42 CONTEXT 182 : DECEMBER 2024 These estates have been threatened not just by lack of maintenance and poorly thoughtthrough repairs but also by pressures on local authorities to increase housing provision. Densifying existing estates, building on land already in local authority ownership, was seen as a low-cost alternative to acquiring new sites, and a strategy less likely to be thwarted by nimby objectors. In Lambeth in particular, passionate and highly motivated local residents put up far more resistance than councillors and staff probably anticipated. However, they lacked the extra ammunition which listing would have given them to defend the high quality not just of their existing homes but of the inspired and extremely humane estate layouts which had successfully delivered a strong sense of community. In Scotland, in contrast, Leith’s iconic Cables Wynd House (popularly known as the ‘Banana Flats’ because of its long, bent, slab-block form) was listed at Category A in 2017. They ‘have entered into popular culture thanks to fictional character Simon “Sick Boy” Williamson, residing in the “Bananay [sic] Flats” in local author Irvine Welsh’s novel Trainspotting’, noted Historic Environment Scotland, also emphasising their ‘international excellence in modernist urban design’.1 HES has also robustly defended the listing of post-war blocks by Aberdeen City architects department and has just completed public consultation on the listing of a medium-rise mass housing scheme at Woodside, Glasgow, designed and built between 1970 and 1974 by Glasgow architectural practice Boswell, Mitchell and Johnston. While there has been an enormous positive evolution in the approach to the conservation of post-war housing exemplified by the differences between Phases 1 and 2 of Park Hill flats in Sheffield (the first stripping back to just the concrete frame and replacing everything else, the latter very much conservation-led), Historic England now needs a catch-up on listing. Hopefully the success of Park Hill, shortlisted for the RIBA Stirling Prize, will allay fears that listing post-war housing is trying to preserve the unpreservable. Moreover, with so much current interest in how to build much-needed new housing, there has never been a better moment to celebrate past achievements and learn from excellent examples. 1 https://www. historicenvironment. scot/about-us/news/ iconic-leith-flatsrecognised-at-highestlisting-category/ Catherine Croft is director of the Twentieth Century Society. Category A, Cables Wynd House in Leith, Edinburgh, known locally as the ‘Banana Flats’. (Photo: Alison and Hutchinson & Partners) One of the more recently turned down listing submissions made by the city council and local residents’ groups is Central Hill Estate, Norwood. (Photo: John East/ C20 Society) Cressingham Gardens Estate in Tulse Hill, designed by architects at the London Borough of Lambeth, led by Ted Hollamby. (Photo: John East/C20 Society)
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