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House Building and Builders in Wandsworth

c.1850–1915

Keith Bailey

Wandsworth Historical Society — Wandsworth Paper 13

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Foreword

The collection of the data used in this paper has necessarily taken place over a prolonged period. I should like to thank all those archivists at the Greater London Record Office (now London Metropolitan Archives [now The London Archives, 40 Northampton Road, EC1R 0AB]) and the Wandsworth Local History Collection at Lavender Hill Library [now Wandsworth Heritage Service, Battersea Library, 265 Lavender Hill, SW11 1JB] who have made documents available; also Roger Logan and Michael Tyldesley for their help in abstracting the various District Surveyors Returns, longer ago than we care to remember. Dorian Gerhold and Neil Robson have made helpful comments on an earlier draft of the paper, but any interpretations based on the data remain the responsibility of the author.

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Introduction

The purpose of this paper is to present basic, essentially statistical data for house building and builders in the area now covered by the London Borough (hereafter LB) of Wandsworth between the 1850s and 1915. This period covers the critical phase of local suburban development, as the area was transformed from a group of hitherto separate settlements on the verge of the most significant change in their history until the Great War. By 1915, the demands on men and materials finally brought the burgeoning of Victorian and Edwardian Wandsworth to a halt. After a wartime hiatus, building resumed around 1920, although by then there were relatively few green-field areas in Wandsworth yet to succumb to bricks and mortar. Most post-1920 building was in the form of replacement dwellings for life-expired stock (including substantial bomb damage between 1939 and 1945), the great bulk of it by local authorities. As such, this represents a quantum change from the pre-1914 world, and as such warrants study in its own right.

The growth in the population of London from around 700,000 in the early eighteenth century to more than seven million two centuries later created the world's first giant metropolis, and although this phenomenon is now relatively commonplace, it must have seemed completely alien to anybody who lived through it, especially in the second half of the nineteenth century. During that time, the population of the Wandsworth area grew even faster than that of London as a whole, from less than 30,000 in 1841 to more than 400,000 at the outbreak of war in 1914.

Given that the Wandsworth area saw more than sixty thousand new houses (along with a few hundred flats) erected by more than three thousand builders, this paper can do no more than provide a broad framework. The building of London suburbia has not yet attracted a great deal of attention from urban historians. Perhaps the most notable examples are the work of Dyos on Camberwell and Thompson on Hampstead, along with studies by Olsen and Clarke.¹ Battersea has received considerably more attention in this respect than the other suburbs in the Wandsworth area, and it is hoped that local historians will turn their attention to the process of estate development and the myriad people involved in Balham, Putney, south-west Streatham, Tooting and Wandsworth.²

This paper is divided into three sections. The first concerns the sources for the study of house building and builders between the 1840s and 1915. Attention then turns to the data on the number of houses built year-by-year in each of the components of LB Wandsworth, together with a discussion of the peaks and troughs in the building cycle. (Then, as now, building was affected by the ups and downs in economic activity, as well as by the obvious fluctuations in demand for accommodation.) The third section concerns the legions of individuals who built the suburbs. As we shall see, the great bulk of these were here-today-gone-tomorrow, making little impact on the number of houses built, even in aggregate. Indeed, Victorian development was a triumph of hope in profits for all over the reality of mass bankruptcies, in which new men were ever ready to try their hand where others had failed. The maintenance of output in the face of rapidly-expanding demand, such that the average number of occupants per house varied only slightly (between about six and seven) throughout the period, and no major slum areas were created locally is testimony to their collective energy.

There is not space here to discuss the evidence for the creation and development of building estates. There are probably in the region of five hundred of these in LB Wandsworth. The necessary research has only been done for Battersea, where almost 210 estates are identifiable between c.1780 and 1910.³ This is clearly a major research objective for the rest of Wandsworth, although the number and variety of sources should not be underestimated.

The boundaries of the parishes which comprise the London Borough of Wandsworth appear on the back cover, while Map 1 shows a selection of building estates of different types and periods across the area.

[Em Fig. 1: Images of individual builders are extremely rare. These sketches of the Lathey brothers, active across the Borough from c.1850–1908, date from around 1890. (Reproduced from Clapham Junction and its People: A Peep-Show, c.1890.)]

Key to Map 1:
1. Park Town   2. Crown/Battersea Park   3. Colestown   4. Latchmere (Battersea Borough Council)   5. W.W. Pocock   6. Alfred Heaver   7. Conservative Land Society   8. Artizans & General Labourers Dwellings Co. (Shaftesbury Park)   9. Corsellis   10. British Land Company   11. London County Council   12. Furzedown   13. Magdalen College   14. Southfields Grid   15. Wimbledon Park   16. J.T. Leader

[Em Fig. Map 1: Selected Building Estates in Wandsworth (outline map showing numbered estate locations within LB Wandsworth boundary)]

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Builders and the Townscape

One point should be made clear at the outset, concerning the extent to which builders were responsible for the appearance of the townscape as we see it. Readers will be familiar both with streets in which all or most of the houses are to a uniform design, and with those in which there is a great variety of house types. This generally reflects the nature of the estate development, rather than simply the work of builders. It was the person or organisation responsible for laying out the streets and house plots that usually specified the value of houses to be erected, and in many cases also laid down the designs to be employed, although in this area, very little evidence of this has yet come to light, and in most cases seems unlikely to do so. It was therefore possible for uniform terraces to be the work of a large number of builders, even though this is not apparent to the casual observer. Equally, there are examples of whole streets which were the handiwork of one builder or firm, this being the case on the Shaftesbury Park estate in Battersea, the southern end of the Southfields Grid, and John Leader's estate around Bangalore Street in Putney, to name but three. Where developers exercised little or no control over the appearance of their estates, the streetscape is much more varied. Perhaps the best examples are estates developed by freehold land companies, where plots were sold rather than leased, and short runs of houses are the norm. Good examples are to be found in Disraeli Road (Putney) and Elsynge Road and its neighbours (Battersea). The frequent use of sub-contractors, and interruptions to the building of streets once they had been laid out because of the vagaries of the building cycle, bankruptcies and so on are other factors which may or may not actually appear in the facades of local streets.

The extent to which designs for houses were produced by architects employed by developers, or whether so-called "pattern books" of off-the-shelf designs were used by developers and builders is a subject which has received little attention across London. The sources which survive for building estates other than those developed by great landowners, for example the Dukes of Bedford and Westminster in Bloomsbury and Mayfair, or Eton College at Chalk Farm, do not generally provide evidence on the way in which designs for suburban houses originated, nor how they were transmitted to and interpreted by builders. There are few estates developed by large landowners or institutions in the Wandsworth area, and they often show as little evidence of a "controlling mind" as of a carefully thought out master plan.

Much more work needs to be done to relate the sources used in this paper to one another in terms of identifying builders with specific houses before one can safely generalise about the extent to which builders were active or passive agents of change in the creation of suburbia. The key source for identifying builders of individual houses/terraces is the Drainage Applications (see below), along with the actual product of their labours. This of course does not prove that the builders were responsible for the design(s), even if they were themselves the estate developers.

