Masculinities, Planning Knowledge and Domestic Space in Britain, C
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Masculinities, Planning Knowledge and Domestic Space in Britain, c. 1941-1961. Kevin Guyan UCL This thesis is submitted for the degree of PhD. I, Kevin Guyan, confirm that the work presented in this thesis is my own. Where information has been derived from other sources, I confirm that this has been indicated in the thesis. 2 Abstract This thesis examines the significance of masculinities in debates about planning the home in mid-twentieth century Britain, the dissemination of domestic ideals in planning publications and at housing exhibitions, and men’s experiences of these ideals in reality. Emboldened by a historically specific set of challenges that followed the 1941 Blitz and demobilisation after the Second World War, planning experienced a ‘golden age’ in the 1940s. As the borders of expert knowledge expanded, and quotidian practices became a topic of national significance, planners promoted men’s presence within the home as part of Britain’s postwar reconstruction. The first chapter analyses planning publications and films to reveal the proliferation of technocratic, rational and omniscient planning identities and their effect on how experts studied and conceptualised the home. Focus then moves to explore the methods used to disseminate ideal representations of the home and men’s domestic actions at major exhibitions such as Britain Can Make It (1946), the Festival of Britain (1951) and the model Lansbury Estate in East London. The final chapter uses oral histories and observational studies to discern how men used their homes to perform masculine identities and assesses whether these lived experiences aligned with planners’ domestic ideals. Historians have overlooked the relationship between the men who planned homes and the men who lived in them, and thus failed to properly attribute agency to all actors in the planning process. This study therefore addresses the complex relationship between planners (architects), observers (social investigators) and inhabitants to reveal the effects of class on the efficacy of planning ideas. Regardless of whether men accepted, subverted or rejected planners’ domestic ideals, this study brings into focus the pervasive influence of normative masculinities and illustrates connections between men’s access to well-planned homes and their ability to perform family-orientated practices. 3 Acronyms BCA British Cartoon Archive BCMI Britain Can Make It CoID Council of Industrial Design DCA Design Council Archive DHC Documenting Homes Collection, Geffrye Museum DIA Design and Industries Association LBC London Brick Company LCC London County Council LCS London Cooperative Society LSE London School of Economics MO Mass Observation NA National Archive, Kew NMGC National Marriage Guidance Council NUTG National Union of Townswomen Guilds RIBA Royal Institute of British Architects TA Tate Archive TFC Testimony Films Collection, British Library THA Tower Hamlets Archive UCL University College London UEA University of Edinburgh Archive 4 List of Illustrations Figure 2.1: Front cover of Ralph Tubbs, Living in Cities (1942). Figure 2.2: ‘Today – and Tomorrow’, advertisement for Gyproc Products from The Architectural Review (1941). Figure 2.3: Illustration from CB Purdom, How Should We Rebuild London? (1945). Figure 2.4: Advertisement for the London Brick Company, in JM Richards, An Introduction to Modern Architecture (1940). Figure 2.5: Front cover of Your Home Planned by Labour (1943). Figure 2.6: The 12 ‘best designed’ objects and photographs of ‘The Experts’, which included housewife Mary Harrison, from Design Quiz (1946). Figure 2.7: Arthur Ling (left) and the County of London Plan team in Proud City (1946). Figure 2.8: Planners (from left to right) Percy Johnson-Marshall, LW Lane and Hubert Bennett examine further plans for the reconstruction of Stepney-Poplar (1955), UEA 237/PJM/LCC/E/2.3.2. Figure 2.9: The planner positioned ‘above’ his plans and equipped with his triangular ruler, in The Youngest County: A Description of London as a County and its Public Services (1951). Figure 2.10: The built environment as part of the natural world, from Tubbs, Living in Cities. Figure 2.11: A rational system for work in the kitchen, from Tubbs, Living in Cities. Figure 3.1: Albert Snoddy kisses goodbye to his old home at 6 Yatton Street ahead of moving to the new Lansbury Estate, in First Citizens of New Estate (1951). Figure 3.2: The Council of Industrial Design’s ‘Design Quiz Competition’, Daily Herald Modern Homes Exhibition (1946), DCA 474286. Figure 3.3: ‘Gremlin Grange’ (3 May 1951), NA WORK 25/207. Figure 3.4: ‘People keep asking me for the name of the architect’, cartoon from the News Chronicle (4 May 1951), BCA AH0033. Figure 3.5: ‘The living room in a family house looking through into the dining room’ by Frank Austin and Neville Ward, Ideal Home Exhibition (1949), DCA 350/11. 