The Social Background of a Plan

A Study of Middlesbrough

Ruth Glass

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2013
• Print ISBN:
  9780415177061
• eBook ISBN:
  9781136258862
• Topic: Social Sciences
• Subtopic: Sociology
• Index: Social Sciences

This is Volume X of thirteen in a series on Urban and Regional Sociology. First published in 1948, this study uses Middlesbrough in the North East of England as a basis of research into the new Town and Country Planning Bill, and the widening responsibility of the planner to the broader basis of team work, and civic designer to ground their work in skills gained from the field of geographers, economists, sociologists, engineers and architects.

PART I

THE PATTERN OF NEIGHBOURHOODS

I

AN INTRODUCTION TO MIDDLESBROUGH

Middlesbrough is the very prototype of a town born and reared during the past century. Hence all its defects and all its assets. Hence it is known chiefly for its iron and steel industry, for its mushroom growth, its grid-iron layout and its alleged ugliness. Instead of growing around a castle or a cathedral, as some of the old towns in the country, it has grown around coke-ovens and blast-furnaces. The founders of the great combines have been its Lords of the Manor. The scenery is marred by weird and giant industrial structures. The sky is obscured by the twin bursts of flame and smoke which emanate from industrial processes. The river is cut off from the town by the machinery of the docks and of the iron and steel works. Its bed is muddy. Its banks are littered with all the debris and the appurtenances of the works and the docks: vast slag heaps interspersed with railway lines, cranes, chimneys, furnaces and sheds. This core of Middlesbrough is still, as it was at the beginning of the century, “a place in which every sense is violently assailed all day long by some manifestation of the making of iron”.¹

To those who think of beauty and romance in terms of things rustic and antique, this place is indeed very ugly. Others differ. It is true that it lacks diversity and that it has no tradition, yet its very bleakness and impetuousness has a vigorous beauty of its own. The very fact that industry is all pervasive has its peculiar fascination. Battles have been and are fought here; battles for the organisation of the industry. Men have stood up daily, and still do so, against the physical dangers of production; accidents, diseases and exhaustion. They have faced the depletion of raw materials. They have been and are subjected to the economic hazards of the iron and steel trade. The imprint of courage and success is everywhere.

But there is also the imprint of failure. The rapid growth of the industry and of the town has entailed waste and neglect. The decay of the old town has kept pace with the expansion of the new. Hemmed in on the north by the Ironmasters’ district, the docks and the River Tees, the town has sprawled southwards. The more prosperous a family became, the further out did it move, away from the original centre of the town. The poor people were left there, on either side of the railway, living in “rows and rows of little brown streets”, in cottages which were cheaply and hastily built by the jerry builders of the second half of the last century. Whilst suburbia spread out, the old town deteriorated, so that by now most of it is a blighted area, urgently in need of reconstruction.

Industry has become dispersed and in part obsolete as well. The shifting of emphasis from iron to steel production; the exhaustion of the Cleveland ironstone mines; the vicissitudes of the post 1918 steel trade; all these have left gaps and derelict patches in the Ironmaster’s district, in the docks and on the wharfs. On the other hand, new steel plants have been erected on both sides of the river outside the county borough boundary. The mighty I.C.I, works at Billingham have grown up, absorbing an increasing proportion of Middlesbrough’s labour. In addition, some clothing and service industries have established themselves at scattered points within the residential area of the town.

This dispersal of housing and industry has divided the town and has made it rather amorphous in character. It has led to a sharp geographical division between the rich and the poor, to acute inequalities in the amenities of different areas of the town and to the lack of a common focus.

Going from north to south, there are three distinct residential belts in the town.

The very poor, unskilled workers and dock-labourers, live in the most northern area. The next residential belt is occupied by a more mixed group of artisans who, on the whole, have a higher grade of skill and are on a higher income level. Their district shades into one of varied housing development, on either side of and surrounding Albert Park. Many of the houses here were originally large and occupied by prosperous families. They were abandoned when the next southward move occurred. A large number of these houses are now sub-divided, let as furnished lodgings or used by several families. Others are occupied by clubs or offices. Hence an admixture of social groups is to be found in this particular intermediate area. Unless its deterioration is arrested, the slums of the next decade will be here.

The third belt at the southern end of the town belongs to the middle class. In Middlesbrough this is the highest social group as most of the people who belong to the upper class in terms of national standards have left the town altogether. The minor executives of industry, the professional people and prosperous tradesmen live in the centre of this area, in large, rather clumsy post-1918 houses. These are surrounded by smaller houses, also built after the last war by speculative builders for the type of owner-occupier who aspires to belong to the middle class.

There is also a fourth socio-geographical group in Middlesbrough, the new housing estates. Although geographically separate, they are fairly homogeneous in terms of physical and social characteristics.

