🚨 New on Substack: my post on the Honor Oak Estate, Lewisham - to some 'a successful endeavour to provide suitable hygienic accommodation for the poorer classes' and to others 'a warning for planners’ municipaldreams.substack.com/p/the-honor-...

Reminds me of Newtongrange, Midlothian. The Lothian Coal Company built the village using subsidiary building companies. Tenants/employees kept in check by heavy-handed paternalism. The Dean pub, run as a Gothenburg pub, is still community owned. #coal #mining #housing flic.kr/p/2pNkeDD

🚨 New on Substack: my post on the Honor Oak Estate, Lewisham - to some 'a successful endeavour to provide suitable hygienic accommodation for the poorer classes' and to others 'a warning for planners’ municipaldreams.substack.com/p/the-honor-...

From my train for those in the know.

From my train for those in the know.

1/ New Bolsover, Derbyshire: a model village built between 1891 and 1896 by the Bolsover Colliery Company for its workers to the designs of Arthur Brewill and Basil Baily. It comprised a double horseshoe of houses arranged around a central 'village' green and also included ...

@municipaldreams.bsky.social appears to have been in Derby of late so - some Trusteel system housing construction from the c.1947 official handbook "Spotlight on Derby" showing the 21-house constructed by the Corporation's Building Works Dept as part of the post-war housing drive. flic.kr/p/2rDuo3f

Here's the excellent programme of the Writeidea Festival organised by Tower Hamlets Council, 21-23 November. All events free but need to be booked. (If you look carefully, you'll see I'm playing a bit part alongside the estimable @peteapps.bsky.social.) www.ideastore.co.uk/whats-on/wri...

This research and the planning vision it reveals is really quite something ...

1/ I need some local experts to properly decipher this 1860 boundary marker for the Borough of Derby for me but it's a wonderful insight into the patchwork nature of local government in the mid-nineteenth century.

Another informative, witty and intriguing podcast from John Grindrod. If you don’t listen to Monstrosities Mon Amour…you really should. It’s good for you and you will enjoy it and…well you just should. So there. That’s it.

I always enjoy Modern Mooch's rambles - usually some historical and contemporary photography and a bit of history, all going to offer a perspective into some usually unheralded piece of public architecture. Here he is on Manchester's Brunswick Estate: modernmooch.com/2025/11/03/b...

In WWII they had discussion groups - even the soldiers were paid to discuss things and had specialist publications provided for them via the Secretary of State for War. cambridgetownowl.com/2025/11/01/h... Can we bring back this wartime innovation? (ie local discussion groups).

Some late 16th century modernism: 'Hardwick Hall, more glass than wall', Derbyshire.

This week's Substack post tells the story of Brighton's interwar council housing. There's a new post every Thursday in your inbox if you subscribe. municipaldreams.substack.com/p/brightons-...

This is me with the wonderful @grindrod.bsky.social talking about the London overspill town of Thetford - 60s' optimistic progressivism incarnate - and ... white bread. Enjoy. open.substack.com/pub/johngrin...

Light show, St Oswald's Church, Ashbourne, Derbyshire.

Another installment in the surprising reach of the 1951 Festival of Britain: the scale model of the Midland Railway completed for the Festival in the then Derby Borough Museum. Now located in the Silk Mill Museum of Making.

🚨 New on Substack: Brighton built a lot of fine council housing between the wars but could it make it affordable to the working class? My post on Brighton’s Interwar Council Housing Estates: ‘Housewives with empty larders’ municipaldreams.substack.com/p/brightons-...

Long Row, Belper: housing built by William Strutt, 1794-1797 for the workers of his new cotton mill - one of the world's first factories and some of its earliest industrial housing.

This is me with the wonderful @grindrod.bsky.social talking about the London overspill town of Thetford - 60s' optimistic progressivism incarnate - and ... white bread. Enjoy. open.substack.com/pub/johngrin...

🚨 New on Substack: Brighton built a lot of fine council housing between the wars but could it make it affordable to the working class? My post on Brighton’s Interwar Council Housing Estates: ‘Housewives with empty larders’ municipaldreams.substack.com/p/brightons-...

Penshurst Kent Parish Council Housing 1900 Jane Escombe municipaldreams.wordpress.com/category/kent/ @municipaldreams.bsky.social

Good morning.

Gell's Bedehouses (almshouses), Wirksworth, Derbyshire. Founded by Anthony Gell in 1584; modified in 1963 and, following a £400,000k grant from Derbyshire Dales District Council, thoroughly modernised tin 2024 to provide four energy-efficient social rent homes.