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Sources

The range of sources for studying local house building and builders is predictably wide, but there are nevertheless some large gaps in the data, even for so recent and crucial a topic of our history. A broad distinction may be made between official and private records. Although virtually all building before 1914 was by private enterprise, it was subject to a fair degree of national and local government control in much the same way as other areas of the Victorian economy which impinged upon public welfare.

Official Records

The onset of true suburban development in the Wandsworth area coincides with the maps produced as a result of the 1836 Tithe Apportionment Act. Their large scale and accurate surveying provide a view of the scattered villages and other settlements which made up the area, along with the fields, commons and gardens which separated them. Only the industrialised fringe along the Thames in Battersea and Wandsworth, together with some proto-urban housing in Battersea New Town provide variety from the largely rural landscape. In those two parishes, substantial traces of the medieval common fields stand in stark contrast to the first main-line railway, the London & Southampton of 1838, as it cut a swathe through the fields on embankment and in cutting. The rural idyll is however slightly deceptive, as all the local parishes were already deeply affected by the metropolis which lay only a few miles away. Their agriculture was skewed towards the London market, for example in the numerous market gardeners working to supply fresh vegetables, fruit and flowers. Their increasing desirability as residential areas is witnessed by the villas and mansions which lay scattered around the commons from south-central Battersea to Roehampton.

The spread of suburbia across the area can be followed cartographically on the various sheets of the Ordnance Survey 25-inch to the mile plans. The first of these were surveyed in the mid-1860s, at the height of the first major building boom to affect the area, albeit mostly in north and central Battersea. The second edition dates from the mid-1890s, by which date Battersea was largely built-up, and the tide of bricks and mortar was sweeping across Wandsworth, Balham and just beginning to overcome Tooting and Putney. The third edition dates from the early years of the First World War, and in presenting the fully built-up picture (with the exception of west Putney and Roehampton) provides a neat counterpoint to the Tithe Maps.

Under the terms of the Metropolitan Building Act of 1845, the post of District Surveyor was created, to oversee the quality of new buildings and alterations to the existing fabric. They began work in 1845, and their returns, when surviving, provide a detailed picture of the rhythm of building. Not only the numbers of houses, but also their builders' names and addresses are usually provided. At various times the jurisdictions of the surveyors were changed, and some new districts were created as the volume of work increased in new areas, or as formerly busy areas were fully built-up. The principal surveyors for the Wandsworth area were: Battersea North and Battersea South & Clapham, with Central added in the late-1880s; Wandsworth and Tooting Graveney, later divided into West Wandsworth and East Wandsworth & Tooting; Putney & Roehampton; and West Streatham, which covered Balham and Tooting Bec.

Unfortunately, the District Surveyors Returns (DSR) for the years 1853 to 1870 have been destroyed, and although summaries for annual activity in each area survive, in most cases the responsibilities of the surveyor do not coincide with modern boundaries. This hiatus means that the first major peak of building in the Wandsworth area, which affected all areas, but especially Battersea, Balham and Wandsworth, cannot be studied in detail, although it is possible to fill some of the gaps from other sources (see below). Also, the fact that only Battersea was subject to any appreciable degree of development in the smaller boom of the late-1840s and early 1850s means that it is sensible to treat the results for that area separately in the analysis, to avoid distorting the data for the whole Borough. The main database therefore refers to houses built and builders active between 1857 and 1915, a convenient span of almost exactly sixty years.

It should be emphasised at this point that there are discrepancies between the totals derived from the DSRs and those obtained by counting houses and flats from large-scale Ordnance Survey plans (especially the 25-inch to the mile Editions of 1894–6 and 1913–6, many of which are available in the invaluable Godfrey Edition), and from local street directories once the streets are fully built-up. The same is true if the Drainage Applications are used instead of the DSRs. In most areas, the DSR totals exceed those actually achieved on the ground. The reason for this is that groups of houses were quite often recorded by the District Surveyors more than once — for example, if a builder failed to erect all or some of the houses recorded in one year, and was replaced by a different builder in a subsequent year, or if the original builder amended the numbers of houses to be built. Work on the Southfields Grid has shown that this could involve a group of houses three times, often over a protracted period, as builders' financial circumstances changed.

Although it should in theory be impossible for any substantial area of housing to be built in Victorian and Edwardian Wandsworth without coming to the notice of the appropriate District Surveyor, there are cases where large numbers of houses did so. Particularly noteworthy are the Heaver Estate in Balham, where the DSR capture only 785 out of a total of 1,301 houses built between 1890 and 1905, and the Furzedown Estate where the totals are 1,211 and 1,988, respectively. Whether this reflects oversight on the part of the West Streatham District Surveyor, or deliberate withholding of information by the builders and developers is not clear. In the analysis which follows, the data drawn from the DSR have been analysed as they stand, since it is impossible to guess what numbers of "missing" houses were built in a given year, and by whom they were built. Further work on the Drainage Applications will enable some of the gaps to be plugged.

The gap in the DSR can be filled in part from the records of the Wandsworth District Board of Works (hereafter WDBW). This body was set up under the Metropolis Management Act of 1855, and covered the areas of the later Metropolitan Boroughs of Battersea and Wandsworth (i.e. including the whole of Clapham and Streatham parishes, most of which were lost on reorganisation in 1965). The Board did not have responsibility for the District Surveyors, which was transferred at the start of 1856 from the Metropolitan Buildings Office to the Metropolitan Board of Works (hereafter MBW), in the person of the Superintending Architect. The WDBW was, however, kept advised of applications for new streets and kept a record of applications from builders for new houses. There is one essential difference between these records and those of the DSR, in that the latter record actual building work, for which fees were charged, as nowadays, whereas the notices to the WDBW record intention to build, which in some cases never happened, or was only partially completed. (It is also true that some of the houses recorded in the DSR were left half-finished during periods of reduced activity, or were demolished as unfit, but these form an insignificant proportion of the total.) The tendency of the notices to the WDBW to overstate the actual number of houses in certain streets is, however, compensated by the fact that the minutes omitted to record large amounts of activity. Overall, where other sources of data are available, for example rate books, the 1860s are clearly under-represented in terms of houses built and builders at work in the area. This probably amounts to 2–4% of the total for the period 1857–1915. Parochial rate books enable some of the gaps left by the missing DSRs to be filled, although no parish has a complete series for the years 1856–70. Once the DSR recommence in full form in 1871, they provide a continuous series of data for all parts of Wandsworth down to the end of the review period in 1915.

There is a further official source which provides much useful information about the progress of house building — namely the plans submitted by builders/architects to the WDBW and its successors the Metropolitan Boroughs of Battersea and Wandsworth. These show at least the location of proposed houses in the various streets, something the DSR generally do not do. They may include ground plans also. They first survive from the late-1870s, but do not form a continuous series until the 1890s, and even then are not complete. For this reason, and given that they are most useful for the identification of builders with the houses they built, they have not been used in this study. (They do, however, need to be exploited much more, especially where photographic evidence can be used to show the styles employed by builders over time.)

