Today's geography quiz - and today's weather. Looking from FBC to LRDC (that's council housing at the very top of the hill, centre-left).

'It's the most wonderful time of the year' and nothing captures that better than Corby Borough Council's Christmas Card of 2013. Season's greetings one and all.

China clay and du Maurier - very Fowey.

My new post celebrates the life and work of Sidney Colwyn Foulkes, an important regional architect and designer of some of the finest council housing in the land. There's a free access article that you can download and a new book by Adam Voelker: municipaldreams.wordpress.com/2025/12/16/s...

🚨 What makes a so-called 'sink estate'? My new post examines perceptions and realities and the successes and failures of regeneration - the Raffles Estate, Carlisle; from showpiece to an alleged part of 'No-Go Britain' municipaldreams.substack.com/p/the-raffle...

My new post celebrates the life and work of Sidney Colwyn Foulkes, an important regional architect and designer of some of the finest council housing in the land. There's a free access article that you can download and a new book by Adam Voelker: municipaldreams.wordpress.com/2025/12/16/s...

A lovely celebration of 'a fine city'

Really good series of posts from the Society for the Study of Labour History @sslh.bsky.social , on Places in Labour History: sslh.org.uk/tag/place-in... #History #LabourHistory

Grevenstraat, Leiden, the Netherlands: late 1930s social housing, now owned and managed by the non-profit Portaal housing corporation. Fully renovated in 2020.

🏆 Our C20 Activist of the Year 2025 award goes to… The protectors of the Sheringham Bus Shelter! Their 9-day occupation of the humble 1950s shelter earlier this month thwarted an attempted demolition by Norfolk County Council, attracted nationwide media coverage and even drew support from the PM.

1/ Generations of social housing in Lenham, Kent: The Grade II-listed Douglas Almshouses, mid-19th century. The merged Honywood and Douglas Charity now manages 29 homes in the village.

Two English icons in Thetford. Thomas Paine (b. Thetford 1737); statue by Charles Thomas Wheeler, 1963 and Captain Mainwaring (Walmington-on-Sea but filmed locally); statue by Sean Hedges-Quinn, 2010. [Grade II listed cast-iron bridge over Little Ouse, 1829, to rear.]

🚨 What makes a so-called 'sink estate'? My new post examines perceptions and realities and the successes and failures of regeneration - the Raffles Estate, Carlisle; from showpiece to an alleged part of 'No-Go Britain' municipaldreams.substack.com/p/the-raffle...

🚨 New post. You may not have heard of Sidney Colwyn Foulkes but he was one of Britain’s most significant regional architects and the designer of some of its finest council housing. Adam Voelcker recounts his life and work. municipaldreams.wordpress.com/2025/12/16/s...

🚨 New post. You may not have heard of Sidney Colwyn Foulkes but he was one of Britain’s most significant regional architects and the designer of some of its finest council housing. Adam Voelcker recounts his life and work. municipaldreams.wordpress.com/2025/12/16/s...

Thamesmead - The First Areas. This is undated, but appears to be from around 1976: A GLC brochure outlining the work done on the initial Thamesmead areas (I, II ,IIA and IIID). This first phase of work produced nearly 4,200 dwellings.

In the 1950s the man in charge of Oxfordshire's roads didn't like the UK's road signs, so he invented his own. The Ministry hated them - first because they weren't allowed, and second because they were better than the real thing. www.roads.org.uk/articles/oxf...

Fulmerston's Almshouses, Thetford: 1610, remodelled late C19. Sir Richard Fulmerston's will left funds and land for a free school for 30 boys and alms for four poor people. The plaque quotes Hebrews 12: 14: 'Follow Peace and Holiness with all men without the which no man shall see the lord'.

The avowedly 'anti-socialist' council of Carlisle built 4702 houses in the interwar period; by 1939 27 percent of homes in Carlisle were Council-rented. In its words 'careful housekeeping’ combined with ‘good and progressive government for the city’. municipaldreams.substack.com/p/carlisles-...

The avowedly 'anti-socialist' council of Carlisle built 4702 houses in the interwar period; by 1939 27 percent of homes in Carlisle were Council-rented. In its words 'careful housekeeping’ combined with ‘good and progressive government for the city’. municipaldreams.substack.com/p/carlisles-...

With the grand reopening last weekend of Hornsey Town Hall - 'the quintessential English modern public building' of the 1930s - it's a good time to revisit my earlier post on the building and its history (with some pre-restoration pics): municipaldreams.substack.com/p/hornsey-to...

1/ Thetford Guildhall - designed by Herbert John Green in neoclassical style and completed in 1901; the former home of Thetford Borough Council. Inside, there is a small display commemorating Britain's first black mayor, Allan Glaisyer Minns.

An eclectic range of post-Second World War council housing all found in the small Prospect Road estate in Norton, Suffolk. Built by Thedwastre Rural District Council.

