London County Council cottage estate

London County Council cottage estates are estates of council houses, built by London County Council, in the main between 1918 and 1939.

The City of London Corporation built tenements in the Farringdon Road in 1865, but this was an isolated instance. The first council to build housing as an integrated policy was Liverpool Corporation, starting with St Martin’s Cottages in Ashfield Street, Vauxhall, completed in 1869. That year a Royal Commission was held, as the state had taken an interest in housing and housing policy. This led to the Housing of the Working Classes Act 1890, which encouraged the London authority to improve the housing in their areas. It also gave them the power acquire land and to build tenements and houses (cottages). As a consequence London County Council opened the Boundary Estate in 1900, a block dwelling estate of tenements in Tower Hamlets.

The first four cottage estates were at Norbury, Old Oak, Totterdown Fields and White Hart Lane.

In 1912 Raymond Unwin, published a pamphlet Nothing gained by Overcrowding. He worked on the influential Tudor Walters Report of 1918 which recommended housing in short terraces, spaced at 70 feet (21 m) at a density of 12 to the acre. The First World War indirectly provided a new impetus, when the poor physical health and condition of many urban recruits to the army was noted with alarm. This led to a campaign known as Homes fit for heroes. In 1919 the Government, through The Addison Act (Housing Act 1919) the required councils to provide housing built to the Tudor Walters standards, helping them to do so through the provision of subsidies,

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