Extra: New Ash Green – building it and living there

Ivor Cunningham was an architect who worked with Eric Lyons at the design led Span Developments in the late 1960s. The company created iconic contemporary housing schemes in places such as Twickenham, Beckenham, Blackheath, Putney and New Ash Green in Kent. Cunningham’s contribution to these was the highly individual landscape design that played such an important part in the creation of courtyards and walkways that surrounded largely modest dwellings, simple and repetitive in design but innovative in style and construction technique.

It was New Ash Green, a new village in the countryside, that set out the community concept that was Span’s ambition. The promotion of residents societies with ability to enforce restrictions upon use and alterations. A prescriptive approach to the type of buyers for certain neighbourhoods. The desire to create a social mix with council tenants, by the allocation of neighbourhoods for them exclusively. It sought through a reciprocity of rights and responsibilities, and the commonality of benefits and burdens a social interaction that would bring the harmony of the rural idyll.

Like all Lyons’ schemes the houses were devised on a principle of high repetition ‘cutting costs through common denominators’. His houses utilised stock brick flank walls and brick party walls in a cross-wall format. A central steel A frame with horizontal purlins was clad with prefabricated panels incorporating fenestration that was determined strongly by siting and orientation, under a signature mono-pitch roof. At the lower end of the scale, flat roofs were used with open plan living that allowed heat to circulate from vents sited back to back in kitchen and sitting room under a central single flight staircase. Specification and finishes were at a basic level with fare faced brickwork ,flush unpainted doors and limited ceramic tiling. This simplicity of design and construction delivered a cheap house within a scheme that was exciting and distinctive. It looked forward to ways in which design and construction can serve community and retrospectively at scale of dwellings, use of open space and pedestrian pre-eminence.

It was however, Span’s involvement at New Ash Green that led to its decline in 1969. A commitment to infrastructure and difficulty in achieving sales due to a reluctance of lenders to accept its construction methods were difficulties added to by a change of heart from GLC to purchase certain neighbourhoods for its tenants.

In January 1971 Bovis purchased New Ash Green. A more traditional approach was taken to construction with just a passing reference to the Lyons designs and in the later neighbourhoods a reversal of the Radburn principle of pedestrian and vehicle separation central to the Span concept. The Span concept was thereby abandoned to market forces.

Much of what Span had set out to achieve was by then however established. Its residents societies, designs, landscape spaces set the theme for what was to follow. Span houses were good value and cheap. I worked for Bovis and despite the modest salary of a trainee surveyor was able to afford a Span house. It had three bedrooms, sitting room, kitchen dining room, bathroom and cloakroom a small garden and garage. It was an ideal house to start with , purchased, be it with the help of a large mortgage it was not rented or part owned and indeed due to the withdrawal of the GLC all houses at New ash Green were at that time privately owned.

Today we face the consequences of a failure to provide enough cheap housing for a growing population and increased household formation particularly in the countryside. We seek ways to create a feeling of community within our developments. We are revisiting ways of constructing cheaply but effectively through innovative design and modern methods of construction. We face the additional challenge of improving insulation and reducing carbon emissions. These are challenges similar to those addressed by Span 40 years ago. What can we learn from the successes and failures of New Ash Green?

I believe we first have to recognise the need for a modern design approach using modern methods of construction and high levels of repetition ‘cutting costs through common denominators’ in Lyons’ words. Such developments need scale to achieve economies and there is no doubt that we have to think in terms of large scale land release for this purpose. We have to acknowledge the contribution that communal spaces, generously landscaped , can make to amenity and community. New Ash Green was achieved in it’s incipient years, without Social landlords. Homes were genuinely cheap due to their simplicity of accommodation design and build. Prescriptive measures to create affordable housing were abandoned by circumstances which allowed market forces to establish an organic settlement. Ownership engendered pride and a willingness to participate in community. It gave opportunity to climb the housing ladder with the acquisition of a larger house to accommodate a growing family.

Today the emphasis is on urban regeneration. In the past it was assumed that people would prefer the salubriousness of the suburb or the tranquillity of the countryside. Urban regeneration achieves new dwellings through the extinguishment of obsolete land use close to existing infrastructure. This is an effective way of increasing housing supply but not every body wishes to live in the city. Development in suburbs cannot take place at sufficient a scale to meet housing demand. Perhaps it is time to look again at the new village in the countryside concept utilising the energy of ownership rather than the conformity of mixed tenure. The New Ash Green experience with its successes and failures, goes some way to demonstrate the solution to rural housing need.