'T’owd Man of Bonsall' - a Saxon sculpture of a lead miner in St Mary's, Wirksworth. Plus, the 'Wirksworth Stone', a Saxon grave cover depicting scenes from the life of Christ and another Saxon fragment of a Nativity scene.

Wirksworth Town Hall: designed by AB Bradby for the local freemasons in Italianate style as a market hall and events venue in 1873; the headquarters of Wirksworth Urban District Council from 1904 to 1974. Now housing the local library.

Today's quiz question: I'm on my travels. Anyone guess where I am?

Made by Holborn Trades Council, the leaflet survived as part of the Trades Union Congress archives Author Peter Abrahams, future organiser of the 5th Pan-African Congress in Manchester, spoke at the protest meeting advertised on the leaflet's other side cdm21047.contentdm.oclc.org/digital/coll...

🚨 Amelia King, volunteering for the Women's Land Army in 1943, was rejected by Essex farmers. This week's Substack post on John Scurr House in Stepney looks at the racial discrimination suffered by residents and its later redevelopment. municipaldreams.substack.com/p/john-scurr...

🚨 Amelia King, volunteering for the Women's Land Army in 1943, was rejected by Essex farmers. This week's Substack post on John Scurr House in Stepney looks at the racial discrimination suffered by residents and its later redevelopment. municipaldreams.substack.com/p/john-scurr...

We all, quite rightly, have our issues with AI but it's hard to argue with this. 😊 www.perplexity.ai/search/which...

In case you missed it, here is a link to the great @municipaldreams.bsky.social blog and review of my new book: municipaldreams.wordpress.com/2025/03/25/b... "Clayton’s book is not only a powerful evocation of past ideals and practice but a call to action."

1/ Interesting piece by @PeteApps on cooperative housing in Zurich. Switzerland is a country which shows how well high quality public housing serves a mixed community. See also the next tweet in which I write about Zurich's municipal housing ... www.theguardian.com/commentisfre...

🚨 New on Substack: today's post looks at the evolution of Stepney's model tenement block John Scurr House: the controversial politics of race that marked it, and the major refurbishment that transformed it: municipaldreams.substack.com/p/john-scurr...

A few more digitised at archive.org/details/@ant...

This is a fantastically interesting piece. Take a look at the proposed community centre and weep for the world we lost that might have been.

The Rietveld Schröder House, Utrecht: designed by Gerrit Rietveld for Truus Schröder and her three children in 1924 - 'an icon of the Modern Movement in architecture and an outstanding expression of ... the De Stijl movement'. A UNESCO World Heritage site.

This week's Substack post tells the story of how one London Labour Party came to accept the need for multi-storey housing and how Stepney's John Scurr House became the first municipal development to be accepted for the Royal Academy's annual exhibition: municipaldreams.substack.com/p/john-scurr...

In a week when a new almshouse scheme in Southwark won the prestigious Stirling Prize for excellence in architecture, it was good to visit some of the wonderful historic 'hofjes' (courtyard almshouses) of Haarlem and Leiden - still fulfilling their founding purpose.

This week's Substack post tells the story of how one London Labour Party came to accept the need for multi-storey housing and how Stepney's John Scurr House became the first municipal development to be accepted for the Royal Academy's annual exhibition: municipaldreams.substack.com/p/john-scurr...

See also this guide to Leicester City Council's services at archive.org/details/3904... from 1939. "... a comprehensive yet superbly accessible guide to the city, its functions, and its governance structures. The sort of guide every city should have."

I'm very pleased to have received my copy of Ned Newitt's thoroughly researched and finely illustrated history of social housing in Leicester. I recommend it not just to locals but to anyone interested in our housing history. waterstones.com/book/housing...

This is the most "fuck you!" planning application I have ever seen, and I've seen a few. One for the album, @municipaldreams.bsky.social. This is what we get, now the public housing dream has died. I imagine it has already informed @dsquareddigest.bsky.social's views on planning law reform or not.

New on Substack: John Scurr House, Stepney: ‘Stepney Council’s New Luxury Flats’ municipaldreams.substack.com/p/john-scurr...

Two decades of #localgov austerity 🙁 If anyone wonders why town centres look so dilapidated despite council tax rises (which councils have little choice in given statutory duties to provide services)

New on Substack: John Scurr House, Stepney: ‘Stepney Council’s New Luxury Flats’ municipaldreams.substack.com/p/john-scurr...

Neude Library, Utrecht; formerly the main post office. Built 1917-1924 to a design of the Amsterdam School by Joseph Crouwel. Statuary by Hendrik van den Eijnde.

Former police station, Leiden; designed in the style of the Amsterdam School by Jan Neisingh in 1927.