The area in the extreme south, where Middlesbrough’s most prosperous people live, is flanked on either side by a new municipal housing estate. A third housing estate is separated from the rest of the town; it is an isolated group of cottages at the north-eastern border.

But for the presence of the two housing estates at the southeastern and the south-western fringe of the town, the pattern of socio-geographical differentiation in Middlesbrough is amazingly clear-cut. Walking from north to south you find a succession of distinct residential areas, each with its specific social and physical characteristics. Evidence of comparative prosperity increases steadily with every further move southward. The extremes of poverty and prosperity, in terms of the town’s own standards, are on the northern and southern edge respectively. There are slums at one end; suburban villas at the other; the beginning of blight in the intermediate areas, which also bear the scars of the continued exodus southward of people who had advanced socially or wanted to advance. Here is the melting pot of the town, for the people who have just left the extreme north live here and also those who have not yet reached the stage of moving further south.

This segmentation of the town, this living apart of the different social groups, is accentuated by the unequal distribution of its amenities. All the specific urban amenities are in the north. All the breathing space is in the extreme south. In the north is the focus of transport: the railway station and the bus terminus. Here are the major churches; the chief shopping centres; clubs; cinemas; restaurants and pubs. The town hall; the general post-office; the theatre are in the north. All this was the necessary urban equipment according to the standards of the late 19th century. It was provided when Middlesbrough was in the early prime of townhood, according to these standards, and hence much of it is now outmoded. The principle of leaving reserves of the countryside within the town was not yet established. Moreover, fields and farms were still at its doorstep everywhere, except on the northern edge. And the town simply rushed forward in those days; there seemed to be no time to stop and consider its growth.

Albert Park, now the junction between the old and the new town, was opened in 1868. But all the other parks, playing fields and allotments are in, or at the edge of, the most recent southern suburbs. Here are some new shopping centres, and also the new schools, the only schools in Middlesbrough which provide the educational environment demanded by 1944 standards. But here is hardly anything else. There is a marked paucity of social institutions, for the suburbs are typical products of inter-war housing. They express the urge for an alliance of country and town. They also express the urge to defeat density by distance, by both physical and social distance between neighbours.

So the town is split; Albert Park divides the old part from the new. The difference between the two is striking although even the old town is quite young in years; it has grown old only through wear and tear. But the division is obvious because 19th and 20th century housing, as represented north and south of the Park respectively, differed markedly in their purpose as well as in their shortcomings. The first was primarily designed for the working class. Cheap and small houses were quickly built. The second was primarily intended for the middle class; the houses were supposed to be solid and substantial.

Thus the old part is crowded; an array of brick with hardly any green patches. But it is still the place for the most essential urban functions: work; trade; transport outlets; administration and entertainment. Its people are sociable. Here are the slums, and here is also the warmth of the town.

The new part is spacious and barren; not designed to draw people together, but rather to divide them from each other. It is free from the noise and the smoke of the old town. The countryside has been allowed to infiltrate here. There are some pleasant tree-lined streets, houses with gardens and open spaces. But there are few other urban amenities, apart from the most necessary schools and shops. These southern parts of Middlesbrough are shapeless, disjointed and frigid. Although dependent upon the old town, they have never fused with it. Hence they have never advanced beyond their status as suburbs.

The division between the southern and the northern parts of the town is not at once apparent from its map or from its history. Its size is fairly compact, both in terms of area and population. Its growth, throughout a single century, has been rapid and continuous. Suburbia appears to be rather out of place in such a town. Why has it not merged with the remainder?

It has not done so for a variety of reasons all of which are derived from one common cause: the social distinction between the northern and the southern areas. Because of it, their physical characteristics differed from the outset as well as their social habits. For the same reason, there was indifference to the decay of the north as long as there was expansion of the south, and both processes have accentuated the cleavage between 19th and 20th century Middlesbrough. People in the north live under conditions which almost compel them to be “matey”; people in the south have chosen conditions which make it possible for them to be secluded. As tastes differ, amenities differ and are rather ill-balanced between the two sections of the town.

Therefore, give and take between them is ill-balanced also. It is rather one-sided. The people from the new town continually pass through and use the amenities of the old, but there is much less movement in the opposite direction. For suburbia has only a few attractions: its playing fields and open spaces draw people from the north, particularly the school-children; a few also come to its clubs. Northerners pass through on their way to the country and to the hills. Otherwise they have hardly any reason for doing so, for all the chief urban amenities are within their own area, and these are used by the suburban people as well. Work, travelling, shopping, entertainment, all this can be done, and much of it can only be done, in and from the north. Thus the old town gives a great deal to the new but receives only little in return. This lack of reciprocity further emphasises the division between them.

