The Origins and Evolution of the Progress Estate

by Keith Billinghurst

By the mid-nineteenth century, the industrial revolution had created the worst housing conditions this country had ever seen. Resolving the problem became the pre-eminent legislative issue between 1850 and 1915 as the working classes were enfranchised. In parallel, social thinkers and enlightened architects sought new ways to house the huge numbers of people who needed to live near factories. One of the outcomes was the development of garden suburbs, of which the Progress Estate, in south-east London, is a pre-eminent example. This book records these changes and explains how they were brought about by a chain of people who knew one another, often through pupilage. It explains the Estate's non-symmetrical outline and includes sketches of the people remembered in its road names. It chronicles the arrival of the motor car and the gradual change from gas to electric lighting. The transition from baths in the scullery and outside WC to the internal facilities taken for granted today is described, as is the shift from tenanted to leasehold and then freehold housing. The book also chronicles the considerable damage wrought to the Estate in aerial attacks during the Second World War and the process by which houses were repaired or rebuilt in their original style.

276 pages, Paperback

Published July 11, 2017