Private Records

The survival of both personal and corporate papers concerning the process of suburban development is extremely patchy and represents only a minute fraction of what must once have existed. This applies especially to the day-to-day business papers of builders and contractors, and to the supply of building materials. Fortunately, these are of little direct concern in the present study.

Numerically and qualitatively, the most important records are the deeds for individual houses and estates. These survive in large quantities, but are far from evenly spread geographically. This reflects the fact that most tend to owe their survival to compulsory purchase by local authorities. Thus north Battersea is well covered, as are certain other areas which suffered large-scale damage between 1939 and 1945. Otherwise, it tends to be the chance depositing of old deeds by legal firms, and occasionally industrial concerns which have expanded in residential areas, which throws light on local development.

The principal uses of deeds, in identifying how land became available for building, who owned it, who laid out the estate, who built the houses, and how the various operations were financed, are not of direct concern here. They can be used to fill in some of the gaps in the official record between 1853 and 1870 by revealing houses for which there is no record in the WDBW minutes. Given that only Battersea has been subjected to detailed scrutiny of available deeds, however, this material has not been included here in the general analysis of houses built and builders. It has instead been analysed separately for the period 1845–52 along with the early DSRs for Battersea alone. (In reality there was very little house building going on locally at this early date other than in Battersea.)

Other sources of information on building estate development include sale particulars, often with plans and conditions of sale, along with restrictive covenants on land uses which would have been detrimental to the "tone" of an estate. Very rare are reports by architects or surveyors to landowners. Wandsworth was not the home of large landed estates such as those found in the West End and Bloomsbury, for example. Only the Flower family at Park Town in Battersea and Magdalen College, Oxford, stand out as being especially concerned to maintain the quality of builders' work and tenants on their estates, albeit with very different degrees of success.

The only notable first-hand account which survives by one involved in local estate development and building is the unpublished autobiography of the architect William Willmer Pocock.⁴ Virtually nothing survives giving voice to the myriad builders themselves. Another rarity is some manuscript notes by Edwin Lathey, one of two Wiltshire brothers who came to Battersea in the 1850s and built both houses and public works over the next half century. The fact that they lasted so long in the industry and became Vestrymen marks them out as rather exceptional, of course.

It is sometimes possible to piece together biographical details of builders from the decennial Censuses, relatives' reminiscences and other sources, but for the great majority there is no epitaph apart from their small contribution to the building of Wandsworth's houses, a large proportion of which are still standing and occupied. A few brief biographies of local builders are given in Appendix 4.

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The Pattern of House Building in Wandsworth, 1856–1915

Background

For the purposes of analysis, the period 1856 to 1915 has been used, since this has continuous, more or less complete data for all local areas within the Borough. The period begins just after the end of the Crimean War, which marked a very low ebb in building activity. Coincidentally, the end coincides with a severe trough brought about by a diversion of capital away from construction into another war. It is well-known that house building proceeds in a cyclical fashion, related to, but not coincident with, the general cycles within the economy as a whole. High interest rates and shortage of ready capital lead to a decline in output, while low interest rates and abundant finance lead to boom periods. This financial basis of the cycle does not necessarily coincide with that of the demand for housing arising from population growth, however. Victorian house building was notoriously speculative, and it seems that builders would carry on building houses almost irrespective of the supply of new tenants to occupy them. Thus, in Battersea the boom of the mid-late 1860s produced a large glut of empty houses, totalling around 1,500 by 1871. The sharp downturn in housing starts from 1869 soon redressed the balance as the population continued to surge, with around 54,000 new inhabitants in the 1870s. The all-time peak of activity in Battersea between 1878 and 1882 also saw a large stock of empties, but not for long.

Parry Lewis's study of building cycles sets the scene for Britain as a whole, with an examination of selected large cities.⁵ During the period under review, London as a whole experienced peaks of building activity in 1850, 1867/8, 1880/1 and 1899 and troughs in 1856, 1876, 1890 and 1910, representing cycles of between about fifteen and twenty years' duration. By the outbreak of the Great War, the old London County Council area, and much of the surrounding areas in other counties, were fully built-up, so that a logical progression to a new peak in about 1917–1919 would seem unlikely. In the Wandsworth area, only west Putney and Roehampton were yet to be fully developed, although many areas of first-generation villas and mansions (Wimbledon Park, for example) were ripe for redevelopment.

Below the level of the LCC area, local factors play an increasing role in the details of the building cycle, and disaggregation of the data is less helpful. Taking the whole of LB Wandsworth together, there were peaks in 1867/8, 1879/80, 1894 and 1904, the last two representing a local division of the overall London peak in 1899. Local troughs occurred in 1871, 1889, 1897 and 1915. The 1897 trough was merely a short, sharp fall after a year of exceptional activity and 1915 marks the virtual cessation of building in the Great War. Overall, the Wandsworth cycles are shorter than those for London as a whole, lasting for around ten–fifteen years between peaks. This may be because for the whole fifty year period, one part or another of Wandsworth was at the edge of suburbia, with large areas of virgin land to attract the builder and those seeking to move out from the inner city.

The main focus of building in Wandsworth moved over time as one suburb was completed and another took off. Thus, in the 1850s and 1860s 70–90% of all new housing was in Battersea, but after 1900, Wandsworth, Tooting and Streatham were the main areas of building. Tooting was still essentially a roadside village in 1860, with scarcely ten new houses a year until 1869, and never more than one hundred per annum until the boom of 1903–7, much of which was associated with the LCC's Totterdown Estate. Similarly Putney, which, although having about the same area as Wandsworth and Battersea, did not "take-off" as a suburb until the mid-late 1880s. More than two hundred new houses were erected there in 1887, 1888, 1896 and 1900 (houses which represent the essential Victorian Putney between the Thames and Howards Lane). In those parts of Streatham parish which are still in Wandsworth (Balham, Tooting Bec and Furzedown), building activity moved progressively from the former around 1865–1875 to the latter after 1900. Years of peak activity were 1881, 1901 and 1906, and here alone substantial numbers of new houses were being erected as late as 1913 and 1914.

Building in Battersea, 1845–1856

Battersea is the only part of the area which had a substantial number of houses built in the decade after the District Surveyors began their work, and the figures are set out below.

Sources: District Surveyors Returns 1845–52; Battersea Poor Rate Books 1853–56

In total, 1,356 houses were built in Battersea during this period, which neatly encompasses the passage of the building cycle from a trough in 1845 to another, much deeper one during the Crimean War in 1855, by way of a peak in 1850–51. Most of the activity was on new estates in north Battersea, especially to the east and west of the old village centre, on land which until then had been used as market gardens supplying the London market. Now the first ripples of the suburban tide were being felt, which would engulf the area within twenty years. The first new developments off St. Johns Hill also appeared, although there was no station on the new railways from London to Southampton and Richmond, which parted here, until 1863.

