Prefabs in the United Kingdom

British post-war prefab houses were the major part of the delivery plan envisaged by war-time Prime Minister Winston Churchill in March 1944, and legally outlined in the Housing (Temporary Accommodation) Act 1944, to address the United Kingdom's post-World War 2 housing shortage.

Taking the details of the public housing plan from the output of the Burt Committee formed in 1942, the Conservative Party's Churchill proposed to address the need for an anticipated 200,000 shortfall in post-war housing stock, by building 500,0000 prefabricated houses, with a planned life of up to 10years within five years of the end of World War 2. The eventual bill of state law agreed under the post-war Labour Party government of Prime Minister Clement Atlee, agreed to deliver 300,000units within 10years, within a budget of £150m.

Through use of the wartime production facilities and creation of common standards developed by the Ministry of Works, the programme got off to a good start, but foundered through a combination of commercial rivalry, public concern, and pure cost. More expensive to build than conventional houses, the envisaged excess production capacity of materials was taken up at a quicker rate through Britain's post-war export drive to reduce her burgeoning war-debts.

In the end, of 1.2million new houses built from 1945 to 1951 when the programme officially ended, only 156,623 prefab houses were constructed. Today, however, a number survive, a testament to the durability of a series of housing designs and construction methods only envisaged to last 10years.

Context

The combined impact of war and a lack of commercial high street activity, creates many post-war shortages and resultant economic inflation, not the least of which is in housing stock. In post-World War 2 Britain, this was increased through the use by both sides of carpet bombing from great altitudes, which had a huge effect on both the number and quality of available housing stock. Estimates at the time suggest that the minimum shortage was some 200,000 houses nationally. The result was the duplication of a strategy deployed by the post-World War 1 government of a country-wide investment programme in a national public house building scheme.

In envisaging the problem, Prime Minister Winston Churchill had set up the cross-party Burt Committee in 1942. They sent British engineers to the United States from late 1943, looking at how America - a world leader in prefab construction, thanks to its war focus - intended to address its needs for post-war housing.

The outcome of the Burt Committee was that it favoured prefabricated housing as a solution to the problems. In a radio broadcast in March 1944, post the end of the War in Europe, Churchill announced a Temporary Housing Programme, known officially as the Emergency Factory Made or EFM housing programme. The vision was for a Ministry of Works (MoW) emergency project to build 500,000 ‘new technology’ prefabricated temporary houses directly at the end of the war:

The emergency programme is to be treated as a military evolution handled by the government with private industry harnessed in its service. As much thought will go into the prefabricated housing programme as went to the invasion of Africa.

This vision and promise passed into law as the Housing (Temporary Accommodation) Act 1944, which planned to build 300,000 prefab houses in Britain over the next four years, with a structural lifetime of between 10 and 15years. In fact just over 150,000 were built.

However, rather than relying on private sector investment as in the United States, the new Labour Party government of Clement Atlee, having been part of a war government that deployed large and efficient production schemes to win the war, simply applied the same theory to this problem. The plan was also in part an economic solution, as it reduced the need for a post-war government laden with debt having to subsidise commercial operations, a problem avoided by simply encouraging them to work together to design and produce the paid-for solutions. The solution providers were hence already equipped for mass manufacture, and made capable of post-war transition through fulling a great economic need.

By 1951, the EFM housing programme and its off-shots had added one million council houses, resulting in 15% of all the dwellings in Britain became publicly owned, more than the proportion in the communist Soviet Union at that time.

Standards

The MoW created research institutes, standards and competition authorities that resulted in core building regulations. Although essential at the time to ensure quality, the way in which they were implemented from a regulatory view point defined and restricted the whole of the British construction industry, until the reforming non-centralist government of Margaret Thatcher some 35years later.

The most innovative creation of the MoW was what was termed the "service unit," something which MoW encouraged all designers to include. A service unit was a combined back-to-back prefabricated kitchen that backed onto a bathroom, pre-built in a factory to an agreed size. It meant that the unsightly water pipes, waste pipes and electrical distribution were all in the same place, and hence easy to install.

The service unit also contained a number of innovations for occupants. The house retained a coal-fire, but it contained a back boiler to create both central heating as well as a constant supply of hot water. For a country used to the pleasures of the outside lavatory and tin bath, the bathroom included a flushing toilet and man-sized bath with hot running water. In the kitchen were housed such modern luxuries as a built-in oven, refrigerator and baxi water heater: items we now take for granted.

