The 1930s House Explained

Trevor Yorke

• Publisher: Countryside Books
• Year: 2012
• ISBN:
  9781846748400
• Topic: Architecture
• Subtopic: History of Architecture

The Art Deco exhibition in Paris in 1925 ushered in a new style of architecture based on the latest designs from Europe and American—flat roofs, plain facades, reinforced concrete and white paint inside and out. Streamlining was the watchword and houses, from bungalows to detached family homes, were planned around their internal use. Using his own drawings, diagrams and photographs, author Trevor Yorke explains in an easy-to-understand manner all aspects of the 1930s house, and provides a definitive guide for those who are renovating, tracing the history of their own home, or simply interested in houses of the period. The book is divided into four sections. The first outlines the history of the period; the second steps inside and looks at the different rooms and their fittings and goes on to describe the gardens and garages.; the third section explains briefly the developments in housing after this period; and the final section contains a quick reference guide, including notes on how to date houses, a glossary of unfamiliar terms, further reading and details of places to visit.

SECTION I

THE HISTORY
OF THE
1930S HOUSE

CHAPTER 1

The Inter-War Years

Glamour and the Depression

FIG 1.1: Northgate, Chester: A visit to the cinema was an opportunity to escape from the grind of everyday life and with the advent of ‘Talkies’ the number of cinemas in the country boomed with around 5,000 by the end of the 1930s. Unlike many other buildings, modernity and foreign style was acceptable, especially with Odeon Cinemas, as in this example from Chester. These startling plain, geometric compositions contrast dramatically with the historic styles that dominated Victorian and Edwardian architecture, as used in the shops on the left of the picture.

The two decades between the World Wars project distinct and conflicting images. There are the glamorous Hollywood films, flamboyant dance crazes, and distinctive popular fiction like Agatha Christie’s Poirot. They create an image of luxury, style, glamour and wealth in this vibrant and fast Jazz Age. In contrast, however, the history we are taught in school tells of the Depression, the General Strike and the Jarrow March. Photographs of rundown industrial towns, dole queues and slum dwellings give an impression of decline and economic constraints. How can these two extremes exist alongside each other? What were those inter-war years really like for the middle and working classes who would live in and own the types of house which we will be covering in this book?

FIG 1.2: The Cenotaph, Whitehall, London: War memorials, from Sir Edwin Lutyens’ Cenotaph in Whitehall (above) to the humble stone cross in every village or hamlet, focused the grief of the nation and would remind future generations how the distant catastrophe had touched even the smallest community. The style often used, as with many other public buildings, had moved on from the ornate baroque and gothic structures of the previous generation to a more simple, starkly geometric form of classical architecture.

The Great War 1914-1918

Life in the period 1918 to 1939 was affected both politically and economically by the First World War, known before the second conflict as the Great War, which began on 4 August 1914.

There was no shortage of volunteers in the early months of the conflict, although as the war sank into an economically sapping stalemate and the casualty list lengthened, the quality of those signing up dropped markedly and a large proportion had to be rejected on health grounds. The honest working class Tommy was simply not fit enough!

Unlike the Second World War, this conflict passed by with little direct effect at home, although the Zeppelin bombing raids were a foretaste of the wars to come. Its most notable legacy on the domestic front was how those who were unable to fight, especially women, filled in for the absent men on duty in France. Towards the end of the war, there were restrictions and rationing but these were nothing compared to the suffering endured by the Germans at home, as the blockade by the British Navy virtually starved the German homeland into submission.

After the Armistice on 11 November 1918, there could be no return to the situation before the conflict. Things had changed, the world was not quite the same place and Britain was no longer at the economic centre of it.

Industry and the Economy in the 1920s and 1930s

Along with the other European nations, we had borrowed heavily through the war and sold foreign assets. America had bankrolled us and now with its industrial and financial might it enjoyed a boom during the 1920s. New factories were mass-producing goods and skyscrapers soared into the sky in competition with each other, forming iconic images which told the world the USA was the bigger, better, new kid on the block! The Wall Street Crash of October 1929 brought it back down to earth and the ripples from the impact radiated around the globe, sending economies into further depression.