Building in the Wandsworth Area, 1856–1915 (see Cover Map)

Appendix 1 gives details for all houses built in the LB Wandsworth area in the sixty years from 1856 until activity virtually ceased in the First World War. It should be noted that the name "Streatham" refers to those parts of the ancient parish remaining in Wandsworth after 1965, mainly Balham, Tooting Bec and the Furzedown/Mitcham Lane area. It also includes what had once been a detached portion of Clapham parish, in the Ramsden Road area. "Tooting" refers to the parish of Tooting Graveney, a very small unit of less than 600 acres, whose boundary with Streatham was overridden by several building estates. In the remaining cases, parish and district areas coincide, which means that Roehampton is subsumed under Putney, and that East Putney falls to Wandsworth and New Wandsworth and Clapham Junction to Battersea — there is nothing new in the renaming of suburbs to give them implied status!

Just over 61,000 new houses and flats in purpose-built blocks were built in the Wandsworth area during the period. An explanation about the half-house (maisonette in modern parlance) is appropriate here. They first appeared in the 1890s and thereafter formed an important part of the total output of dwellings. Unfortunately, the District Surveyors were not consistent in noting that an otherwise ordinary two-storey house was divided into two separate dwellings, each with its own front door, so the total here will be understated by several hundreds from around 1895 onwards. Large numbers of ordinary two- and three-storey terraced houses had always been in multiple occupation, with families on each floor. Half-houses were occupied by the skilled working- and lower-middle classes, offering real benefits above the norm of shared access and facilities, although they were more expensive to rent. They were a mixture of local authority and private sector provision, the former most notably in the case of the Battersea Borough Council's Latchmere estate of 1902–3, and the latter scattered across all districts, from Felsham Road, Putney, to the Southfields Grid, and in Tooting. Flats in blocks first appeared in the 1870s for housing the skilled working classes: a small Peabody block on the Shaftesbury Estate [1875], Victoria Dwellings in Battersea Park Road [1877], and Durham Buildings in York Road [1902]. Later flats were virtually always the preserve of the middle classes — notably around Battersea Park [1888–1902] and in developments like Kenilworth Court by the river at Putney [1901–3]. The DSR merely note the building of a whole block of flats, and numbers of dwellings have been derived in this case from local directories for the first year after completion.

The density remained in the range six to seven people per house throughout the period, showing that the speculative building process was fully equal to meeting the unprecedented demands put upon it. The local population increased by almost 350,000 between 1850 and 1914, unremarkable in the context of a metropolis exploding to six-seven million, but still equivalent to a substantial provincial city. Although there were the inevitable pockets of severe overcrowding crammed with humanity living in highly insanitary conditions, Wandsworth people were either adequately- or well-housed by the standards of the time. The completion of more than 2,500 new dwellings in 1880 marks the apotheosis of local builders and developers, providing for more people in one year than the entire local population in 1801!

Not only was the process of house building cyclical, but it was far from evenly spread geographically. The spread of London from a walled medieval city to the world's first true metropolis may be likened to the effects of dropping a stone into water, with ever-larger ripples spreading out. Concentric rings of development, progressively further from the centre represent Stuart, Georgian, Victorian, Edwardian and inter-war London. This simple pattern is, however, complicated by the existence of ancient towns and villages throughout the area, which often began to develop "suburbs" of their own, well in advance of the arrival of the tidal wave of bricks and mortar so dramatically portrayed by George Cruickshank in his famous cartoon London Going out of Town (1829). Thus Battersea saw a surge in riverside industry from the mid-seventeenth century which led to growth at Nine Elms, notably the creation of Battersea New Town from 1786. Wandsworth too grew into a small industrial town, with areas of housing for workers in its mills and other enterprises.⁶

In general, however, the concentric model did apply, with Putney and Tooting lagging well behind Battersea, for example. Within each locality, the timing, as well as the type, of development was very much determined by the attitudes and circumstances of landowners. If there was no financial pressure, blocks of land could remain unbuilt for decades after their neighbours had succumbed. A notable example of this is Matthew Whiting's estate off St. John's Road Clapham Junction. His wealth meant that he had no need to convert his grounds into housing, and although completely surrounded from 1886, it was not until after his death in 1903 that the land was sold and Barnard Road created. The same occurs in every suburb.

One simple measure of the progress of building and the point at which each suburb may be said to have taken off is to convert the annual output of houses into a cumulative percentage. Far from the smooth 2% per annum which might be predicted, the effects of the building cycle and local population and ownership factors meant that there were spurts of building followed by years in which little happened. Table 2 identifies the years in which each area, and the borough as a whole, passed the landmarks of one quarter, half and three-quarters of all houses built between 1857 and 1915. Before the 1850s, suburban development had only really affected, and even there was only just making significant inroads into new greenfield estates.

Battersea "took off" during the building boom of the mid-late 1860s, at least a decade before its neighbours to the south and west, and a generation before Tooting. Putney, Streatham and Wandsworth followed in the boom years around 1880, by which time Battersea was half complete. Take-off in Tooting, the furthest from London, only began in the late-1890s. Then, thanks to the combined efforts of private builders and the London County Council's cottage estate at Totterdown, growth was explosive, with half of all houses built between 1898 and 1905, a feat which took between seventeen and twenty-one years elsewhere. Putney experienced its own boom in the late-1880s and early 1890s which took it slightly ahead of Wandsworth and Streatham. This continued down to 1900, making Putney quintessentially late-Victorian, whereas large swathes of Wandsworth — notably the Southfields Grid — and Streatham date from the Edwardian period, albeit with little change in the appearance of the houses. A key individual in taking Balham and Tooting from take-off to the half-way mark was Alfred Heaver. His mainly middle-class estate in the former, with almost 1,300 houses, still bears his name, but his link with large areas of less grandiose houses around the shopping centre of Tooting is much less well-known.

By 1914, only Roehampton had substantial tracts of land which were still occupied only by great houses and their grounds, although there were pockets of undeveloped land in all areas, even in south Battersea. There was little new building activity until the mid-1920s, when a few developments of typical interwar semi-detached and detached houses were undertaken, often with the hallmark "half-timbering". At the same time, the clearance of decayed areas of early Victorian development took place, especially in north Battersea, where characteristic four- and five-storey brick-built blocks were the norm. Roehampton generally survived unchanged, although most of the great houses passed into institutional use. When their landscaped grounds finally succumbed, it was to concrete blocks in the late-1950s and 1960s, which also saw large houses in the Wimbledon Park area replaced by similar schemes. Vast areas in Battersea were similarly affected, much of it having been destroyed or damaged in the Blitz.

