Noel Park Estate: a so-called Victorian garden suburb

Whilst other philanthropic housing companies such as the Peabody Trust and the Improved Industrial Dwellings Company focused on multi-storey, inner-city blocks of flats, the Artizans, Labourers & GeneralDwellings Company aimed at building low-rise housing in open countryside alongside existing railway lines. The company was dedicated to providing decent accommodation for the working classes at a time when overcrowding and squalid living conditions were rife amongst the poor. A location near a railway station would allow workers to live in the countryside and commute into the city.

The Noel Park Estate was designed to provide affordable housing for working-class families wishing to leave the inner city. As a break from the norm every property had a front and rear garden. It was planned from the outset as a self-contained community close enough to the rail network to allow its residents to commute to work. In line with the principles of the Artizans Company's founder, William Austin, no public houses were built within the estate, and there are still none today. Noel Park is known as one of the earliest garden suburbs in the world, although it predates the Ebenezer Howard Book Garden Cities of tomorrow. As such it is a predecessor of the Garden City Movement and one of the founts of inspirations for it.

In 1882 the Artizans, Labourers & General Dwellings Company acquires Ducketts Farm near Wood Green. This 40 hectare estate belonged to Dovecote Manor (later styled Duckett Manor) and stretched from the Moselle River southwards to Ducketts Common and Turnpike Lane. This project, the third for this dwellings company, was named after its president Ernest Noel, also liberal MP for Dumfries in Scotland. Building work started in 1883 and lasted until 1902. The layout is again a grid of long parallel streets running most of the length of the site. All the streets are named for board members of the Artizans, Labourers & General Dwellings Company. The same is true of the small park southeast of the estate known as Russell Park. This park is sometimes mistakenly referred to as Noel Park.

This late-19th-century planned community consists of some 2.200 model dwellings, all designed by Rowland Plumbe in the Gothic Revival Style. Plumbe designed the estate with five classes of houses. Although the houses were built to the same five basic designs, each street was given a distinct style of design and ornamentation. Varying mixes of red and yellow bricks, and variations in window design and ornamental motifs were used to give each street a distinct identity. Corner houses were given distinctive designs and turrets. The housing provided included semidetached houses, terraced family houses and small "one up-one down" apartments.

The original concept was to combine new housing for a mix of social classes with social facilities such as meeting rooms, school rooms, a wash house and baths, and to provide integral open space. To avoid the social problems caused by cheap alcohol a pub wasn't included. Near Wood Green two churches, a Community Hall and a primary school were built. The dwellings in the highest class are located here. On the High Road the company built several shops.

This model dwellings estate shows a typical Victorian grid layout. The northern edge is formed by the partially culverted Moselle River (M). On the opposite side  Russell Park (RP) is located. The focal point is located on one side of the estate near the former village of Wood Green and the High Street with two churches (C), a Community Hall (H) and a primary school (S). Between the highest class housing around the churches and the former railway sidings (RS) a number of railway cottages (R) were developed as part of the estate. The non-original building substance is shown crosshatched, most constitute WW2 bombsites (B).

After 1888 when the train company refused to carry cheaper fares for workers, the development of the estate halted. There were at the time already 7.000 people living here though. After 1900 the southern section of the estate was completed. By 1935 the whole estate was surrounded by other developments, mainly suburban housing estates. This was the result of the extension of the underground railway to Wood Green in 1932. In 1965 the area within the Municipal Borough of Wood Green in Middlesex was incorporated into the newly created Greater London Borough of Haringey.

In 1982 most of the estate was given Conservation Area Status as an example of philanthropic model housing of the Victorian Era.

Hip, hipper, Hippeastrum

Commonly known as "Amaryllis" the bulbs grown indoors to bloom at Christmas invariably belong to the South-American genus Hippeastrum. The name Amaryllis is conserved for bulbs originating from South Africa. When not prepared to flower in December the bulbs will flower later, mostly at the end of winter and in early spring. I keep my bulbs for years in cramped pots, which they seem to love. With new methods of propagation the bulbs have become cheaper and are now seen more often in modern and hip interiors as floral accents or as cut flowers.

The red varieties of Hippeastrum are mostly derived from Hippeastrum reginae and H. blossfeldiae. These complex hybrids have bright red petals in a cluster of 3-5 flowers atop a hollow stem that sprouts from the centre of a bottle-shaped bulb. Some cultivars have at least double the number of tepals (middle: H. 'Double Delicious'). The bulbs are kept dry over autumn an often lose their leaves. Some however are evergreen and should be watered slightly during their resting period. 

Shaftesbury Park Estate: Gothic Revival model dwellings

The streets are laid out on a grid pattern of long parallel streets flanked by long terraces. The streets are tree-lined with small trees mostly small fruit trees such as Hawthorn, Flowering plum, June Berry, Rowan, Whitebeam and Service Tree.

