Model homes: Artizans Dwellings Company

William Austin, who had worked himself up to become a developer even though he could neither read nor write, founds a commercial housing company in 1867: The Artizans, Labourers & General Dwellings Company. His company is an excellent example of a Victorian, philanthropic, model dwellings exploitation company. These model dwellings companies were a forerunner of municipal social housing and the Garden City Movement. The focus of all these was to provide affordable housing for the working classes in good homes, away from the polluted inner-cities and with amenities (like parks, schools, churches, community halls and shops) nearby.

The goal of William Austin was to provide affordable housing to city dwellers, whose houses had to make way for the rapid modernisation and development of London, e.g. new roads, railways, canals, locks, gas works and factories.

Besides some large apartment buildings in central London the Artizans, Labourers & General Dwellings Company is best known for a handful of large housing estates for working class and lower middle class residents. The first of these was the Shaftesbury Park Estate of 1872. This estate was quickly followed by the Queens Park Estate (1874), the Noel Park Estate (1883) and the Leigham Court Estate (1889). Lastly the dwellings company developed Pinner Wood Park, a true garden suburb, between 1913 and 1952.

The five housing estates developed by the Artizans, Labourers & General Dwellings Company are all similar in layout, except for Pinner Wood Park. Long streets on a grid plan dominate the layout of these estates. The architecture is also similar in a gothic revival style. Each estate differs in building details however. The spatial concept is also similar, with the higher class houses close to the central church and school and the smaller lower class houses around that and duplex housing along the edges. This type of housing estate is typical of the Victorian Era.

Pinner Wood Park is visibly from a later era. Here the spatial and functional ideas of the Garden City Movement were translated into a large estate for the working classes and lower middle class. It's located within Metro-land but not on a prime location near a station, but rather in between the stations at Northwood Hills, Pinner (both Metropolitan Railway) and Hatch End (London Overground). The layout is also rather unconvincing. This garden suburb is part of a belt of dormitory suburbs around Harrow.

An overview of the five housing estates by the Artizans Dwellings Company on the map of the urban province that is Greater London.

All estates developed by the Artizans, Labourers & General Dwellings Company were located on what were then the outskirts of the London Metropolis. Their location is also influenced by the proximity of railways, but they aren't located directly adjacent to any station. The idea was that the workers could live a better life on the edges of the sprawling city and commute back into town for their work. The ideal was that private and professional life would be best separated in temporal and spatial terms.