. D.
Harvey, which later that year featured in the Royal Academy summer exhibition.55

Labour control and the completion of John Scurr House, 19341937

Victory in the town hall was only temporary. In April 1934, Labour won its first
majority in the LCC, and in October 1934 regained control of Stepney. In January
1935, the new Housing Committee voted to abandon the 10-storey scheme but
approved Adshead and Ramseys six-storey proposal, with its lifts.56 The LCC
now enters the story directly, both as former site owner and as the authority with
responsibility for both London Building Act compliance and approval of the scheme
for subsidy purposes on behalf of the Ministry of Health. A Labour-controlled
LCC could be expected to look very critically at any multistorey proposal. Stepneys
10-storey scheme was already under pressure from the LCC over potential overshadowing of the county councils housing in the prewar Bekesbourne Buildings.57
Adshead and Ramsey brought in consultants with a technical report that saw off the
LCC on this point.58 But LCC pressure continued after Labour won control of Stepney
and adopted the six-storey scheme, with further inquiries about the soundproofing
of floors, the central heating system, and the absence of refuse chutes.59 Stepney was
committed to large wheeled refuse containers on each floor, which would be brought
down in a separate goods lift and emptied by a specially designed vehicle (it was the
use of these steel-lined refuse lifts as emergency passenger lifts that had been criticised
at the special council meeting). The borough was advised to change its design of the
fifth- and sixth-floor flats into maisonettes (as was now standard practice in LCC
blocks), which, it was pointed out, made the provision of any lifts unnecessary.
Stepney, however, was firmly committed to its lifts and would not have allowed its
architects to give way on this point, even had they wished to do so.
Discussions with the LCC officers on outstanding technical issues dragged on
through 1935, until in January 1936 concern over the modified six-storey proposal
was resurrected inside Stepney when the tenders came in greatly in excess of the
estimates as submitted by the Architects.60 A number of further economies were then
implemented. A general squeeze on space standards was accompanied by the decision
to abandon the hoped-for central heating (which was still in prospect when the model
was exhibited at the Royal Academy, showing no chimneys over the flat roof) and to
accept the LCC line on combination grates with back-boilers. LCC pressure for refuse

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48

SIMON PEPPER AND PETER RICHMOND

chutes paid off now, for the decision to adopt the refuse chutes allowed the two
service lifts to be dropped leaving only one lift in each of the two blocks.
Construction started in May 1936.61 The north block was completed and began to
be occupied in June 1937. On 24 July 1937, the south block was opened by the mayor,
and the scheme was named John Scurr House in honour of the East End Labour
veteran (Figure 5). Another model was shown in the Royal Academy summer
exhibition, and in August the scheme was illustrated in The Builder by another
perspective drawing as well as photographs.62 The LCC (and most other tenementbuilding authorities) normally concealed the access galleries behind the main facades
of its blocks and around the interior of courtyards. The decision to run the access
galleries around the outside of John Scurr House placed the main rooms and private
balconies overlooking the internal courtyard, protected from the traffic noise from
the tunnel entrance (Figure 6). It also gave a pronounced horizontal emphasis to the
external facades. Although not perhaps as impressive as the 10-storey scheme of 1934,
the image presented by the modified six-storey blocks was nevertheless that of a
distinctively modern architecture and if not the Modernism propagated by the
MARS Group, at least very different from the municipal neo-Georgian favoured by
the LCC up to that time.63
The first impression left by the Stepney saga was that Labour-controlled councils
were still set firmly against high-rise, although they were by now reconciled to the
need for multistorey housing in inner areas. For the LCC, however, the situation had
changed more fundamentally. Just before the 1934 LCC elections, Herbert Morrison

gure 5 Six-storey nal design for the Branch Road site (later named John Scurr House),
Adshead and Ramsey, 1934. The rooftop play area is behind the blank wall on each side of
the lift and staircase tower. Source: Builder (7 May 1937)

49

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STEPNEY AND THE POLITICS OF HIGH RISE HOUSING

gure 6 Ground-oor plans of John Scurr House, Stepney, Adshead and Ramsey, 1936,
following the cost-cutting measures that removed the central heating and the additional
goods lifts. Each block now has just one lift; the bathrooms contain a bath and toilet but no
washbasin; and the living room replaces are scaled for an open re with back-boiler and
trivets for cooking when the re was in use (allowing winter savings on gas). The upper oor
plans are practically the same. Source: Builder (7 May 1937)

had set up a housing research group chaired by Charles Latham (the future Lord
Latham) to draft a housing policy for the coming campaign. Lathams group concluded
that block dwellings [were] inevitable and that it would be unwise to dogmatise
on the question of their height.64 Coming to power in London at a time when the
focus of national housing policy was the slum clearance and anti-overcrowding drives,

