ABSTRACT
The decline in housebuilding during the years leading up to 1914, the virtual suspension of all construction during the war and the collapse of the small property investment market were not the only aspects of the post-war problem. In the emotional hothouse of wartime and the subsequent demobilisation the number of marriages accelerated and the average age of marriage fell. In July 1922, the Evening News illustrated a complete staircase and a bath taken out of one of these relatively new houses and offered for resale as the walls came down. Housing was to become a social service as those in power saw the necessity of legislation on a national scale, changing the voluntary basis of local authority provision to an obligation. A provision of the 1923 Act giving local authorities power to guarantee payments by house purchasers to building societies stimulated the construction of large numbers of unsubsidised private houses.