[Em Figs. 2 & 3: Blackett Street and Borneo Street, Putney. Houses on right of Blackett St. by J. Tozer of Barnes 1900, on left by H. Brooker of Putney, 1898, who also built the quite different houses on the right-hand side of Borneo Street in 1899. Those on the left of Borneo St. are by John Pacey (1900) in the style used for the majority of houses on this estate, as can be seen in the distance in Bangalore St. (Patrick Loobey Collection)]

[Em Figs. 4 & 5: Along with all the residential streets, the commercial centres of the suburbs were largely created after 1870. These two examples from opposite ends of Tooting show Alfred Heaver's parades running along High Street from Garratt Lane (1897–99) and the much more ornate Furzedown Market at Amen Corner by J.W. Hallett (1905–8). (Patrick Loobey Collection)]

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The Builders of Wandsworth 1856–1915

In an age when we have become used to large-scale, national housebuilders, it is necessary to remember that such a phenomenon did not exist in the nineteenth and early-twentieth centuries. Even the great Thomas Cubitt, who created large parts of Belgravia and Pimlico, as well as Clapham Park, was basically a London builder.⁷ The overwhelming majority of the thousands of builders who created the Victorian and Edwardian suburbs of London operated on a tiny, purely local scale, over a very short time span. As with the creation of an anthill or termite city, the metropolis was the culmination of myriad small actions, which make the end-product all the more impressive. The appearance of much larger scale municipal building activity only occurred after 1900, and with the exception of the 300-plus dwellings at Latchmere and the 1,100-plus on the LCC's Totterdown estate at Tooting, made little impact until after the Great War.

Perhaps the main reason for the failure of housebuilding to develop into a large-scale activity is that it remained (and remains) essentially a handicraft activity, in which the skills of a large variety of individual tradesmen are brought together. With the exception of the not very successful industrialised "system" building of the 1960s and early 1970s, this approach has yet to be improved upon. This means that the collection of bricklayers, carpenters, masons, joiners, painters and roofers who were responsible for the building of London's Stuart and Georgian suburbs are the same sort of people who were building in north Battersea in the 1860s and the Southfields Grid in the 1900s. Styles might change, but methods did not. The main change after 1850 was the addition of much more plumbing, the installation in many houses of gas fittings, and a certain amount of prefabricated joinery assembled on site.

The essentially small scale of any individual builder's activity meant that the financial threshold for entry was low, and given the almost continuous mushroom growth of London, the potential rewards were considerable. Most, if not all, builders were in reality practitioners of one or other of the basic crafts who took responsibility for leasing plots from developers and then recruited others to carry out the tasks for which they were not equipped.⁸ As little as £100 capital would be enough in the case of typical developments of small houses, but at least £4–500 would be needed to get started on a middle-class estate. The problem was that the lure of quick and substantial returns was often able to cloud the risks. We have already seen that building is a highly cyclical activity, in which booms produced gluts of unlet houses, followed by slumps in which few new houses were built. This of course exposed builders to the risk of having to pay ground rents on empty properties, and also in completing houses within the terms laid down in the lease, incurring expenses on materials and wages with no income from tenants in prospect. The local and trade press is littered with tales of builder bankruptcies, and also of unfinished house 'carcases', some of which were demolished to sell off the bricks, wood and slates.

These failures never daunted the next generation of aspiring builders, however, and hope always triumphed over adversity. Very few men prospered to the extent of lasting more than five years in the local building industry, and even fewer achieved more than one hundred houses. The thousands of builders and craftsmen who laboured to produce the houses into which artisans and costermongers, clerks and shop assistants, merchants and bankers flocked, generally kept pace with unprecedented demand over sixty years, building structures which have largely stood the test of time.

It is important to note that the word "builder", as used in sources such as the District Surveyors' Returns, conceals wide variations. It may indicate what we understand by the term now, a person capable of building complete houses, employing his own craftsmen. Equally, it may be a specific tradesman, often a bricklayer or carpenter, who while taking a lease and notifying the authorities of the intention to build, then worked formally or informally with his peers from other trades to do the job. Of course, many "builders" started out this way. Even Alfred Heaver (1841–1901) who employed hundreds of men at the time of his death, began as a humble carpenter in the 1860s. By 1901 he had developed large swathes of Battersea, Balham, Tooting and Fulham. His estate was valued at around £600,000 (about £35m at present prices). A third category of so-called builders did not belong to the industry at all, but merely took on leases and sent notices to the District Surveyor. They might be the estate owner, lawyers, property companies or building societies (then concerned with building, not mortgaging properties). In the absence of other sources, it is impossible in most cases to identify their occupations. Sometimes, individuals moved back and forth between trades, and there are many examples of men who appear in the sources as builders (or building tradesmen) at one time and licensed victuallers (occasionally other trades) at another, often in pubs which they had built! Here, all of these various people will be referred to as "builders".

The following analysis is based on a collation of the various sources discussed in the first section of the paper, but a few words of explanation are necessary for a fuller understanding of the basis of the statistics. It must be emphasised that the various gaps in the records of building, especially before 1870, mean that some builders' outputs will be understated. This is less significant, however, than the substantial number of short-lived builders who will have been missed altogether. While their omission probably does not affect the total number of houses built significantly, because of their very small output, it depresses the number of builders by one hundred or more (about 3%). The difference between the total number of dwellings built in Wandsworth between 1856 and 1915 (61,032) and the total number with identifiable builders (60,746) is very small (0.5%), and the following discussion is based on the second figure.

Secondly, it must be remembered that many of the builders were active in areas outwith the Borough of Wandsworth, before, during or after the time that they worked locally. Unfortunately, there is as yet no London-wide analysis of the DSR and other relevant sources. The discussion of builders' output and duration are therefore based wholly on the Wandsworth data. It is important not to overemphasise this problem, however, as two-thirds of our local builders appear in only one or two years, building very few houses. Even within the Borough boundary, it is relatively unusual for men to work in more than one parish or locality. It is the larger builders, or those who lasted for more than five years, whose total contribution to the London housing stock is perhaps understated. We know, for example, that Alfred Heaver built houses in Fulham, Clapham and Lambeth.

Thirdly, it is likely that some of the builders who are recorded as operating locally after 1856 also worked before that date, but the patchy nature of the sources again makes it impossible to quantify the number or the houses they built accurately, except in the case of Battersea. The data for Battersea 1845–1856 are therefore treated briefly, and separately from the rest of the analysis. Brief biographical notes on a sample of local builders will be found in Appendix 2.

Local Builders in 1891

Before considering the data on all builders and their output, it is instructive to look in more depth at the problems associated with studying an artificially bounded area like the LB of Wandsworth. The Census of 1891 provides details of all those claiming to be "builders", which can be compared with the various DSRs of that year. The Census shows that there were many more "builders" living locally than are recorded as building houses. Equally, there are many builders working locally in 1891 who did not reside in the area. There are several explanations for this. Then, as now, the word "builder" had several connotations. Many individuals were engaged in repairs and minor works to existing buildings, lacking the capital to undertake new construction. Secondly, local boundaries are often arbitrary, so that, for example, many builders living in Clapham or Chelsea were as near, or nearer, to the areas of building activity than local men. Thirdly, the notices in the DSR are sometimes in the name of landowners, agents, or others involved in development of estates who were not in the building industry. Finally, some "builders" also had other occupations and they are recorded in the Census as, for example, licensed victuallers, carpenters, or surveyors. If nothing else, therefore, taking a single year as a snapshot of late-Victorian building poses as many questions as it answers!