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50

SIMON PEPPER AND PETER RICHMOND

the LCC Labour group stuck firmly to this policy, and by 1935 had itself embarked
upon the acquisition of sites for a number of very extensive flatted developments at
Hackney Marshes, Tulse Hill, Seven Sisters Road in Tottenham (the future Woodberry
Down estate) and the White City.65 Stepney was still held by the Conservatives when
Adshead and Ramseys 10-storey scheme was first considered by the Labour-controlled
LCC Housing Committee. The LCC Housing Committee at that time decided to take
the case on its merits as an experiment.66 It was Stepney Borough Council in January
1935 that decided to abort the 10-storey scheme in favour of the six-storey version,
but to retain the lifts. The LCC kept its options open.
The original 10-storey proposals for Limehouse Fields and the much smaller Branch
Road site both contained an element of temporary accommodation. Here they were
described as decanting schemes: elsewhere the term clearing house was employed.
Both terms signalled the use of at least part of the scheme for the initial housing of
those displaced by clearance operations, before they could be assigned long-term
accommodation. The very high densities offered by 10-storey high-rise blocks made
this an attractive proposition for councils such as Stepney, where popular resistance
to rehousing outside of the borough had been encountered, but where it proved
extraordinarily difficult to obtain sites for new housing. This was certainly the
thinking that underpinned the original plans for Quarry Hill in Leeds (first phase
opened 1938), probably the most famous of all the interwar high-rise proposals, and
which had been built by another Labour council that was otherwise strongly opposed
to multistorey flats.67
Stepneys early schemes, however, were clearly designed for a population that
would mostly remain as permanent residents. Their maisonettes were not radical
departures from local authority housing norms in their planning: indeed, Councillor
Somper spoke of the Limehouse Fields dwellings in 1925 as subsidy cottages (houses
hoisted into mid-air, so to speak), while the town clerk who contributed notes to
accompany the publication of Riverside Mansions in 1928 wrote only of investing the
old, dreary, slum-tenement idea with some of the advantages connected with recent
housing reform. This is the language employed by those selling a pragmatic solution
to an essentially sceptical audience, not the enthusiastic advocacy of a Modernist
flatted way of life. Yet this is not to underestimate the hoped-for provision of on-site
social amenities at Limehouse Fields and the actual achievement of Riverside Mansions.
As blocks of council flats, they set unusually high standards. Whether or not this was
intended to put pressure on the LCC by showing what the boroughs could do is
unclear (although it may well have been the case when different parties controlled the
LCC and the borough).
Possibly, the long-term importance of Stepneys schemes resides less in the plans or
the buildings than in the learning experiences of the architects and politicians involved,
and the impact that these experiences had on changing attitudes to multistorey social
housing. Although the boroughs 10-storey proposals finally ended when Labour won
control in 1934, the various Stepney schemes involved an astonishingly large number
of the key figures in the early history of high-rise housing. The political architects
Harry Barnes and Ewart Culpin both served on Charles Lathams housing research
group, which established the London Labour Partys policy on flats just before the
LCC elections of 1934. After the election victory, Major Barnes chaired the LCC
Town Planning Committee until his death in 1935. Culpin eventually chaired the LCC

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STEPNEY AND THE POLITICS OF HIGH RISE HOUSING

51

and continued to build flatted blocks for the London boroughs with a noticeable
tilt towards simplified, almost modern design features.68 Adshead was professor of
planning at UCL and in part-time practice with Stanley Ramsey while working on
John Scurr House. It is likely that many of the advanced technical features of their
design (the steel frame, light panels originally in concrete but later in brick, and
central heating services) as well as the (arguably less important) modern imagery
derived from his younger partners preoccupations. Although known for their pre1914 neo-Georgian housing in Kennington, Adshead and Ramsey had also collaborated on the development of the highly industrialised Dorlonco system built at the
end of World War I for the workforce at the Dorman Long steelworks at Redcar.
Ramsey attempted (without success, but no doubt hoping for official endorsement)
to have their Stepney scheme examined in detail by the Humphreys Committee on
the Construction of Flats. Adshead retained close links with Liverpool, where he had
occupied the chair of civic design before moving to UCL. He was certainly familiar
with Liverpools programme of central flats, which made Launcelot Keays city
architects department one of Britains leading proponents of continental-inspired
Modernism.69 Liverpool also produced a number of proposals for 10-storey clearing
houses the last of which (employing an advanced concrete technology) was
published shortly after Adshead and Ramseys Stepney design first went public.70
Two of the participants in the Stepney experiments, moreover, remained in practice
to influence postwar events. William Davidge was engaged as a consultant to draft
Westminster City Councils response to Forshaw and Abercrombies wartime plans
for London. Davidge also advised on the brief for the Pimlico housing competition
of 1945. Stanley Ramsey, by then an RIBA vice-president, was appointed assessor for
the Pimlico housing competition that finally delivered Londons first 10-storey blocks
of council flats, later to be known as Churchill Gardens.