Nor have the municipal housing estates on either flank of the suburbs yet acted as a link between the north and the south. On the contrary, so far, their presence there has led to further segmentation. The estates are clearly distinguished from suburbia proper; by their geographical position and by their lay-out; by the type of houses and by the type of people they contain. Although the children from the suburbs use the schools in the housing estates, and their mothers use the shops at their fringes, there is again very little movement in the opposite direction. Yet there is a close mutual friendship between the housing estates and the north, for it is from there that the majority of their tenants have come. They are still fond of their old streets and still frequent their old shops, churches and clubs. These visits are returned by Northerners who call on their relatives in the new council cottages and participate in some of their social activities. But such visits to the south are confined to the housing estates. There is no overspill of friendliness for the adjacent suburbs.

The bond between the new estates and their place of origin is particularly close because the estates are cut off from each other. Consequently, there is very little social intercourse either between the two housing estates in the south, or between them and the third, which occupies an entirely isolated position at the northeastern fringe of Middlesbrough.

Thus the disjointedness of the town has been accentuated by inter-war housing. It is predominantly a working class town, but its working class settlements are too dispersed to admit of close social relationships between them. Only their rather ragged parent settlement, the old north, still stands out clearly and compactly. It is still their only common meeting ground.

The middle class minority live in an enclave of their own. But although their distinctiveness has thus been enhanced, they are also a dispersed group. They are scattered not only because, by and large, they prefer seclusion to sociability, but also because many of their social equals and most of their social superiors have left the town altogether. The class on whom Middlesbrough is financially dependent, the owners and managers of its industries, are absentees.

A town which lacks cohesion so markedly is urgently in need of a centre to pull all its component parts together. Industry used to be the focus and the very raison d’être of Middlesbrough. But industry has become huge and economically unstable, depersonalised and dispersed. Nowadays it is not run by paternalistic employers who live on the spot and know their workmen, but by remote grandees from an outer world.

Moreover, work has ceased to be the sole driving force of the town. Its people now have time to rest; indeed, they have been forced to be idle during long periods of depression. Their pursuits have become more varied, for Middlesbrough is increasingly developing its function as a service centre for the Tees-side and Cleveland area.

So the sovereignty of industry has been challenged. It still dominates Middlesbrough, but it is no longer the magnet which draws the whole town together. There is no such magnet at present. For although the importance of other institutions, administration, trade and services, has recently grown, they do not yet have sufficient cohesive power.

In terms of its social relationships, Middlesbrough now lacks a focus. But in terms of physical movement it has, of course, a central area. It is in the heart of the old town, amid all the rather tattered rows of workers’ cottages of the late 19th century. Here, just across the railway, round and about the northern end of “Main Street”, Linthorpe Road, are the station, the bus terminus, the town hall and the chief shopping and service centres.

Because of its institutional equipment, this area is still the chief meeting place of Middlesbrough. But it is no longer its centre of gravity. All the northern residential districts are at its doorstep, but the people from the southern suburbs and housing estates can reach it only by a comparatively long journey. As a result, central institutions, major shops and services, are slowly shifting further southwards, thus diminishing the importance of the central area.

Indeed, this very “centre” is becoming diffused. Being now, in fact, at the periphery of the town, it cannot claim its former status or fulfil its present functions adequately. It does not provide sufficient room for the new, more spacious and more complex institutions required. Most important, because of its position, it is unable to do what is most necessary, that is, to restore the balance of the town.

Yet lack of balance is the keynote of Middlesbrough’s problems. It is not a town the structure of which shows severe gaps and major dislocations. It suffers from comparatively minor ailments only, all of which are the typical legacy of its period of growth. It suffers from social and geographical segmentation and from an unequal distribution of amenities throughout the town. The old quarter now needs reconditioning because it was neglected whilst the suburbs sprawled southward.

It is predominantly a town of wage-earners and it lacks its full complement of social classes. Instead it is split into a variety of small social groups, the division between which is maintained by minor social differences and geographical separation.

But although there is diffusion, there is not sufficient diversity. The scope of activities which can be carried out within, or around, the town is still rather limited. There is a lack of diversity in industry. Opportunities to express and develop social and cultural interests are scarce. Middlesbrough is still rather monotonous.

Altogether, there is a lack of balance between work and leisure. All these incongruities exist because the town has not yet caught up with its own growth.

Middlesbrough now needs to be pulled together. The isolated parts of the town will have to b...

Table of contents

• Cover Page
• Half Title Page
• Series Page
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Contents
• Tables
• Preface
• Introduction
• Patr I The Pattern of Neighbourhoods
• Part II Health Services
• Part III Education Services
• Part IV Retail Trade
• Part V
• Appendix A The Geographical and Economic Background
• Appendix B Household Distribution and Housing Requirements In Middlesbrough
• Appendix C Supplementary Tables
• Notes
• Additional Publications On The Middlesbrough Survey And Plan
• Index