C O N T E X T 8 8 : M A R C H 2 0 0 5 21 GRAHAM TITE and STEVE CROW Celebrating the Progress Estate The Progress Estate, a 1915 garden suburb that was greatly admired and became an inspiration for much inter-war housing design, has been a conservation area since 1971. The Well Hall area of Eltham in the London Borough of Greenwich contains a key example of the development of mass housing in Britain during its first, heroic era. Much of the initial idealism of the creators of the Progress Estate can still be felt here, despite the numerous problems of recent decades. Now its recently re-founded residents association points to plans for revival. The estate was constructed in a rapid campaign that started in 1915.The residents are using the 90th anniversary in 2005 to launch a series of publicity events. Originally built to house World War I munitions employees at the nearby Woolwich Arsenal arms factory, the scheme was commissioned by the Office of Works. The drawings were prepared at Westminster under the direction of Sir Frank Baines. The style of the small houses and their planning layout owed a great deal to the precepts of Sir Ebenezer Howard (1850–1928). He had founded the Garden City Association in 1899 and began building two model settlements in Hertfordshire: Letchworth (1903) and Welwyn Garden City (1919). Other developments of model dwellings in the same genre for workers had been attempted by even earlier pioneers at Bournville (1879) and Port Sunlight (1888). The Progress Estate brought the garden city movement to the outskirts of the capital in a spectacular manner. It produced results more picturesque than Letchworth’s. A short time after the end of the Great War the London County Council (LCC) itself took up the construction of more extensive cottage estates (such as the St Helier Estate near Sutton by chief architect G Topham Forrest, 1928–36). The LCC mass housing had a great effect on the topography and architectural character of large tracts of outer London. A visit to St Helier, for example, will immediately reveal the close resemblance such developments bear to their important predecessor at Eltham. The significance of the site was recognised as early as 1971 when it was designated one of the borough’s earliest conservation areas (another being Eltham Palace and its surroundings farther up the hill at Eltham). Fortunately, there had been no demolitions prior to 1971 other than those necessitated by wartime damage, so the entire estate of houses and its planned open spaces was transferred virtually intact into conservation area status. During the same years, portions of the estate were in the early stages of being sold off to individual owner occupiers. As this sales process accelerated, an Article 4 direction was applied in 1973 to all 1,300 houses. Again, the measure was well in advance of such restrictions being applied to the development rights of owners in historic areas elsewhere. In 1976 a photographic record of every property on the Progress Estate was made in order to provide visual evidence of the status quo that these controls were intended to maintain. Today the estate’s plan is 100 per cent intact. Two thirds of it are to the east of Well Hall Road and are bisected by RochesterWay.The remaining third is west of Well Hall Road. In all three sub-areas most roads wind and rise up gentle slopes to create picturesque, rural-looking scenes with triangular open greens placed at virtually every corner end. The Progress Estate is adjoined on all sides by conventional housing developments, originating from both before and after 1915. The banality of their layouts stands in striking contrast to the interesting scenes within the conservation area. Houses onWell Hall Road in the early days of the estate (far left) and today (left).The estate was built rapidly in the first world war to house munitions workers.
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