26 C O N T E X T 1 3 7 : N O V E M B E R 2 0 1 4 Gretna: semi-detached houses Gretna: a short terrace of workers’ houses Gretna: a former hostel converted into terraced houses after the buildings were auctioned in 1924 The land at Well Hall was purchased early in 1915. Because the houses were needed urgently, Baines immediately organised a competition among his staff to establish the optimum site layout for the first phase of the estate, east of Well Hall Road.The winning layout emerged to deadline within two days of the briefing. OoW’s architects proceeded quickly to produce working drawings and the first houses were occupied before the end of 1915. Well Hall remains a characterful and attractive estate, in part arranged around a wilfully created central ‘village green’. Some of the complexity and variety of forms in the houses is explained by the ingenuity of the architects in making best use of the reduced range of building materials readily available in wartime, though attribution of its charm to this cause understates the obvious objective of achieving a picturesque composition. The workaholic and highly ambitious Frank Baines was not the sole mastermind behind the creation of dwellings for war-workers between 1914 and 1918. Within the OoW, the other principal architect, Richard Allison, was responsible for an estate of workers’ housing adjoining the Royal Aircraft Establishment at Farnborough, Hampshire, and the 1914 act also granted powers to the Local Government Board (LGB) to provide workers’ housing. The turmoil of 1914 in ministries and agencies brought the planner of New Earswick, Letchworth and Hampstead Garden Suburb, Raymond Unwin (1863–1940) to the LGB as town planning inspector. Quite quickly Unwin was seconded from this post to be head of the munitions workers’ housing-design team of the Department of Explosives Supply at the Ministry of Munitions.The pressing need was to provide accommodation for workers being recruited to the new cordite plant at Gretna/Eastriggs. The initial thought that this accommodation might be provided in temporary wooden huts (then springing up alongside many existing garrisons to house Kitchener’s army of volunteers and the subsequent conscripts) was largely set aside in favour of constructing brick-built hostels and houses. Two new settlements were created during 1916 – the larger at Gretna and a smaller cluster of dwellings at Eastriggs. Consonant with the ‘orderly’ simplified neo-Georgian style seen in parts of Hampstead Garden Suburb from 1907, the housing at Gretna is plainer than anything erected at Well Hall. In aesthetic terms this could be seen as appropriate to the exposed location on level ground close to the Solway Firth. It is interesting that today’s residents consider the dwellings ‘English houses’ because the simple two-storey blocks of semidetached or short-terrace homes differ markedly from the traditional one-and-a-half-storey, stone-built houses of western Scotland. Most of the interest and appeal of Gretna derives from its layout. The rectilinear formality of Central Avenue, flanked on one side by a terrace of shops surmounted by flats, is balanced by sinuous estate roads which conserved mature trees and from which spring some small greens, lined on three sides with workers’ housing.The influence of Unwin’s layout for Letchworth Garden City (1903) is very clear. Returning south, it would be negligent to ignore Frank Baines’ other estate for war-workers: Roe Green, Kingsbury, north-west London. Smaller even than the first phase of Well Hall, Roe Green accommodated workers employed at nearby aircraft factories. It is a considerable achievement. Again the housing is centred around a village green, sited on gently rising ground. The materials used for external walls are either painted render or mellow red brick, eschewing the timber-frame features which dot the more complex building forms of Well Hall. Most likely more-economical construction was imperative when Roe Green rose from the ground in 1916. Nevertheless a convincing semi-rural atmosphere is created. In this case Baines practised his preference for interspersing a higher proportion of cottage flats among the two-storey houses, slightly intensifying the density of the estate.
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