5 Figure 3.6: ‘Design for the living room in a small house on a new estate’ by Elizabeth Denby (1946), DCA 0829. Figure 3.7: ‘The Young Artisan and his family’ illustrated by Nicolas Bentley, DCA 32/2/1/38. Figure 3.8: ‘Noise’ designed by Ronald Avery, NA WORK 25/199. Figure 3.9: ‘The Site as it was: Nos. 74-79 Upper North Street’ (21 June 1950), NA WORK 25/199. Figure 3.10: Promotional poster for Live Architecture (1951). Figure 3.11: ‘The Site as it was: No. 33 Bygrove Street, a look through the open front door’ (29 June 1950), NA WORK 25/199. Figure 3.12: ‘The Site as it was: Sanitary fittings at No. 33 Bygrove Street’ (29 June 1950), NA WORK 25/199. Figure 4.1: ‘In time Fathers make Splendid Mothers’ from ‘How to Be a Father’, Picture Post (29 July 1939). Figure 4.2: George Copperwheat spending his evening at home with his family, in Jill Craigie’s The Way We Live (1946). Figure 4.3: David Davies plays with his daughters in the parlour of his house on a modern housing estate, in ‘What It Means to Live in a Good House’, Picture Post (1 January 1944). Figure 4.4: The front cover of Practical Householder (July 1959) shows a man covering his bathroom wall as his wife watches. 6 Contents Abstract 3 Acronyms 4 List of Illustrations 5 Acknowledgements 9 1. Introduction 11 Why masculinities matter in mid-twentieth century Britain 12 Sources 17 Defining men and masculinities 22 Class and masculinities 27 Planners, observers and inhabitants 31 Chapter outline 37 2. Expert Knowledge and Planning Identities 45 The intellectual landscape of postwar planning 48 Influences on planning identities 56 Masculine planning identities, methods and ideas 75 3. The Exhibition of Ideal Domestic Masculinities 97 The language of exhibitions 102 Pedagogical methods 114 Representations of domestic masculinities on the Lansbury Estate 131 Working class agency and challenges to expert knowledge 148 4. Men’s Uses and Experiences of the Home 155 Men’s experiences of returning home 158 Men’s experiences of class on new estates 165 Men’s experiences of past, present and future 172 7 Inside the home 176 Housework and privacy 177 Living rooms 183 Dining spaces 189 Bedrooms 192 Gardens 198 Sheds, hobbies and Do-It-Yourself 201 Performing masculinities in the home 207 ‘The new man stays at home’ 211 5. Conclusions 216 Future directions for study 220 Homes and masculinities since the mid-twentieth century 222 Contemporary impacts 224 Bibliography 229 8 Acknowledgements I first found myself thinking about histories of the home during conversations with my grandparents. Their childhood experiences living in ‘but and ben’ and tenement housing in the Scottish city of Aberdeen in the 1940s seemed a world away from how we lived today. Stories of large families squeezed into overcrowded conditions, shared wash facilities and gas lighting made me realise how radically domestic life changed for many families in the middle decades of the twentieth century. By the 1950s, my grandparents had moved to spacious homes on new estates and enjoyed many of the domestic appliances and other ‘luxuries’ discussed in this research. My grandparents’ personal stories sparked my curiosity in this subject, and for that I am grateful. I am also thankful for the opportunities to present research from this doctoral study at the following conferences and seminars: History and Space, Birkbeck, University of London, London (2014); Leisure Lives: Places and Spaces of Leisure in Twentieth Century Britain, Mass Observation Archive, Sussex (2015); Social History Society Conference, Portsmouth (2015); Gender Research Seminar, Trinity College Dublin, Dublin (2015); History Staff/Student Seminar, Queen’s University Belfast, Belfast (2015); and the Symposium on Gender, History and Sexuality, University of Texas, Austin (2015). In April 2014, with Dr Ben Mechen, I co-organised the one-day workshop New Directions: Gender, Sex and Sexuality in Twentieth Century British History at University College London. This experience confirmed to me the value of historical scholarship that explores gender, sex and sexuality and am therefore grateful to all those who attended and shared their research. I further wish to thank UCL for their Impact Scholarship award that made it financially possible for me to undertake this research. I also acknowledge the financial support of UCL’s Department of History and Graduate School that allowed me to take up the position of Visiting Research Associate at the Institute of Historical Studies, UT Austin in 2015. Engaging conversations with Professor Philippa Levine, Professor Mark Micale and other researchers in Austin refreshed my enthusiasm for the study of gender history in twentieth century Britain. 9 Thanks are also due to Merran Crockett and Jacob Bellworthy for providing me with accommodation on research visits to London. I also wish to thank Dr Fern Insh, Dr Jack Saunders and Dr Florence Sutcliffe-Braithwaite for their constructive feedback on draft chapters. Thanks also to Dr Michael Collins and Professor Margot Finn for their helpful guidance and supervision.