The 1891 Census names 358 individuals as builders (or as builder & contractors, builder & decorator, etc.):

Note: Head = head of household; Other denotes family members, lodgers, boarders, etc.

As befits an industry where there was a progression from labourer to craftsman to one capable of undertaking building in his own right, local builders in 1891 were overwhelmingly married heads of household (84%). The average age of married household heads was 46 years (cf. widowers 59, and unmarried 34; those who were not family heads averaged 31 years). In socio-economic terms, builders covered a range depending on income and capital resources. Some were little more than building craftsmen who inflated their occupation for the benefit of the Census enumerator, earning perhaps £2–£5 per week. Others, with large numbers of employees of their own and capable of building fifty or more houses in a single year, will have measured their income in hundreds, if not thousands of pounds per annum.

Very few Wandsworth builders in 1891 had been born locally (8%), with another 34% coming from the rest of Surrey and Middlesex and 16% each from the Home Counties and South-West England. There was, of course, much movement between suburbs as the building frontier moved inexorably outwards — from Chelsea to Battersea to Streatham, for example.

When we turn to the records of builders in the DSRs, the great difference between the two records is clear. Only 176 of the local builders in the Census appear as active in the area at any time (49%), including houses built in any year, not merely 1891. The remaining 50% must therefore have belonged to one or more of the following categories, which are not mutually exclusive: [1] they were house builders, living but never working in Wandsworth; [2] they were associated with known builders of local houses, but not named as partners in the DSR; [3] they were building craftsmen, such as masons or carpenters, who had inflated their status for the benefit of the Census, not such a modern problem as we may think; [4] they were engaged only on public works, or on repairs and maintenance work.

In total, 110 individuals were responsible for some house building locally in the DSRs for 1891, of whom 29 were active only in 1891. This is very typical of the whole Victorian period, where builders were extremely transient, and those lasting more than a couple of years were the exception. Of the 110, fifty-eight appear also in the Census, while a further 36 did not have addresses in the Wandsworth area. This leaves sixteen who lived locally according to the District Surveyors, but who were not described as builders in the Census. Many of those who gave notice of new houses to the District Surveyors were in fact building tradesmen (e.g. bricklayer, carpenter, mason) who headed up an informal grouping which came together on an ad hoc basis to build a few houses before going their separate ways again.

Appendix 5 gives details of the builders who appear in both the local Census and the DSRs for 1891, together with their output in that year. With the exception of John Stanbury (154 houses, all central Battersea), John Statham (48 houses, all Battersea), H.J. Kerven (42 houses, all Balham) and William West (40 houses, all Balham), and W.L. Peters (29 houses, all Wandsworth) none of these 58 builders achieved more than twenty houses during the year. The total output of these five individuals was 313 houses (average 63), half of them by Stanbury. The remaining 53 achieved only 323 between them (average 6). This is entirely typical of the whole period, with relatively few men responsible for building as many new houses as hundreds of small operators. Even though the scale of the output had gradually increased from the 1870s, as larger firms achieved the critical financial mass to go over to large-scale enterprise, builders of one or two houses still far outnumbered them. In 1891, there were seventeen of the latter, and a further fifteen who erected three–five houses during the year, a total of 85 houses (13% of the total by 55% of builders).

Builders and Their Output

Between 1856 and 1915, a total of 3,057 builders with a total output of 60,746 dwellings worked in the LB Wandsworth area (see Appendices 4 and 5 for details). (Note that the element of double-counting which affects some of the DSR data may inflate the output of a small number of builders [see pages 5–6]. This has not been taken into account here, as the distortions where identifiable were minimal, and we cannot be sure that all of them are identifiable in the sources.)

The average output of just under twenty dwellings per builder represents around ten "pairs" of typical tunnel-back terraced houses or a small block of flats. As usual, however, crude overall averages conceal more than they reveal. The crucial fact is that builders were ephemeral: three-fifths are mentioned in a single year, another 10% in two years. These 69% of builders accounted for about one-quarter of all dwellings. Equally striking is the fact that 493 builders only erected one house, and 420 only two, sometimes taking more than ten years to do so! They represent 30% of all builders, but achieved a grand total of 2% of dwellings. Builders of between three and ten houses (35% of the total), erected 10% of all dwellings. Little is known about the vast majority of these small builders apart from their name, address (usually), and the location of the houses they built. Even if they were at work elsewhere in London, it is unlikely that their total contribution to the creation of suburbia was very significant. The lure of making a profit, with luck a large and rapid one, from the ever-growing metropolis continued to attract building workers throughout the period, despite the evidence of bankruptcies, empty houses unable to attract tenants, and half-finished streets.

When we reach builders of between eleven and 25 houses, numbers and output are more balanced (18% of builders, 15% of dwellings). Even so, half of them worked locally in only one or two years. The threshold between small and medium builders cannot be defined with great precision, but lies around the 25-house level. Given the rudimentary mechanisation of the industry, builders of 26–50 houses may be termed medium-scale, with an output typically equivalent to one side of a suburban street. They account for only 8% of all builders, but erected 15% of the dwellings, an average of 36. They often took five years or more to achieve these totals, however, so that their annual output was usually not so impressive, often in line with that of many small builders. Many longer-lasting builders did not produce houses in every year, depending on the vagaries of the demand for housing and the financial situation.

In contrast to the multitude of small builders, those who completed in excess of 50 dwellings were rare indeed, and represent a continuum from medium- to large-scale output. There were 279 of them (9%), but they were responsible for 35,376 dwellings (58%), an average of 127. Given the handicraft nature of the industry, it is surprising that almost one-tenth of these individuals worked locally in only one or two years. This is usually because they are associated with one particular building estate where output was far higher than usual, notably the Shaftesbury Park estate of 1872–7, which was built by direct labour. Here the "builders" are effectively front men for the Artizans & General Labourers Dwellings Company, employing a legion of tradesmen to achieve outputs as high as 500 houses a year. The same is true of work on the LCC Totterdown estate of 1903–4, and the blocks of flats around Battersea Park in the 1890s, although in the latter case the labour inputs per dwelling unit would have been much less.

Those at the summit of the Victorian and Edwardian building world were those who achieved more than one hundred dwellings (see below). They account for less than 4% of builders (118), but built 39% of all dwellings (23,954). Their average of 203 houses is equivalent to the work of 203 builders of single houses or 102 builders of two! They were longer-lasting than most of their peers, with 86% working locally for more than five years, but the nature of the industry meant that their annual output was not vastly greater than that of medium-sized builders. Average annual output ranges from 25 for builders of 100+ houses active for six–ten years, to 12 for those active for ten–twenty years and only nine for those lasting more than two decades. Rather like the hare and the tortoise, some builders lasted only a few years but made as great an impact on the local townscape as those who plodded away building four or five "pairs" of typical terraced houses year after year.

