LIVING IN THE SKY A HISTORY OF HIGH-RISE COUNCIL FLATS IN THE BLACK COUNTRY FREE PUBLICATION ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS DEMOLITION CONTENTS & RENEWAL This is a small book but it represents a much allowing us to use his data and images, as C 27 bigger project – a project which has only been has Simon Briercliffe in creating a database possible with the help and support from dozens of all the high-rise flats in the area. A team of of individuals and organisations. Groups which voluteers has also helped in cataloguing the supported the original idea included Sandwell archive, and I would like in particular to thank Community Information and Participation Jessica Bassam and Dawn Hazlehurst. A MISREPRESENTED A WORK-IN- Service, Walsall Tenants and Residents 3 HISTORY? 33 PROGRESS Association and Wolverhampton Federation The staff of the four public archives services Tenants of Tenants’ Associations, all of whom in the Black Country have also been of great were partners to the project funding bid. I’m assistance in providing advice on the project grateful to Corinne Miller at Wolverhampton design, training to volunteers, and helping Art Gallery, Amanda Smith at English during the sourcing of archive images and THE BLACK COUNTRY’S LIST OF ORAL Heritage, Ros Watkiss at Wolverhampton other material. Ros Watkiss, Sue Whitehouse PART IN THE STORY HISTORY University, Malcolm Dick at Birmingham and Harriet Devlin have also provided 5 37 INTERVIEWS University, and Ian Cawood and Chris Upton invaluable training to volunteers. at Newman University for their support and encouragement in the early stages of the I’d particularly like to thank our community project. My colleagues in Planning Services at engagement officers, Chaz Mason and José Wolverhampton City Council as well as those Forrest-Tennant for their energy, enthusiasm ‘RISING HEAVENWARD’ at Wolverhampton Culture, Arts & Heritage and patience. 7 Service were also very helpful. Several people have given me useful feedback Of vital importance to the ‘Block Capital’ on the draft of this document including Bob project, as it became known, was our grant Deacon, Carol Thompson, Cat Fuller, Dawn and we are grateful to Heritage Lottery Hazlehurst, Marguerite Nugent and Meave ‘LIVING IN THE SKY’ Fund for having the confidence to invest Haughey. As usual, any errors of any kind 11 39 INDEX in the idea. The Block Capital project has remaining in this document are entirely the subsequently benefitted from the time, energy responsibility of the author. and commitment of more than fifty volunteers whose names are listed on the inside back Paul Quigley cover. The distinctly black country network ‘IN QUITE A BAD STATE’ LIST OF Wolverhampton Art Gallery 19 41 VOLUNTEERS I would also like to thank everyone who has March 2015 contributed to our Block Capital digital archive (details on page 20) by either giving time to record an oral history interview, providing images or donating other material. Miles THE BLOCK CAPITAL Glendinning has been particularly helpful in 20 ARCHIVE 2 1 A MISREPRESENTED HISTORY? It is now half a century since the peak that it is okay to blame any problems of tower-block housing construction in related to British high-rise council housing Britain. Over that period millions of people on either the idea of high-rise itself or, have lived in high-rise flats. alternatively, on the people who (not even always by choice) have lived in council- As you might expect, in a group of this built tower blocks. size there have been different types of people - some have led difficult lives, Our investigation of multi-storey flats others have been more successful. in the Black Country has found a more Yet the persistent view of the history of complex story. We have found a history in high-rise flats in Britain is one of almost which high-rise blocks have certainly not unmitigated architectural and social always led to isolation and alienation, and failure. have sometimes hosted largely happy and active communities. Indeed, in the history As we were writing this, two incidents we have found, the people who lived in Top: Three blocks on Parkview illustrated this point. Prince Charles them haven’t always been very different Road, Stowlawn. Approved published his ‘geometric principles’ to from those living in other types of social by Bilston Municipal Borough guide the architects of new buildings – housing. One of our Facebook followers Council in 1963, they were he wrote in a very straightforward way, summed up a similar view:- named after (from the left) the without room for doubt, that ‘high-rise then leader of the Labour Party, tower blocks alienate and isolate’. “I lived in one in late ‘90s for about 3 Hugh Gaitskell, and the wartime years. Good neighbours ...not always leaders Winston Churchill and As Prince Charles was writing, a major the horror stories people perceive Clem Atlee (Photo