🚨 New post. Carlisle: the self-declared 'anti-socialist' council committed to 'careful housekeeping … good and progressive government’ that built proportionately more council housing than any other between the wars. municipaldreams.substack.com/p/carlisles-...

🚨 New post. Carlisle: the self-declared 'anti-socialist' council committed to 'careful housekeeping … good and progressive government’ that built proportionately more council housing than any other between the wars. municipaldreams.substack.com/p/carlisles-...

'Campaigners who have been protesting to try to save a 1950s bus shelter from demolition are celebrating after a town council voted to save the structure.' www.bbc.co.uk/news/article...

Rural Housing Chipping Norton @municipaldreams.bsky.social

The fight to save Sheringham's 1950s 'Streamline Moderne art-deco design' bus shelter (where I used to catch the bus to school from) has now made the national news: www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2025...

It's all kicking off in my home town of Sheringham over proposals to demolish this 'Streamline Moderne art-deco design' bus shelter from the 1950s ... www.bbc.co.uk/news/article...

1/ Two C15th misericord carvings (misericords were the ledges on which choristers perched) from St Andrew's, Norton, Suffolk: a cleric studying and a woman carding wool, separating and untangling the strands.

Council housing, Norton, Suffolk

Another example of the far-reaching impact of the 1951 Festival of Britain: the local history exhibition in Blaxhall, Suffolk (pictured Robert Savage and Henry Hewitt). The exhibition was organised by George Ewart Evans, rural historian and author of Ask the Fellows Who Cut the Hay.

This week's new blogpost reviewed Ned Newitt's excellent history of social housing in Leicester: municipaldreams.wordpress.com/2025/12/02/b...

🚨 New on Substack, my post on the postwar Regent’s Park Estate, St Pancras: ‘catering for the main bulk and backbone of our people’ municipaldreams.substack.com/p/the-regent...

Fascinating exhibition on school meals at the @foodmuseumuk.bsky.social. You'll be pleased to see Bradford's pioneering role given due coverage, @rdrberry.bsky.social

🚨 New on Substack, my post on the postwar Regent’s Park Estate, St Pancras: ‘catering for the main bulk and backbone of our people’ municipaldreams.substack.com/p/the-regent...

I'm in Thetford again, @grindrod.bsky.social! It's a good time to remind people about our chat about the town here: johngrindrod.substack.com/p/monstrosit...

An article about an interesting new book by Eoin Ó Brion, ‘Flats and Cottages: Herbert Simms and the Housing of Dublin’s Working Class, 1932–1948’ www.irishnews.com/news/norther...

I'm looking forward to talking with Jessica Field about her fine new book, Eviction: a Social History of Rent, at Bookmarks, Bloomsbury, next Friday 5th December. Free event but reserve your place here: www.eventbrite.co.uk/e/authorsboo...

🚨 New post - my review of Ned Newitt's excellent new book, 'Housing the People of Leicester – a History of Social Housing'. municipaldreams.wordpress.com/2025/12/02/b...

King Charles the Martyr, Selland, and St Mary's, Woolpit, Suffolk; morning and late afternoon.

How I wish this London Transport wonder at Manor House from 1933 had survived! As well as the signpost it masks a tram/trolleybus overhead pole with a remarkable "UD" Underground finail. Sigh.

🚨 New post - my review of Ned Newitt's excellent new book, 'Housing the People of Leicester – a History of Social Housing'. municipaldreams.wordpress.com/2025/12/02/b...

Ah - the usual air of breezy optimism in an 'architects sketch'; this as part of an advert for Fram Russell Construction & the Richmond Park estate in Ashton-under-Lyne from the Borough's 1968/9 official guide. @municipaldreams.bsky.social #housing #architecture ↘️ flic.kr/p/2rJoZty

There’s a few more examples in our post : wp.me/p74yfw-vH

1/ Like the infamous Cutteslowe Walls in Oxford and a wall built at the Downham Estate in south London, we are seeing barriers going up between council estates and their posh neighbours. www.theguardian.com/inequality/2...

'The 'Pillar of Salt': a Grade II-listed road sign designed in International Modern style by Basil Oliver, Borough Architect, for Bury St Edmunds Town Council in 1935.

Attractive scheme of flats on Aylesford High Street/Mount Pleasant, built by Malling Rural District Council in 1968. The plaque gives due credit to C Brown Architect, Engineer and Surveyor to the Council 1954-1967.

The Hufeisensiedlung (Horseshoe Estate), Berlin - a modernist masterpiece designed by Bruno Taut and and built by the socialist trades union housing association, GEHAG between 1925 and 1927. municipaldreams.substack.com/p/the-hufeis...

Ipswich's council housing - ahead of the game according to the c.1949 Official Guide with this aerial view of the borough's Racecourse Housing Estate first laid out according to then 1920s contemporary town planning on the site of the Racecourse that closed in 1911. @municipaldreams.bsky.social