In general terms, the appearance of successive cohorts of new builders through time reflects the pattern of house-building shown in Appendix 1: rising from the mid-1850s to a peak in the decade 1876–85, and declining thereafter. By 1905, the local suburbs were virtually built-up, and established firms often continued to build down to the outbreak of war, dramatically reducing the number of newcomers.

Notes: 1. New Builders are all those who first appear in the relevant decade, irrespective of the duration of their work locally; 2. Total Houses includes all those built by the builders starting in a given decade, irrespective of the date when they were built; 3. Houses/Builder is the average number achieved by those starting in a given decade.

It seems that nothing deterred the aspiring builders of suburbia, for despite the evident problems of obtaining finance and averting bankruptcy in the event of over-building and the failure to let houses, scores of newcomers appeared in each year for more than four decades after 1857. We have already seen, of course, that for the great majority of them it was a case of here-today-gone-tomorrow. It was to those who stayed the course that we owe the achievement of 61,000 dwellings in only sixty years. (One wonders what they would have made of the national housing totals of recent years!)

Although Table 3 shows the total numbers of houses built by individuals commencing in each decade, the rapid turnover means that most men had come and gone within each period, with only the larger builders lasting into subsequent decades. The trend in output shows a step change after 1876, when the average per builder increased by two-thirds. The sharp fall after 1905 reflects the area becoming fully built-up. In part the change in output relates to larger building estates after 1870. In Battersea estate size doubled, giving builders more scope to continue working in the same area, without the need to move elsewhere and start again. Although far fewer estates predate 1870 in other areas, those developed after 1880 tend to be larger than before. The relative stability of the financial markets after 1870 also helped builders to survive and hence to achieve greater output. Falling prices of many goods will also have been crucial in this process.

The incidence of new builders in relation to the length of time they were active in the Wandsworth area is summarised below. Table 4 shows how long those builders who began to work locally in each decade were at work in the area, expressed as percentages of each cohort.

Very short-lived builders (one or two years) predominate throughout, increasing from 57% in 1856–65, to around 70% for the period 1866–1905, before rising sharply to 90% thereafter. The number of builders who survived for more than a decade had begun to fall long before the artificial cut-off date of 1905, from 17% for those starting 1856–65 to 10–12% for the next three decades.

Battersea Builders, 1845–1856

As already indicated, complete data for builders are only available for Battersea for this period. There were 157 of them, building 1,379 houses during the decade (about nine apiece). This figure changes slightly if we take into account those who continued to work locally after 1856. Twenty-seven builders did so, erecting a further 417 houses, bringing the average up to just over eleven houses. The length of time which these builders worked locally may be compared with those who worked across the whole Wandsworth area from 1856: 71% worked in one or two years (69% after 1856), 12% worked between three and ten years (21%) and 17% were active for more than a decade (10%). It is clear that some long careers were founded during the building boom of the late-1840s, and also that the tendency for the great majority of builders to disappear from the local scene almost as soon as they had arrived was well-established at the outset of suburban development.

The addresses of 111 of the 157 builders can be identified. Forty (36%) came from Battersea itself and a further 35 (32%) from adjoining parishes, mostly areas where development had proceeded further and opportunities for new work were less, especially Westminster/Pimlico, Lambeth and Clapham.

Origins of Wandsworth Builders

Unfortunately, the various sources available do not provide information about the addresses of builders working in the area on a systematic basis. Even the District Surveyors Returns, which in theory should provide this detail, often omit to do so. The period before 1870 is especially deficient in data which would enable us to identify where local builders lived, and the extent to which they moved into and out of the Wandsworth area. Information on builders' addresses is, however, available for 2,445 individuals and firms, about four-fifths of the total at work in the sixty years under review. The basic details are summarised below.

Note: All recorded with a first address in a given location/area, discounting any subsequent moves.

Given the highly ephemeral nature of most builders' operations (one or two years, fewer than five houses built), it is not surprising that only 292 (12%) are recorded as moving during the course of their work in Wandsworth. Sixty per cent of the inward moves were from London suburbs within a five-mile radius. There was a small flow of builders between the various parts of the Wandsworth area, although this was not as important as short-distance movement within each district. In all, some 92 builders moved across local boundaries. Moves to places outside Wandsworth were much less frequent.

More than 90% of builders came from addresses within the LCC area, but only half of them ever lived locally. This is a surprisingly low figure, given the distances involved in travelling to work, for example from the City, Peckham and inner north London. It may be one of the factors making for a large number of short-lived operations, with the costs of distance outweighing the potential profits. It must be remembered, however, that these "builders" may merely have been the applicants to build, the actual work being done by building tradesmen who did live in Wandsworth. Even so, it is difficult to see why some builders lived as far away as Brighton, Birmingham, Lowestoft, Tunbridge Wells and even Newcastle-upon-Tyne, although John Wilson, a contractor who began his local activity based in the north-east, soon moved to Putney.

It must be emphasised that we know little of the means by which builders were attracted to take leases on any given estate. Informal networks such as family and personal contacts were probably very important. With purely local builders, they will obviously have seen new developments being laid out. Outsiders, however, must have relied on sources such as the trade press, in which new schemes were written up, or where invitations to tender were published.

Builders' Areas of Operation in Wandsworth

We now consider builders' work in terms of the suburbs where they worked locally.

Note: Streatham denotes Balham, Tooting Bec, Furzedown and Clapham Detached; Tooting refers to Tooting Graveney.

The ephemeral nature of the vast majority of builders means that they occur in only one local district. Battersea- and Wandsworth-only builders account for just over half of the total. Both had a higher proportion of smaller building estates, in which there was little scope for large-scale enterprise. There were of course larger developments, such as the Magdalen College estate in Wandsworth and the Crown Estate round Battersea Park, where firms such as the locally-based Holloway Brothers and Walter Johnson from Wood Green, respectively, could be responsible for scores, even hundreds of dwellings. In the other areas, whose development began later, estates tended to be larger, and many builders had begun their work in other locations, notably in Battersea in the 1880s. Looked at another way, work in Battersea accounts for 41% of all builders. In contrast, only 13% of builders worked in Putney, 22% in Streatham, 10% in Tooting and 32% in Wandsworth (counting work in each area separately).

