Shaftesbury Park Estate: a Victorian model dwellings project

A large section of Battersea Fields, also known as Pig Hill, near the Thames was acquired in 1872 by the Artizans, Labourers &General Dwellings Company for the realisation of their first socially mixed housing estate. The estate occupies a flat area of land at the edge of the flood plain just north of the slope rising to Clapham Common. Historically the poorly drained common land of Battersea Fields was used for pig herding. Two large ditches cut across to drain the land into the River Effra and Falcon Brook.

At the same time the housing co-operative was planning their house-building activities, the social reformer and peer, the 7th Earl of Shaftesbury was pushing legislation through parliament to improve the living and employment conditions of working people and was sponsoring philanthropic efforts to provide schooling for their children. Under Shaftesbury's guardianship new so-called Ragged Schools were established providing free education in 1844. In 1872 Lord Shaftesbury, as president of the Ragged School Union, laid the foundation-stone of buildings at the estate, thus giving it it's name.

The street plan and house designs were by the Dwellings Company's architect and surveyor, Robert Austin, formerly a carpenter with the company. However, financial difficulties, caused by poor accounting, led to replacement of the directors of the company and a change of approach during the construction of the estate. The initial idea was to build small housing projects for sale, the profits of which would be invested in larger estates of affordable rented housing. Rents and lease prices were raised, excluding many lower paid workers who were originally intended to benefit, and the planned area of open space - Brassey Square in the centre of the estate- was built over. Greenery was thus limited to the small back garden and the small fruit trees lining the streets.

The estate is located behind Lavender Hill (L). The streets are laid out on a grid pattern of long parallel streets with shorter cross streets. At the centre a large public garden (green outline) was planned on Brassey Square (B), but this was built over. It is here that we find the primary school (PS), a large former hostel (H), a block of flats (F) and a block of shops with apartments (S). A former Victorian secondary school (SS) is located just outside the estate.

The estate was built between 1873 and 1877 along a grid of wide tree-lined streets and comprises about 1.200 two-storey houses with gardens. The houses of the Shaftesbury Park Estate are of four basic types or classes distinguished by the number of rooms. Only the highest class originally had bathrooms. The street elevations are varied slightly to avoid monotony, creating generally attractive street frontages in a gothic revival style so typical of the Victorian Era.

The buildings are consistently of stock brick with red brick dressings and pitched slate roofs, which with the common architectural style, gives the estate a strong sense of identity and distinctiveness. The grid layout, with streets of varying lengths but always straight (except Eversleigh Road, which is aligned with the railway embankment), allows for easy movement throughout the estate. There is a sense of formality in the townscape arising from the grid layout and the repetition in the building frontages.

At present the Peabody Trust owns most of the estate, but many homes are already privately owned, and the number keeps rising as the Trust gradually releases more units for sale.