All prefabs under the housing act came pre-decorated in magnolia, with gloss-green on all additional wood, including the door trimmings and skirting boards.

House types

When the Ministry of Works opened up the design competition, some 1400 designs were submitted. However, only a few were approved after testing for construction:

Prototype - Portal

The first prototype to be unveiled was the motor industry contribution, a steel panelled experimental temporary bungalow called the Portal after the minister of works, Lord Portal. With a floor area of 616 square feet (57.2 m²), and an estimated cost of £675 fully furnished. It included a prefabricated slot-in kitchen and bathroom capusle, that included a pre-installed refrigerator. The proposed rent was 10 shillings (50p) a week for a life of ten years.

Airey

Developed by Sir Edwin Airey, recognisable by its precast concrete columns and walls of precast ship-lap concrete panels.

Arcon

The Arcon was an asbestos-clad variant of the Portal, with the same prefabricated kitchen and bathroom capsule. It had a longer life, but also came with a higher cost of construction. The later rolled top roofed Arcon Mk5 was developed by Edric Neel.

AIROH

The AIROH house (Aircraft Industries Research Organisation on Housing) was a 675 square feet (62.7 m²), ten tonne all-aluminium bungalow assembled from four sections, each to be delivered to the site on a lorry, fully furnished right down to the curtains. The proposed rate of production of complete houses was to be an incredible one every twelve minutes. This was possible because the completely equipped and furnished AIROH could be assembled from only 2,000 components, while the aircraft it would replace on the production line required 20,000. The parents of future Labour Party leader Neil Kinnock were allocated at AIROH, on which he commented:

It had a fitted fridge a kitchen table that folded into the wall and a bathroom. Family and friends came visiting to view the wonders. It seemed like living in a spaceship.

BISF

The British Iron and Steel Federation, an association of steel producers, was formed in 1934 in order to provide central planning for the industry. It was prominent in coordinating output through the War.

Post-war, BISF became key in the new housing programme. It sponsored a solution for a permanent steel framed housing to a design by architect Sir Frederick Gibberd, who also designed the Howard House.

The BISF is of a conventional design, with simple architectural devices of projecting window surrounds encasing Crittall Hope windows, and differing cladding to the upper and lower stories deal with the junction between components in an understated fashion. Traditional materials could be incorporated or simulated, for example a brick cladding to the lower storey, or steel sheet profiled to match timber weatherboarding to the upper. The BISF house also uses tried and tested methods, with a simple over-site slab ground floor and render on metal lath cladding.

Produced by the British Steel Homes company, the BISF was a successful design in numerical terms, thanks to the backing of its trade sponsors, who could ensure a supply of steel. The BISF also benefited from a guaranteed order of 30,000units given directly by the Government in 1941.

Hawksley

A W Hawksley Ltd of Hucclecote, were formed in 1940 by the Gloster Aircraft Company to build the Albermarle aircraft designed by Armstrong Whitworth. Post-WW2, the companies parent Hawker Siddeley kept it open to supply prefab houses and bungalows to the MoW. After their MoW work finished, they continued for a period exporting their buildings to Australia, New Zealand and Uruguay into the 1960s. Their designs included:

• BL8 - an aluminium-clad timber-framed bungalow.
• C2/C3 - either a 3 bedroom bungalow, or convertible to a government building such as a Post Office or Doctors surgery
• Hawksley House - a semi-detached or terraced house with 2-4 bedrooms based on the principles of the Swiss architect G Schindler
• Hawkesley Single Storey building - a general purpose building suitable for schools, offices, hospitals and village halls

The company later developed an aluminium house for the Margaret MacMillan Memorial Fund, for use in tropical overseas relief missions.

Howard

Another designed by Sir Frederick Gibberd, the steel framed designed was privately promoted by John Howard & Company. A more industrial aesthetic design, and more adventurous in its use of innovative technologies. Asbestos cement cladding panels are clearly expressed with metal flashings over a base course of foamed slag concrete panels, with windows and doors fitting within the module set up by the cladding. Unlike the BISF this house proudly displays its lightweight prefab nature, but there are also technical advances that set the Howard House apart, for example the pre-cast concrete perimeter plinth that supports a suspended steel ground floor. Only 1,500 Howard Houses were built.