The British economy suffered a roller-coaster ride during the inter-war years, starting with an initial boom on the expectation of a return to normality and then quickly sinking with the realisation that old markets were not there any more. Countries which had previously bought manufactured goods from us had either found other sources during the war and did not return to Britain after it, or simply did not have the money available. This loss of foreign business, coupled with the investment many companies had made on an expectation of a return to pre-war levels of demand, caused a dramatic downturn that resulted in rising unemployment by 1921. Although there was a gradual pick-up through the 1920s, the effects of the Wall Street Crash hindered exports and yet again the economy suffered.

However, this depression resulted in low prices for raw materials and food, which along with dropping interest rates meant that those Britons in work had more money left over at the end of the day. By spending it on their houses, new cars, electrical goods and clothing they helped fuel a consumer boom that softened the worst effects of global depression.

FIG 1.3: Despite the constraints upon the public purse after the First World War, there were still building projects on an imperial scale like the Anglican (top) and Roman Catholic (bottom) cathedrals in Liverpool. The former was completed in this period but work on the latter, designed by Sir Edwin Lutyens to be the largest in Christendom, was cut short by the Second World War. The familiar concrete ‘wigwam’ was erected later upon the foundations of the earlier building, the crypt of which can be seen in the foreground of the bottom picture.

FIG 1.4: The Chrysler Building, New York, USA: With the relative freedom for companies to develop in the mid and late 1920s, America became dominant in world finance and business. Nowhere was this more visible than in the craze for erecting the tallest skyscrapers, one of the most iconic being the Chrysler Building, which for a matter of months became the tallest in the world.

Despite this turbulent economy and the National Debt, Britain as a country became more wealthy per head of population. Wages, which had risen dramatically during the First World War, never returned to pre-war levels and in 1939 were nearly twice as high as in 1914. Due to new state subsidies this apparent wealth was spread more evenly across the classes than before, yet even at the outbreak of the Second World War more than four-fifths of the nation’s capital was controlled by one-twentieth of its population!

The economic well-being of the individual was heavily dependent on whether they were in work or not and, in this period, there were stark differences between the regions and old and new industries. Victorian and Edwardian success had been built on the back of cotton mills, iron and steel works, shipbuilding yards and coal mines, which because of the climate, geology and geography of the land tended to be concentrated in the North of England and South Wales. With the decline in exports, improved foreign competition and new technology, these staple industries declined and had to restructure to survive. The ones that really suffered were the workers as the number of jobs in these trades were nearly halved through this period and, despite prominent displays of unity with the General Strike of 1926 and the Jarrow March ten years later, their situation rarely improved. The new curse of long-term unemployment had arrived, with thousands of men with skills that were no longer needed who lived in areas where there was little alternative employment, and resulted in many families falling into poverty.

FIG 1.5: New shops in the latest Art Deco style were built along high streets in most towns and cities, especially department stores where a room or entire house could be fitted out by the one shop. These two examples, the lower one showing flats, commonly built above small shops, are finished in glazed white tiles with green highlights, a popular combination of colours. The tall vertical window in the top example has a wonderful stained-glass design.

FIG 1.6: New industries required new factories, no longer towering high with floors of clanking machines stacked above each other but now spread out over spacious suburban sites with symmetrical horizontal frontages and improved conditions for staff.

On the other side of the coin, however, were the new industries based on technology. The motor car, aeroplane, electrical goods, energy supply, chemical, drug and engineering industries boomed in this period, doubling the number of people employed. As the number of manual workers dropped, so the number of white-collar workers rose to replace them, reflecting the shift to more science-based light industry. There were increasing numbers of managers, administrators, consultants, engineers, and accountants with, at a lower level, clerks, assistants and typists, many of whom in the previous generation would have gone into domestic service or the mills. The sales of these new products helped the retail sector, with new department stores and national chains appearing on the high street, which resulted in the recruiting of more sales assistants and shop managers.

The problem, though, was that most of this new work was in the South and Midlands, with around 50% of the new factories built in the first half of the 1930s being sited within Greater London alone.

Although there was some natural redeployment between areas, there was little help from the government and what schemes there were had limited success. It is for these reasons that the majority of private houses covered in this book will be found in the suburbs and along the main arterial roads of midland and southern towns and cities.

Society in the 1920s and 1930s

For those in employment during the inter-war years, life could be a significant improvemen...