28 C O N T E X T 1 3 7 : N O V E M B E R 2 0 1 4 LOU ROSENBURG and JOHN ROSSER The Veteran’s Dream The Scottish Veterans’ Garden City Association made one of the most impressive contributions of any voluntary housing body in Scotland during the inter-war period. The Scottish Veterans’ Garden City Association (SVGCA) currently provides over 600 houses on more than 70 sites in Scottish locations, from the border with England north to the line of the Great Glen. The SVGCA is a registered Scottish charity, operating as a private landlord, which builds and maintains housing for selected individuals (and their dependants) who have served in the British armed forces, merchant navy, police or fire brigade, and have become partially or totally disabled while on active duty or after completion of service. The association was founded in 1915, as a direct response to the needs of service personnel who had suffered severe injuries during the initial phase of the first world war. During the first year of the war, as the casualties mounted, severely injured service personnel were being discharged back into civilian life and appearing on the streets of British cities. In Edinburgh, a group of concerned individuals within the local business community began to consider ways of helping needy disabled veterans. The first recorded meeting of this group was held in May 1915. It was convened by an Edinburgh tailor named Alexander Sim, whose son Alistair Sim was later to become a renowned film actor. Within a matter of months, the SVGCA had been formally launched, and an effort was being made to involve other concerned individuals based in Edinburgh and other parts of Scotland. A number of prominent Scots came to participate in this work, including Lord Edward Salvesen, who lost two sons in the war, and Sir Henry Ballantyne, who chaired the Royal Commission on Housing in Scotland appointed in 1912. Initially two types of response were considered. One option was to set up a fund to provide financial assistance for needy families of severely injured service personnel. The second was to provide suitable forms of housing and employment.A decision was taken to focus on the second option.The minutes of a meeting held in October 1915 stated that the association’s primary aims were ‘to raise voluntary subscription and otherwise for the purpose of providing housing on Garden City principles, and to provide housing and employment for men, irrespective of age, who have been partially or totally permanently disabled while serving in His Majesty’s Forces’. Although the early SVGCA annual reports did not elaborate on the underlying garden city principles, there were various references to links with the garden city movement which had clearly established a presence in Scotland before the outbreak of the war. Between 1906 and 1908 two branches of the Garden City Association were established in Edinburgh and Glasgow. Along with other types of promotional activity, the branches organised architectural competitions focusing on the design of working-class cottages. With the passage of the Housing and Town Planning Act 1909, and the promotion of town planning schemes for suburban greenfield land, a serious debate emerged in Scotland on the ‘cottages versus tenements’ question. The SVGCA was founded with the intention of creating small settlements for severely disabled veterans in rural settings, with living accommodation provided in the form of picturesque low-density cottages designed in the garden city style.This vision was conveyed in an emotive painting called ‘TheVeteran’s Dream’, which depicted an injured war veteran day-dreaming about life in a garden city settlement.The painting was obtained during 1915, and the image was used extensively on SVGCA publicity material, including a specially designed postcard. Between 1915 and 1930, the SVGCA evolved as a voluntary body in Scotland with a decentralised network of local branches known as district committees. During this period 15 district committees became SVGCA housing at Pitlochry today, and when it was first built.
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