Acknowledgements
This paper is the product of a research project on the early history of high-rise
housing in Britain funded by the Arts and Humanities Research Council. Our thanks
also go to the staff of the Tower Hamlets Local History Archive and Library in
the Bancroft Library for their many kindnesses, to the journals anonymous referees
for their helpful comments, and to Professor Mark Swenarton for much valued
advice.

Notes
1

P. Dunleavy, The Politics of Mass Housing in

Britain 19451975: A Study of Corporate Power,
and Professional Influence in the Welfare State
(Oxford, 1981); N. Bullock, Plans for Post-War
Housing in the UK: the Case for Mixed Development
and the Flat, Planning Perspectives, 2 (1987), 7198;
N. Bullock, Ideals, Priorities and Harsh Realities:
Reconstruction and the LCC, 194551, Planning
Perspectives, 9 (1994), 87101; N. Bullock, Building
the Post-War World: Modern Architecture and
Reconstruction in Britain (London and New York,

2002); but for valuable interwar coverage that has

given us some leads, see J. A. Yelling, Slums and
Redevelopment: Policy and Practice in England,
191845, With Particular Reference to London
(1992), and S. Parker, From Slums to the Suburbs:
Labour Party Policy, the LCC and the Woodberry
Down Estate, Stoke Newington 19341961, London
Journal, 24:2 (1999), 5169.
A. Ravetz, Model Estate: Planned Housing at
Quarry Hill Leeds (1974).
Architects Journal (7 Oct 1925), 50717.

52
4

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9
10

11

12

13

14

15
16

17

SIMON PEPPER AND PETER RICHMOND

See W. A. Robson, The Government and Misgovernment of London (1939), 2625, for a contemporary
view.
E. Darling, Re-Forming Britain: Narratives of
Modernity before Reconstruction (2007); S. Pepper
and P. Richmond, Upward or Outward? Politics,
Planning and Council Flats, 19191939, Journal of
Architecture, 13:1 (2008), 5390.
A. Beach, Potential for Participation: Health
Centres and the Idea of Citizenship c. 19201940,
in C. Lawrence and A.-K. Mayer (eds), Regenerating
England: Science, Medicine and Culture in Interwar Britain (2000); E. Lebas, When Every Street
became a Cinema: the Work of Bermondseys Public
Health Department, History Workshop Journal, 35
(1995), 4265.
Stepney MBC Minutes (17 Dec 1923), 746. In
subsequent notes, Stepney MBC Minutes refers to
the full council. Housing Committee Minutes are
separately identified. All Stepney material is archived
at the Tower Hamlets Local History Archives and
Library.
E. F. C. Moore, Ministry of Health (13 Nov 1923),
in THLHC, Stepney MBC Minutes (December
1923), 746.
Stepney MBC Minutes (December 1923), 747.
Out of the eleven schemes (mostly small) propounded by us, reported Stepneys Housing
Committee in 1925, nine have either been rejected
by us on grounds of high costs or have been
disapproved of by the Ministry . . .: Stepney MBC
Minutes (30 Jul 1925), 1732.
For the Hackney Marshes proposal, see joint report
from the Housing & Public Health Committee (17
Jul 1935, Chairman Lewis Silkin) and the Parks
Committee (26 Jul, Chairman Richard Coppock)
entitled Hackney-Marsh: Appropriation of Land
for Housing Purposes, in London Metropolitan
Archives (LMA), LCC Minutes (3031 Jul 1935),
2623. See also E. Emil Davies, The London County
Council 18891939: A Historical Sketch (Fabian
Tract No. 243, Jan 1937) in LMA/4062/5/9, 2324,
where the Hackney Marsh scheme is seen as the
breakthrough project in East End redevelopment.
LCC, London Housing: With Particular Reference
to Post-War Housing Schemes (1928), 11116.
Major Harry Barnes (18711935), obituary, Times
(14 Oct 1935), 20.
William Robert Davidge (18791962), obituary in
Times (2 Jan 1962), 12.
London Labour Chronicle, No. 35 (Sep 1918), 2.
Quoted in A. Saint, Spread the People: The
LCCs Dispersal Policy, 18891965, in A. Saint
(ed.), Politics and the People of London: the London
County Council 18891965 (1989), 21535.
Extract from To Make London Beautiful. London
Labour Partys Housing and Town Planning Policy

