Have nothing in your houses that you do not know to be useful, or believe to be beautiful. William Morris, Hopes and Fears for Art 1882
This is the house that Jack built. Nurse Truelove’s New Year’s Gift, 1755
Woman inside house: Well what is it?
Man outside house: It’s a door-knocker. Spike Milligan sketch
A knock on the door, and the guy opens the door and there’s two vicars standing there but they’ve got stocking masks over their faces. He says, ‘Yes? Who are you?’ They say, ‘We are Jehovah Burglars ... We are seeking refuge from the police who are persecuting us because of our beliefs.
‘What are your beliefs?’
‘We believe you’ve got a lot of money in this house.’ Spike Milligan sketch
Why, son, we hope you’re happy here. I mean, I’m not happy here. I’m as miserable as sin here. This house is nothing but a pit of misery and despair. A coffin with windows. Anyway enjoy. Rab C Nesbitt s7e1, New, BBC 1998
A home? Ha ha. Who needs a home, these days, Rab? We’re all rudderless ships in a black night tossed by the icy storms. Rab C Nesbitt s8e2: Heat
The House That Crack Built. Rab C Nesbitt s10e4: Fight, Rab opens local drop-in centre
In 1936 the company filmed a family forced by poverty to leave their home and live on a beach. The Story of British Pathé II: The Voice of Pathé, BBC 2011
One official response to the crisis was the introduction of prefab housing. Pathé’s films extolled the virtues of the government’s quick-fix solutions. ibid.
Britain would gradually tackle its housing crisis but as Pathé’s films show millions were still living on the breadline. ibid.
In London alone it’s estimated that some 230,000 people live under conditions which are unfit for human habitation. Probably not five in every hundred of these dilapidated roofs are watertight. In one of these streets lives Molly, her mother, two brothers and baby sister. Five of them in two rooms. The whole place is rotten from top to bottom. The decaying woodwork is infested with vermin. Pathé Pictures Presents ‘The Great Crusade’: The Story of a Million Homes, 1936
There is no need to do any housework at all. After the first four years the dirt doesn’t get any worse. Quentin Crisp
Homes like these became part of a landscape of ASBOs and crack-dens that helped sound the death knell on social housing. The hey-day’s legacy is one of failure. Michael Collins, The Great Estate: The Rise & Fall of the Council Estate, BBC 2012
Lord Salisbury proposed a Royal Commission for the housing of the working classes. The impetus for the first in a series of housing acts that signalled dramatic change. ibid.
Letchworth: the world’s first garden city. The brainchild of social reformer Ebenezer Howard, Letchworth was a privately-funded project. Its cottages were the vision of a sandal-wearing socialist called Raymond Unwin – the founding father of the British council house. ibid.
Unwin’s garden cottages became the prototype for Lloyd George’s homes for heroes including those on the biggest housing estate in the world: Becontree, Essex. ibid.
It was this man – Lancelot Keay – who introduced the modern flat into the lexicon of council housing. ibid.
Government subsidies were available for the building of flats on sites where slums had been raised to the ground. The epic scale of the estates that emerged astonished contemporaries and enthralled their new inhabitants. ibid.
In 1945 following a Labour landslide the minister for health Nye Bevan oversaw the creation of a welfare state in which public housing would be as universal as health and education. ibid.
In 1946 Stevenage became the first of the nation’s designated new towns built to relieve inner-city population problem. ibid.
The Parker-Morris Report: Homes for today and tomorrow. ibid.
The street in the sky ... Lifts took homes higher than ever; new factory-style building methods produced flats quickly and inexpensively. And government subsidies were offered for high density developments; the taller the tower the higher the handout. ibid.
Eleven years in which the high-rise experiment had collapsed. The decline began when many of the rapidly built tower blocks that shot up from the 1950s were exposed as cheap and shoddy. By 1967 the government had withdrawn its subsidy for tower blocks. ibid.
When Margaret Thatcher swept to power in 1979 the building of council estates came to an abrupt halt. In 1980 she introduced a right to buy scheme. ibid.
It was that sense of permanence that gave so many British people ... a reason to have an investment in their homes, in their estates, in their neighbourhoods. ibid.
An act to amend the enactments relating to the working classes ... (1) It shall be the duty of every local authority ... to consider the needs of their area with respect to the provision of houses for the working classes. Housing & Town Planning Etc. Act 1919
We have set in hand the sale of council houses and flats. Margaret Thatcher
Little boxes on the hillside ...
And they’re all made out of ticky-tacky
And they all look just the same. Malvina Reynolds, song 1962
It always amazes me to think that every house on every street is full of so many stories, so many triumphs and tragedies, and all we see are yards and driveways. Glenn Close
Don’t go in that room ... ever. The Comic Strip Presents ... Consuela starring Dawn French & Jennifer Saunders & Adrian Edmondson & Rik Mayall & Peter Richardson, writers French & Saunders et al, Consuela to new wife
There are certain people who seem doomed to buy certain houses. The house expects them. It waits for them. Peter Ackroyd
A casement high and triple-arched there was,
All garlanded with carven imag’ries
Of fruits, and flowers, and bunches of knot-grass,
And diamonded with panes of quaint device,
Innumerable of stains and splendid dyes,
As are the tiger-moth’s deep-damasked wings. John Keats, The Eve of St Agnes 1820
A house is a machine for living in. Le Corbusier, French architect
Wightwick Manor just outside Wolverhampton. It’s one of the most perfect examples of the marriage between art and architecture. An unexpected time capsule filled with Pre-Raphaelite treasures ... I cried when I saw the building ... It’s alive. Andrew Lloyd Webber, Perspectives, ITV 2011
I would rather not go
Back to the old house … The Smiths, Back to the Old House
Father wears his Sunday best
Mother’s tired she needs a rest
The kids are playing up downstairs
Sister’s sighing in her sleep
Brother’s got a date to keep
He can’t hang around
Our house, in the middle of our street … Madness, Our House
Not a mouse
Shall disturb this hallowed house:
I am sent with broom before,
To sweep the dust behind the door. William Shakespeare, A Midsummer Night’s Dream V ii 17
Our house is hell, and thou, a merry devil,
Didst rob it of some taste of tediousness. William Shakespeare, The Merchant of Venice II iii 2-3, Jessica to Lancelot
You take my house when you do take the prop
That doth sustain my house; you take my life
When you do take the means whereby I live. ibid. IV i 172-174, Shylock to Portia et al
I have heard of a man who had a mind to sell his house, and therefore carried a piece of brick in his pocket, which he shewed as a pattern to encourage purchasers. Jonathan Swift, The Drapier’s Letters
Son of man, thou dwellest in the midst of a rebellious house, which have eyes to see, and see not; they have ears to hear, and hear not: for they are a rebellious house. Ezekiel 12:2
Through wisdom is an house builded; and by understanding it is established:
And by knowledge shall the chambers be filled with all precious and pleasant riches. Proverbs 24:3&4