Contemporary British History For Peer Review Only Place, Memory and the British High Rise Experience: negotiating social change on the Wyndford Estate, 1962- 2015 Journal: Contemporary British History Manuscript ID FCBH-2018-0058.R2 Manuscript Type: Original Paper high rise flats, public housing, micro-history, place, memory, personal Keywords: testimony URL: http://mc.manuscriptcentral.com/fcbh Email:
[email protected] Page 1 of 35 Contemporary British History 1 1 2 3 4 Place, Memory and the British High Rise Experience: negotiating 5 social change on the Wyndford Estate, 1962-2015 6 7 8 9 Introduction 10 11 In recent years, Britain’s deepening housing crisis has stimulated renewed professional and 12 journalistic interest in the legacies of Britain’s post-war ‘high rise revolution’.1 Despite this, 13 14 however, negative perceptions of the multi-storey flat have proven remarkably resilient within 15 16 the British public imagination. While the Grenfell Tower fire of June 2017 provoked intense 17 18 speculation upon Britain’sFor wealthPeer ‘apartheid’, Review reactions to Only the disaster also replenished some 19 long-established myths.2 According to Richard Pendlebury, the ‘Grenfell Tower inferno’ was 20 21 merely the ‘latest tragedy in the troubled history of British multi-storey living’. While Britain’s 22 23 multi-storey revolution aimed to bring ‘futuristic home comforts to former slum-dwellers and 24 Blitz survivors’, in reality ‘blocks resembled factories’, the design of which impeded ‘regrowth 25 26 of uprooted communities’ and fostered ‘anti-social behaviour and crime’.3 Writing in the Mail 27 28 on Sunday, Peter Hitchens was more trenchant still: 29 30 The common sense of the residents of Grenfell Tower was greater than those who built it and 31 ran it.