For those new to CabbieBlog or readers who are slightly forgetful, on Saturdays I’m republishing posts, many going back over a decade. Some will still be very relevant while others have become dated over time. Just think of this post as your weekend paper supplement.
Catford’s Camelot (25.01.11)
The Excalibur Estate is threatened with demolition, but unlike an Arthurian legend there are no Knights of the Round Table galloping to the fair maiden’s rescue.
In a part of Catford that few cabbies would know, or travel to, against the odds, there is the last surviving estate in London of post-war prefabricated houses (“prefabs”), some 187 two-bed roomed homes with St. Mark’s a prefabricated church which were built for bombed out Londoners and given road names such as Pelinore or Mordred by someone in the planning department all those years ago with a liking for Arthurian tales.
After the Second World War 150,000 prefabs were built across Britain. Created to accommodate homeless families with young children, these “palaces for the people” as they were called at the time were synonymous not only of comfort and luxury but also a feeling not lost on the demobbed armed forces of freedom. The Excalibur Estate in Catford South East London is still one of Britain’s largest estates of prefabs.
Erected in 1946-47 by German and Italian prisoners of war, who were in no hurry to return to war ravished Europe, these detached houses with their own gardens, bathroom and the luxury of a separate indoor toilet were the solution to the chronic housing stock shortage after the end of the Second World War.
Plonked on top of pre-plumbed concrete slabs, these homes could be built in a day, and were only expected to last between 10 and 15 years, by which time the Brutalist tower block of the 60s would accommodate these once homeless families.
By the Seventies the Brave New World of modernist architecture was starting to crumble, along with some of the buildings. Many people found that they hated living in high-rise blocks, no matter how much the council and social planners told them how lucky they were.
Tower blocks and even whole estates were demolished while the remaining prefabs, and the residents, with their little gardens stayed put. They remained as an uncomfortable reminder to planners that modernisers don’t always have the answers and home need more than boxes stacked one upon another, with the only way to see the sky is to walk to the municipal park.
With 12 acres of valuable land the property developers are showing an unhealthy interest in the Excalibur Estate and are proposing to squeeze 400 new homes onto the plot.
After years of neglect by Lewisham Borough Council who own all but 29 of them these houses are deemed unfit for human habitation and in the lingo that only local authorities can dream up “these houses are subject to a Sustainable Community Strategy”, demolition to you and me.
Only six have been granted protection from destruction, but these survivors should prove to be a nice little earner for their owners, filmmakers love the, Only Fools and Horse and BBC’s How We Built Britain have featured them.
The Twentieth Century Society (where were they when Centre Point’s fountains were removed?) wants to preserve as much as possible for students to study the design and the estate’s demography, while the local group just want to live there in peace.
The Excalibur Estate’s prefabs might not be the prettiest of dwellings, nor situated among leafy north London’s liberal elite in Barnsbury, but they are a remaining example of how we built homes “Fit for Heroes”.
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