18

19

20

21

22

23
24
25

26

27
28

29
30
31
32

33
34
35

36

37
38

39

40
41
42
43

(March 1918), 3, in LMA, LCC, Housing of the

Working-Classes Committee (HWCC) Presented
Papers (15 May 1918), item 20.
After numerous delays, the scheme eventually
reverted to the five storeys demanded by the LCC
and was completed as the Collingwood Estate in
1926. See LCC London Housing, 11621.
The scheme (following ministry advice) was designed
and supervised by HM Office of Works.
See F. Brockway, Bermondsey Story: The Life
of Alfred Salter (1949), 85112, Bermondseys
Revolution for the full story. See also Yelling,
Slums and Redevelopment, 33.
Salisbury Street cottages (later Wilson Grove) by
Culpin and Bowers, Bermondsey Cottages, Builder
(9 Nov 1928), 756, 7623; also N. Pevsner and
B. Cherry, London South (1983), 607.
S. Pepper, Ossulston Street: Early LCC Experiments
in High Rise Housing, 192529, London Journal,
7:1 (1981), 4564.
London News, No. 6 (Apr 1925), 2.
London News, No. 15 (Jan 1926), 34.
Liverpool City Council was, as Culpin noted,
exploring 10-storey high rise housing at this time.
The first of a series of interwar high-rise proposals
for sites in Melrose Avenue and the Dingle is
described in Liverpool Record Office, 352/MIN/
HOU 1/8 (2 Jul 1925).
Sir Aston Webb (ed.), London of the Future
(1921).
Architects Journal (7 Oct 1925), 507.
Ibid., 509. This was also the official Ministry
of Health position set out in the Unhealthy
Areas Manual (1919), but it had been considerably
compromised by the mid-1920s.
Stepney MBC Minutes (30 Jul 1925).
Architects Journal (7 Oct 1925), 514.
Ibid., 512.
Ibid. See also the detailed description in Stepney
MBC Minutes (30 Jul 1925), 173235.
Stepney MBC Minutes (22 Jun 1925), 1626, 1650.
Stepney MBC Minutes (30 Jul 1925), 1732.
The Housing Trouble at Stepney, Architects
Journal (19 Aug 1925).
Ewart Gladstone Culpin (18771946), obituaries in
Builder (6 Dec 1946), 585, and JRIBA (13 Jan 1947),
15.
Stepney MBC Minutes (2 May 1928), 13067.
Letter from Ministry of Health dated 20 June 1929
in Stepney MBC Minutes (31 Jul 1929), 618.
Letter dated 30 August in Stepney MBC Minutes
(16 Oct 1929), 71516.
Published in Builder (31 Aug 1928), 33842.
Stepney MBC Minutes (27 Oct 1926), 424.
Stepney MBC Minutes (27 Jun 1928), 1373.
See Stepney MBC, Housing Committee Minutes
(7 Mar 1933), 3612 for arrangements. Sadly, the
experiment was ended in October 1934 when the

