C O N T E X T 1 3 7 : N O V E M B E R 2 0 1 4 27 LikeWell Hall and Gretna, Roe Green benefits greatly from the growth to maturity of the original soft landscaping. The trees are now monumental elements which shade the modest though fastidiously sited dwellings. Well Hall and Roe Green were the only housing estates created in London between 1915 and 1918. Baines’s inclusion of cottage flats at Roe Green put him at loggerheads with Unwin, whose objective of environmental improvement for everyone required an individual house and garden for each family. It appears that disagreements between the two did not end with this issue. In his book Semi-detached London, Alan A Jackson suggests that the high quality of war-workers’ housing, with its adoption of the generous space-standards and leafy environment seen at Letchworth andHampstead, fulfilled two purposes. First, to ensure maximum productivity from the strategic workers accommodated and, second, to provide exemplars for the multitude of public-sector housing estates it would be necessary to build after the war to mitigate the national housing shortage. Setting aside whether this second aim was an actual objective of government or sleight-of-hand by Unwin in particular, it is a matter of record that the prime minister, David Lloyd George, gave a speech at a public meeting in November 1918 promising ‘to make Britain a fit country for heroes to live in’. Even before this, the Tudor Walters committee had been set up to investigate the necessary standards for the multitude of public-sector dwellings it would be essential to build as the troops returned to ‘civvy-street’. It is a robust surmise that the high standards specified in the resultant report are Raymond Unwin’s work as a prominent member of the committee, and also significant that his co-member, Frank Baines, resigned from the committee one month before publication of its report in 1918. Notwithstanding the implied divergence of views between these two main players, Well Hall, Gretna and Roe Green survive intact today, almost a century after their creation. They are residential environments highly valued by their residents and are all protected by either conservation-area designation or listed status for many key buildings. In addition they provide impressive evidence of the work of a forgotten corps of talented designers responsible for more than 10,000 houses constructed for British war-workers during the first world war. Roe Green, Kingsbury: the central green (Far left) Roe Green: render-clad houses Roe-Green: brick-finish houses shaded by mature trees. References Swenarton, M (2008) Building the New Jerusalem, IHS BRE Press,Watford Jackson, A (1991) Semi-detached London, Wild Swan Publications, Didcot Alan Johnson, architect and heritage consultant, is author of Understanding the Edwardian and Inter-War House (Crowood Press, 2006).
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