What can we learn from the 1920s and 1930s Plotlands, that might help solve the 2020s housing crisis?
Plotlands books by Stefan Szczelkun
Plotlands of Shepperton by Stefan Szczelkun
Chalet Fields of the Gower by Stefan Szczelkun and Owen Short
Why Plotlands were suppressed as a form of housing by Stefan Szczelkun
Video: UK Forgotten Self-Building Tradition with Stefan Szczelkun on 1920-30s Plotlands, Shepperton & Gower
Plotlands and the Housing Crisis by Stefan Szczelkun
What can we learn from the plotlands, that started in the 1920s and 1930s, that could solve the current housing crisis? The key thing is that one starts with something cheap and small and gradually adds to and evolves this starter structure.
1. Land must be made available for self-build development in a way that does not make the plots prohibitively expensive. Ideally maintaining agricultural value per plot. This might imply a legislative change in planning permissions.
2. This might mean some kind of organisation structure that obtains and holds the land for this use. Users could get secure land tenure when they had proved their commitment and availability to build. Resale could only recoup investment made in building materials etc. Additional value might go back into providing more land.
3. Planners would have to be ready to accept a rough and ready aesthetic to start with. With the knowledge from plotlands that the houses will gradually achieve a more coherent architectural aesthetic as they develop over a decade or two. The appreciation of improvisation might require a light hand from Building regulation and planning? Keeping in mind their higher purpose of communal well-being.
4. A motorhome could provide basic amenities at first as the building goes through its initial stages. ie groundwork and initial shelter. Cost of a second-hand motorhome or converting a van could be as low as £5000.
5. The cost of initial ground works (ideally collectivised for 10 or more dwellings) and basic enclosure would constitute a basic level of investment. It would be good if this could be in the region of £20 – £30,000. At this point permanent occupation as a first home would be expected in exchange for security of tenure and a rent to pay back land costs.
6. The initial shelter might be as simple as a single living space with kitchen and bathroom as per motorhome technology. The structure of this space might be a factory made and insulated timber structure. Or, depending on the site and building skills available, the walls might be rammed earth, straw bale, stone or other material as available locally. Recycling of window and door units?
Designed so additional rooms can be added to external walls or through subdivision of the internal space with internal panels.
7. An architectural reference to the ‘Low cost, loose fit, low energy, long life’. Promoted by Alex Gordon in 1972 also Alison Ravetz.
8. This could be applied to multi-storey re-used structure – with a more challenging aesthetics? (although they could be developed behind an agreed skin/ cladding.
Multi-storey flats would be built by a co-operative of builders that included training in required skills.
Groups plan the internal layout and surface finishes of their own flats.
9. The original plotlands used railway carriages, showman’s wagons or buses as the starter shelter. There could be a national reuse of all lorry bodies and larger vans coming to the end of their mechanical life. These might only need insulation and ventilation to be useful.
10. More abstractly: a. The working class produces all value including housing. b. The UK Plotlands shows us what was possible when working class people were allowed half a chance in the 1920s and 1930s. Surviving examples needs to be recognised and protected as our working class cultural heritage. This recognition that we have the power to directly solve our basic human needs is empowering.
11. National extent: Bower, Richard 2021. Lost plotlands: regulatory consequences of forgotten places. Town Planning Review 92 (5) , pp. 643-666. 10.3828/tpr.2021.8
Bowers points to the significance of JA Steers (1944) remarkable walked survey of the British coast in which he identified plotlands as ‘areas of bad scattered development’!
Full Res maps and paper here: https://orca.cardiff.ac.uk/id/eprint/135909/1/R%20Bower%202020%20Plotlands%20TPR%20post%20print.pdf
Set amongst the houseboat community on the Thames near Fulham, A.P.Herbert’s popular 1930 novel, The Water Gypsies, portrayed a collection of people at odds with society. Colin Ward and Dennis Hardy’s research saved Plotlands from the oblivion of official planning histories
Photographer Jason Orton and writer Ken Worpole documented the changing landscape and coastline of Essex and East Anglia, particularly its estuaries, islands and urban edgelands. In 2013 they published their second book, The New English Landscape (Field Station | London, 2013), the second edition of which was published in 2015.
