ABSTRACT
The problem of housing the poor has, no doubt, always been with us: but in its recognisably modern form it took shape in the later eighteenth and earlier nineteenth centuries, when the unprecedented growth of population, and particularly urban population, gave it new and quite unforeseen dimensions. The problems then encountered, and the various solutions attempted, laid the basis for modern housing policy and municipal housing. The story of the explosive growth of towns and conurbations, the crisis of services and public health that followed, the belated awakening of public conscience, and the eventual growth of legislation and administration, has been told and must be sought elsewhere. 1 What is important for the purpose of this book is the degree to which they prompted and conditioned the idea and practice of the ‘model estate’.
