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municipaldreams.bsky.social
Social historian of housing. Author of 'A History of Council Housing in 100 Estates' (RIBA Books) and 'Municipal Dreams: the Rise and Fall of Council Housing' (Verso). I blog at https://municipaldreams.wordpress.com/.
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From 1951, extracts from a “Facts & Figures” booklet produced by the London County Council, featuring Hainult housing estate, Waterloo Bridge and the LCC in session.

submitted 2 hours ago • 1 comment

Towerhill, Gomshall: early post-Second World War council housing built by Guildford Rural District Council

submitted 8 hours ago • 0 comments

We went to see Witness for the Prosecution at County Hall today - I hadn’t been inside the Council Chamber before, so I have ticked that off my list… Some pics from earlier:

submitted 23 hours ago • 3 comments

Old Fire Station, Shere, Surrey; built for the Shere and Albury Voluntary Fire Brigade in 1885. For more info and some film of the brigade in action in 1899, click on the link. www.sheredelight.com/fiire.html

submitted 1 day ago • 0 comments

Pathfields, Shere, Surrey: council housing built by Guildford Rural District Council - the first built under the 1919 Housing Act, the last completed in the 1930s.

submitted 1 day ago • 1 comment

For @grindrod.bsky.social (who's just visited Padbury) and for my own self-indulgence, a photo - undated - of my grandfather Fred holding the banner of the Padbury Sick Benefit Society,

submitted 2 days ago • 2 comments

This week's new Substack post: Hornsey Town Hall, Crouch End: ‘the quintessential English modern public building of the decade’ municipaldreams.substack.com/p/hornsey-to...

submitted 2 days ago • 1 comment

Given that Runcorn is in the news, here's the story of Runcorn New Town ... born in more hopeful times: municipaldreams.wordpress.com/2024/07/02/r...

submitted 3 days ago • 5 comments

Happy May Day! Bermondsey Metropolitan Borough Council took it seriously as this float in a 1930s May Day parade shows but then the new health centre and free dentistry made a real difference to working-class lives.

submitted 4 days ago • 2 comments

🚨'Space Syntax: Selected Papers by Bill Hillier' now available open access. Includes papers on architecture as a professional and research discipline through to later papers presenting a theory of the spatial structure of the city and its social functions. uclpress.co.uk/book/space-s...

submitted 4 days ago • 1 comment

🚨 New on Substack: Hornsey Town Hall, Crouch End - ‘the quintessential English modern public building of the decade’ municipaldreams.substack.com/p/hornsey-to...

submitted 4 days ago • 0 comments

Not too many posts recently as we've been walking the magnificent North Downs Way between Guildford and Dorking. Who knew Surrey was quite so beautiful?

submitted 4 days ago • 4 comments

1/ Good to be back in Bristol at the weekend and to walk through parts of the Redcliffe redevelopment scheme first planned in the 1950s (Waring House and Patterson House shown and a 1956 architect's drawing of the overall scheme shown below).

submitted 7 days ago • 2 comments

Coming your way ...

submitted 7 days ago • 1 comment

The Dover House Estate, Putney: the London County Council's first post-IWW estate - 'a ‘show place in its day … visited by many from all over the world.’ municipaldreams.substack.com/p/the-dover-...

submitted 7 days ago • 2 comments

Beautiful housing and an interesting backstory...

submitted 7 days ago • 0 comments

Two photographs of Dolemeads, Bath; the first taken in 1901 towards the railway viaduct; the second taken yesterday from it, showing the development of Bath City Council's housing scheme officially opened in July 1901. (New housing extreme left in first image, raised to avoid flooding.)

submitted 8 days ago • 0 comments

The GLC maintaining those earlier conventions at Drummond House, Hackney, built by the London County Council in 1950.

submitted 8 days ago • 0 comments

'One quarter of residents in the French capital live in government-owned housing, part of an aggressive plan to keep lower-income Parisians — and their businesses — in the city. www.nytimes.com/2024/03/17/r...

submitted 8 days ago • 2 comments

Fred Millet sculpture at the LCC’s Raglan Estate (1965).

submitted 8 days ago • 4 comments

@municipaldreams.bsky.social LCC planning ahead, as usual.

submitted 9 days ago • 1 comment

On my way to Bristol where I'll be speaking at the Radical History Festival ... www.brh.org.uk/site/events/...

submitted 9 days ago • 4 comments

1928 & three of Birmingham's Estates Department's pre-WW1 schemes; in Hall Green & King's Heath under the Addison, Chamberlain & Wheatley 'Acts'. The city had a shortfall of 14,000 homes & a list of 27,000 applicants. #housing #planning #birmingham @municipaldreams.bsky.social

submitted 10 days ago • 0 comments

I love the front cover of my last book - a photograph of Durford Crescent, Alton East, c1970, colourised by Sarah-Louise Deazley; the original © Architectural Press Archive/RIBA Library Photographs Collection. An image of council housing as home, decent housing for many millions.

submitted 10 days ago • 1 comment

May I humbly exhort everyone who reads this to follow, and read all of Municipal Dreams' stuff, here and on Substack. It's all hugely valuable, and just very interesting.

submitted 10 days ago • 1 comment

This is a fascinating interview on the early cooperative housing movement in Britain (and I commend the Red Heaven Oral History archive more broadly). www.redheavenproject.com/episodes/co-...

submitted 11 days ago • 1 comment