Phoenix

Looks much like an AIROH, but less asthetically pleasing. A 2bedroom design with steel frame, asbestos clad walls, and an innovative tubular steel poles with steel panels attached roof. Like all designs, it came pre-painted in magnolia, with green highlights on frames and skirting.

Other types

In Edinburgh, the Swedish Government gifted 100 timber-framed house which were erected in two locations.

There are Hamish prefabs (types 1 and 2), the Duplex Sheath prefab, the Bricket Wood Special prefab, the Blackburn Orlit prefab, and even a pre-fabricated gem known as the Foamed Slag.

Tarrans in Hull, the Phoenixs in Bristol, the Arcons in Newport

Programme

The MoW held an exhibition of five types of prefab at the Tate Gallery in London, in 1944/5:

• Two timber framed designs, the Tarran and the Uni-Seco
• One steel-framed with asbestos panels, the Arcon
• One aluminium prefab, made from surplus aircraft materials, the AIROH. Examples of these were exhibited at the Tate Gallery in 1944-5.

In April 1945 an Arcon was completed and handed over to its new occupants by 22 men in under eight hours. In May an AIROH was erected on a bombed site in London’s Oxford Street in just four hours.

But the cost of the programme at £150m met with opposition. In August 1945 the Portal was abandoned for lack of steel, while it was stated that both the Arcon and AIROH were above budget: prefabs in both manufacture and construction costs combined turned out to be more costly than traditionally built brick houses. The population allocated prefabs were also concerned that prefab's were a permanent over a temporary solution, with the postwar radio comedy Stand Easy! with Charlie Chester's creating popular skit-chants on the subject, including:

Down in the jungle, Living in a tent; Better than a prefab, No rent!

As the economy began to recover, the cost of the unwanted post-ware excess production reduced and hence costs of manufacture rose sharply. When the Chancellor allowed the pound to freely float against the dollar from 1947 onwards, a programme costing 60% of government income was severely cut back.

Production of the major types for local authorities continued until 1947, but only 170,000 of the 500,000 units promised were completed by 1951, when Churchill's new Conservative government made a promise of 300,000 new houses in partnership with the private sector:

• AIROH: 54,000
• Arcon: 46,000
• BISF: 30,000

British post-war prefab houses today

The strength of the post-ware prefab house - fast construction over a steel frame - is today its weakness. The properties were only designed to last 10 years, and so some of the quality standards were not as high as they would have been should a longer life have been envisaged. Secondly, the quality of steel production then was not as good as it was now, but it should be remembered that in only the previous few years British steel plants had become adapt at producing a consistently high quality product for the war effort, and so standards were consistent.

The quality of a steel framed prefab house can be found in the footings of the steel structure. With checks undertaken by a qualified and certified housing surveyor, the structural integrity of the house can be quickly ascertained through exposure of the footings: if they are not rusty, the house is normally structurally fine.

The second problem with non-refurbished houses is the use of asbestos in the original construction, particularly in the roof structure. Again, a qualified surveyor should be able to ascertain if asbestos is present, what type, and how to address its removal. There are a number of central and local government grants available for domestic asbestos removal which should cover most of the cost.

The third problem with the survival or prefabs in the 21st century is that of style. Never seen as asthetically pleasing, the tiht building regulations meant they also came with reasonable sized rooms and gardens. Modern house construction can create around 35 living spaces per acre, while often the prefabs will be sat on site layouts of less than 20. This, together with the age of the properties, makes redevelopment of mass prefab sites a distinct advantage to councils and housing associations. Hence, every year since 2000, the number of prefabs remaining has approximately halved.

Bristol has one of the largest remaining populations of prefab housing stock, and it also remains one of the most diverse. As a war time production centre for both aircraft, engines and explosives, it was easy to reach for Luftwaffe bombing, and hence had a large post-war need for new housing stock. There remain around 700 examples of Uni-Seco, Phoenix, Tarron and roll-topped Arcon MkV's. The stock diversity has resulted in English Heritage selecting 16 prefabs for Grade II listed building status.

Approximately six prefabs have been extracted from site for preservation, including one at the Museum of Welsh Life at St Fagans.

External links

• BISF House

Audio/visual

• AW Haksley Prefabs for Northern Ireland from archive of British Pathe
• Lorry leaving the factory of AW Hawksley with an export house