Every terrace has a moulded plaque above the entrances indicating the year of construction. The oldest housing have these triangular entrance gables carried by two red brick arches on three corbels. Al the decorative elements have been given a contrasting white colour. Thus lifting the rather gloomy dark yellow brick used for most of the facade.

The streetscape with similar long terraces on either side of the street make this a very distinctive housing estate. The tiny front gardens don't add much to the scene, due to the walls edging them.

The greatest variation in the houses, that for each class share the same floor plan, is achieved in the treatment of the entrances. On the left shallow pointed arches are used to give access to the side-by-side front doors of these homes with mirrored floor plans. On the right a squared-off variation on the triangular entrance. These houses don't have the decorative moulded plaques.

Another terrace, here with angled bay frontage and red brick dressings, also along the arches over the entrances. Also note the decorative dentil course in red brick below the guttering and the fire walls that protrude above the roof.

Turrets are employed as an architectural device in the Gothic Revival style. O the left a house with the entrance in a castellated turret. The white awning over the door mimics gothic shapes. Bands of red brick create interest in the facade. In a few places a long terrace is emphasised by a turret at the end, always on a visible corner. These turrets have windows with shallow pointed arches, a dentil course under the roof and a pointed roof like a witches hat.

Where short side streets meet the long parallel streets of the grid the corners are given no extra or special attention. The blocks simply abut the pavement. This lack of treatment of corners is indicative of Victorian urban design.

This decorative double commercial unit was included for local shops (baker and green grocer). Small turrets emphasise the two individual shops, whilst in between a door gives access to the apartments above. The primary school (on the right) had dedicated entrances for boys and girls, each with their own playground. This separate education was the norm in the Victorian Era.

A typical street with similar housing on each side. Each has a slightly different treatment of the entrances, creating some degree of local identity within the estate. On the whole the estate is very similar in overall appearance, however.

Shaftesbury Park Estate: a Victorian model dwellings project

A large section of Battersea Fields, also known as Pig Hill, near the Thames was acquired in 1872 by the Artizans, Labourers &General Dwellings Company for the realisation of their first socially mixed housing estate. The estate occupies a flat area of land at the edge of the flood plain just north of the slope rising to Clapham Common. Historically the poorly drained common land of Battersea Fields was used for pig herding. Two large ditches cut across to drain the land into the River Effra and Falcon Brook.

At the same time the housing co-operative was planning their house-building activities, the social reformer and peer, the 7th Earl of Shaftesbury was pushing legislation through parliament to improve the living and employment conditions of working people and was sponsoring philanthropic efforts to provide schooling for their children. Under Shaftesbury's guardianship new so-called Ragged Schools were established providing free education in 1844. In 1872 Lord Shaftesbury, as president of the Ragged School Union, laid the foundation-stone of buildings at the estate, thus giving it it's name.

The street plan and house designs were by the Dwellings Company's architect and surveyor, Robert Austin, formerly a carpenter with the company. However, financial difficulties, caused by poor accounting, led to replacement of the directors of the company and a change of approach during the construction of the estate. The initial idea was to build small housing projects for sale, the profits of which would be invested in larger estates of affordable rented housing. Rents and lease prices were raised, excluding many lower paid workers who were originally intended to benefit, and the planned area of open space - Brassey Square in the centre of the estate- was built over. Greenery was thus limited to the small back garden and the small fruit trees lining the streets.

The estate is located behind Lavender Hill (L). The streets are laid out on a grid pattern of long parallel streets with shorter cross streets. At the centre a large public garden (green outline) was planned on Brassey Square (B), but this was built over. It is here that we find the primary school (PS), a large former hostel (H), a block of flats (F) and a block of shops with apartments (S). A former Victorian secondary school (SS) is located just outside the estate.

The estate was built between 1873 and 1877 along a grid of wide tree-lined streets and comprises about 1.200 two-storey houses with gardens. The houses of the Shaftesbury Park Estate are of four basic types or classes distinguished by the number of rooms. Only the highest class originally had bathrooms. The street elevations are varied slightly to avoid monotony, creating generally attractive street frontages in a gothic revival style so typical of the Victorian Era.

The buildings are consistently of stock brick with red brick dressings and pitched slate roofs, which with the common architectural style, gives the estate a strong sense of identity and distinctiveness. The grid layout, with streets of varying lengths but always straight (except Eversleigh Road, which is aligned with the railway embankment), allows for easy movement throughout the estate. There is a sense of formality in the townscape arising from the grid layout and the repetition in the building frontages.

At present the Peabody Trust owns most of the estate, but many homes are already privately owned, and the number keeps rising as the Trust gradually releases more units for sale.