taken in 2013 UK greetings card manufacturer put on there to be”. by Matthew Whitehouse, sale a ‘comedy’ Christmas card which © Wolverhampton City Council) carried a picture of a high-rise tower We have found that, although there have block and suggested all its residents were been serious design mistakes, a more Left: Sandbank Estate in in effect workshy, alcoholic criminals. common cause of past failure has been Bloxwich (Walsall), pictured Recipients of the card were doubtless the way in which the blocks have been in 2013, is run by a tenant expected to laugh out of recognition. managed. management organisation, an arrangement which the area The card was later withdrawn, but these has been in the forefront of events still seemed to support the view developing. 2 3 In terms of their reputation, tower The Black Country’s blocks have coloured many people’s views of the whole British social part in the story housing programme, even though they In some ways the history of high-rise actually only represent a small fraction in the Black Country is like other large of it. For that reason alone, a better urban areas in Britain. But there are key understanding of their history is not only differences. important in itself, but also because it can help us understand how the history The Black Country has more residents of Council housing more generally than Birmingham but it is not a city. It has been represented – or perhaps does not have the same urban structure misrepresented. as, for example, Manchester, Leeds or Glasgow. Rather than having one This booklet is based on an archive centre, it is a network of towns on a created by Block Capital, a community disused coalfield. This has affected the heritage project conducted in the Black development of its public housing in Country between 2013 and 2015 and general, and particularly the construction supported by a Heritage Lottery Fund of high-rise flats. grant of £52,500. It draws on more than sixty oral history recordings of Each Black Country town has, tenants, housing officers, planners and historically, had its own local authority construction workers, as well as more and many of these commissioned high- than 300 photographs and other historical rise housing schemes, often with different documents. approaches. A large part of the project’s work was City centre land-values have not completed by volunteers - people who generally applied. But there have were willing to give their own time out been the extra costs of making large of commitment to the preservation - or areas of derelict ex-colliery land fit for rediscovery - of this history. development. There have not generally been the large outlying estates created by some cities, but rather they have been within the urban area. They have included many scattered blocks built in isolation or in pairs. In the early 1960s the press were still using the word ‘skyscrapers’ Lastly, in the late 20th century, some to describe the nine-storey blocks at Lakefield Road, Wednesfield. important government attempts to take These would later be dwarfed by buildings more than twice as high. public housing in the Black Country out of Wolverhampton Chronicle, August 1962 (Courtesy Wolverhampton local authority control were withdrawn in Archives and Local Studies) the face of local opposition 4 5 ‘RISING HEAVENWARD’ 1930-55 Plans to build high-rise flats arose at a “Much as I would prefer to see our time of a desperate need for new homes. population spreading out rather than In mid-20th century Britain the public rising heavenward in their dwellings, authorities responsible for urban areas one has to face the fact that, for were faced with the task of re-housing a limited number of our people… thousands of families from substandard tenement provision must be made” Victorian accommodation. In 1948, for example, more than twenty three Later, Aneurin Bevan’s Housing Act in thousand houses in the central Black 1946 also added a specific subsidy for Country alone were identified as ‘property lift construction. So, both before and which should be condemned’, more than after the war, these subsidies would one in every five homes in the area. On have influenced discussions in the Black top of this, nearly half a million British Country and elsewhere about what kind Top: Arthur Greenwood was homes had been destroyed by war in the of housing should replace the Victorian the Labour Minister who, in 1940s. streets earmarked for clearance. 1930, announced the first Multi-storey flats had already been subsidy for multi-storey flats. It is often assumed that the expectation pioneered in continental Europe before Ten years later after his death that these homes would be replaced, the war. Britain followed, with more than he was commemorated in coupled with the lack of available space, eighty blocks having been approved in the name of Bilston’s first pushed local authorities to build upwards.