ABSTRACT
The extraordinary rate of growth in the first half of the period generated huge housing demand that was, perhaps inevitably, inadequately met. War and greater expectations in a more democratic society caused different pressures in the second half of the period; a difficult post-war housing crisis took 30 years to ease, even against the backdrop of an essentially static population. In the war years around 1800 a credit squeeze, inflation, shifts in favour of contractors at the expense of tradesmen and the industrialisation of supply all combined to entrench greater standardised commodification in housing development, and brought a decline in standards. Deliberately short-life and shabby housing, run up by all manner of mean and minor profiteering speculators, was rife. Demand for housing overall was, as before, overwhelmingly met by speculative leasehold development, low-rise and low-density – ‘miles of silly little dirty houses’, as in the title of Colin Thom’s case study of different housing types in Battersea.