STEPNEY AND THE POLITICS OF HIGH RISE HOUSING

44

45

46

47

48

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49

50

51
52

53

54
55
56

57

58

Highway Club terminated the tenancy: Stepney

MBC Minutes (24 Oct 1934), 2604.
Tenders for the lift in Stepney MBC Minutes (29
Jun 1927), 8401, which gives details of push-button
controls and the keyholder access system.
Stepney MBC Housing Committee Minutes (4 Oct
1932), 191; Stepney MBC Housing Committee
Minutes (31 Jan 1933), 3316; Stepney MBC
Housing Committee Minutes (7 Mar 1933), 394.
Stepney MBC Housing Committee Minutes (7 Mar
1933), 396.
Stepney MBC Minutes (26 Jul 1933), 1584 for the
panel.
Details in Stepney MBC Minutes (28 Jun 1933).
See J. White, London in the Twentieth Century
(2001), 377 for the SBC gibe and Morrisons
intervention to remove Councillor Morry Davis,
Stepneys notoriously corrupt wartime majority
leader, from the self-appointed post of ARP
controller shortly before Morry went to gaol in 1944
for trying to bribe a railway official who had caught
him travelling without a ticket.
Stanley Davenport Adshead (18681946) in Oxford
DNB (2004), which lists numerous obituaries;
Stanley Churchill Ramsey (18821968), obituaries in
the Times (28 Dec 1968) and Building (10 Jan
1968).
Stepney MBC Minutes (31 Jan 1934), 198690.
The reference to the objectionable probably
referred to the plan to use the service lift to take
down the wheeled refuse trolleys, which were stored
on each floor.
East London Advertisor (24 Feb 1934). See the
report to be debated and resolution in Stepney MBC
Council Minutes (21 Feb 1934), 201418.
Builder (9 Mar 1934), 407.
Architects Journal (17 May 1934), 729.
Stepney MBC Minutes (30 Jan 1935), 1534, 183
5.
Letters from LCC (4 and 5 Jan 1935) and from
architects considered: Stepney MBC Housing
Committee Minutes (9 Jul 1935), 1522.
Report on letter dated 30 April 1934 from the LCC,
typescript from Adshead and Ramsey, presented to
LCC Housing and Public Health Committee (6 Jun
1934).

59

60

61

62

63

64

65

66

67
68

69

70

53

Report of Extraordinary Meeting of the Housing

Committee, Stepney MBC Housing Committee
Minutes (2 Apr 1936), 44452.
Finance & Parliamentary Committee Report in
Stepney MBC Minutes (29 Jan 1936), 11246.
Clerk of works appointed, Stepney MBC Minutes,
Vol. XXXV, 14467.
Builder (7 May 1937), 967; Builder (6 Aug 1937),
2302.
However, soon after Labour gained control of the
LCC in 1934, a more overtly Modern design policy
was introduced, starting with the Poynders Road
site (later the Oaklands Estate 19351936), Clapham
Park. See Pepper and Richmond, Upward or
Outward?, 723.
London Metropolitan Archive, LMA/4062/5/7, A
Housing Policy for London, Report of the Labour
Party Housing Research Group (1934).
Pepper and Richmond, Upward or Outward?,75
77.
Stepney MBC Minutes (25 Jul 1934), 2444 reprints
the letter from the LCC (dated 19 June 1934) giving
approval for two blocks of flats, mainly ten stories
in height ... This approval, however, must not be
taken as committing the council [i.e. the LCC] to
the principle of the erection of high tenement
buildings, the present proposal being regarded in the
nature of an experiment.
Ravetz, Model Estate.
Working Class Flats, Garratt Lane, Wandsworth,
Architects Journal (11 Apr 1940), 38591.
For continental European influences on Sir Launcelot
Keays department, see F. D. N. Newbery,
Liverpools Flats 19191939 (BArch dissertation,
Liverpool University, 1981). Liverpool was the only
major English provincial city to adopt an overtly
pro-flats policy between the wars.
Architects Journal 80 (1934), 587, 6001; Architects
Journal 80 (1934), 6234, 6512; Builder (26 Oct
1934), 7067; Builder (23 Nov 1934), 899901;
Liverpool Post and Mercury (19 Oct 1934). The
scheme was for 10-storey cylindrical blocks in
concrete designed in collaboration with Truscon
(the Trussed Concrete Steel Co., Ltd of Liverpool
and London), each holding 160 flats on a site only
slightly more than one acre.

Notes on Contributors
Simon Pepper recently retired as Professor of Architecture in the University of
Liverpool. He has long-term research interests in the architecture of social housing,
public library buildings and Renaissance fortifications. His publications include Housing Improvement: Goals and Strategy (1971) and, with Nicholas Adams, Firearms and
Fortifications: Military Architecture and Siege Warfare in Sixteenth-Century Siena
(Chicago, 1986).

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SIMON PEPPER AND PETER RICHMOND

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Dr Peter Richmond collaborated as a Research Fellow in the AHRC-funded study

of the Early History of High Rise Housing in Britain which yielded this paper.
He has published Marketing Modernisms: The Architecture and Influence of Charles
Reilly (Liverpool, 2001) and with Stephen Bowe, Selling Shaker: the Commodification
of Shaker Design in the Twentieth Century (Liverpool, 2007).