Fewer than one-sixth of builders worked in more than one suburb, the great majority of them in two, usually adjacent, localities. By far the most common combinations were Battersea+Wandsworth (110) and Battersea+Streatham (63). Most represent builders moving to new estates on the advancing suburban frontier. Other frequently-occurring combinations were Putney+Wandsworth (54), Streatham+Tooting (42) and Streatham+Wandsworth (49), all adjoining pairs. It was common for builders to rent one of the houses they had most recently built, moving after a few years to another such house. Few emulated Alfred Heaver. In the 1870s he lived in rented accommodation in Belleville Road, Battersea, but by 1880 was at a grand villa, Homeland on Brixton Hill, thence to Streatham Elms in Tooting Bec Road by 1891, where he kept six servants.

Builders who worked in more than two areas were exceptional. Only 78 are found in three suburbs, 46 of them in various combinations including Battersea and 65 including Wandsworth, which reflects the central position of the latter, attracting men who also built in Battersea, Streatham, Putney and to a lesser extent Tooting. Only eleven builders worked in four areas and three in all five, summarised below.

What distinguishes these builders is that, apart from Heaver and the Holloway Brothers, they did not achieve very high outputs, but were much longer-lasting than the vast majority of their peers. Whereas it was unusual for a local builder to last for more than five years, the average duration of these fourteen was twenty-eight years, and only one of them lasted less than a decade. During the course of a long career, most rarely built in every year, but erected a small number of houses in a variety of suburbs. Excluding Heaver and the Holloways, the average output per builder was only 86 dwellings, less than three per year on average.

The Lathey Brothers came from the Wiltshire village of Berwick St. John to Battersea in the early 1850s, and they not only built houses but also public works such as schools and churches. They were therefore used to the tendering system and probably sought out larger houses built in this way. Apart from thirty or so houses on the Lucas Estate at Nine Elms in the 1860s, the Latheys never built more than one or two houses in any given year. Their firm lasted until the early Edwardian period, but soon collapsed after the deaths of Samuel and Edwin, as did Heaver's enterprise after his murder in 1901. Heaver and the Holloways were in a different league, not only in surviving for four decades, but also in being active on a substantial scale outside the Wandsworth area. Heaver developed and partly built estates in Fulham and Lambeth, although his main focus was Battersea, then Balham and Tooting after 1890.

Large-Scale Builders in Wandsworth 1857–1915

It was evidently not the widespread, long-lived builders who were responsible for the bulk of houses built in Victorian and Edwardian Wandsworth, and we turn now to look at those who crossed the threshold into large-scale operations, building more than one hundred dwellings. The salient details are set out in Appendix 6.

Although there were only 118 large-scale builders (3.9% of the total), they were responsible for 23,954 dwellings (39.4%). Their average output of 203 dwellings was ten times that for all builders. Even so, half of these builders erected less than 150 dwellings (total 7,297), and a further fifth built 151–200 dwellings (total 3,826). Only seven builders erected more than 500 houses and/or flats, totalling 4,697 dwellings (0.2% of all builders; 7.7% of dwellings). The largest builders were exceptional, not only in terms of output, but also duration, which averaged fifteen years (cf. just under four years for all builders). Whereas 70% of builders worked in the area for only one or two years, 56% of large-scale builders were active for more than a decade. Given the nature of house building — a group of craftsmen working together, and the need to have access to adequate and continuing sources of finance — there was a limit to the number of houses that could be completed in a year (unless the firm was a large one with access to large amounts of labour, which was very much the exception). In order to build more than a hundred houses, several years were usually necessary. The average annual output for large builders was still only fourteen houses.

The rare feat of erecting more than one hundred houses in only one or two years was achieved by only eight builders, generally in special circumstances. Chief among these was the LCC's Totterdown Estate, Wandsworth's first large-scale municipal development, where more than 1,200 houses were built very rapidly after 1901. Wellings & Miller built 101 houses in 1904, as did Meech & Goodall (121 houses), and Philip Miller (141 houses and shops), both in 1904–5. Most prolific of the builders at Totterdown was C.B. Roberts of Redhill, who ran up no fewer than 350 houses in 1902–3. In the private sector, J.E. & G.F. Gray built all 145 houses in Undine and Valnay Streets, Tooting, in 1903. The prize goes to Thomas Penny, however, who is credited with 769 houses on the Artizans & General Labourers Dwellings Company's estate at Shaftesbury Park in Battersea between 1874 and 1876. They were built by direct labour, Penny's being the name used in the applications to build. The company was helped by the fact that building generally was in a deep recession in the early-1870s, which meant that large quantities of otherwise unemployed craftsmen and labourers were ready to hand, glad of the work. John Parsons of Chelsea was the applicant for 316 houses on the same estate in the three years from 1872.

Generally, large-scale builders took much longer to achieve their final total. For example, Frederick Meech built 554 houses in 15 years (37 p.a.), and George Palmer 578 houses in 9 years (64 p.a.), many of them on the Southfields Grid. Alfred Heaver (740 houses over 35 years), averaged only 21 p.a. in LB Wandsworth, although there were many years in the 1870s and 1880s when he was active in other parts of suburbia. Holloway Brothers took forty years to build their 737 houses (18 p.a.), while the largest of all, Swain & Selley, major players in Tooting and Furzedown, built 779 houses in 22 years (35 p.a.)

There were fewer large-scale builders in the early decades, as it took time for them to build up the necessary financial and labour resources. Only one-fifth of builders of 101+ houses had started work before 1875, compared with 37% of all builders. During the next decade, when building reached its peak in Battersea and began to spread across other suburbs, one-third of large builders were established (cf. 27% of the total); their output of almost 8,063 houses represents one-eighth of all those erected locally after 1856. The slowdown in building activity in the late-1880s saw fewer new large-scale builders starting work, but there was another major upswing after 1896 as the flood of bricks and mortar engulfed Wandsworth, Streatham and Tooting. The 24 large-scale builders who began work 1896–1905 represent 20% of this group (cf. 15% of all builders). They were responsible for 4,800 houses. Only one large-scale builder began work after 1906. Rowley Brothers of Tottenham, who built 174 houses in Tooting in 1909–10, all on the Totterdown Estate (see above).

To summarise, the 65 individuals and firms who built more than one hundred houses and who started work in LB Wandsworth 1876–1885 and 1896–1905 account for only two percent of all local builders, but they built 12,874 dwellings (21% of the total). Without these men, the ability of the building industry to keep pace with the insatiable demand for new houses in this group of suburbs would have been severely compromised. It must be remembered of course that the methods employed by builders of one or two houses and those building several hundreds were the same, requiring the deployment of large numbers of building tradesmen and labourers in a system where mechanisation was almost completely absent. It was merely that a few dozen men managed to pass the critical financial threshold needed to employ dozens, if not hundreds of men, while thousands came and went in a few years, leaving only a tiny imprint on the townscape.

[Em Fig. 6: Houses in Acris Street, Wandsworth, all built by W.H. George 1895–6. George was active across large areas of Battersea and Wandsworth in the 1890s and 1900s. (Patrick Loobey Collection)]

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Conclusion

This paper has sought to provide a framework for the study of the building of suburbs in the Wandsworth area between the Crimean War and the Great War. It began with a discussion of the various sources for building history, and then examined the way in which building proceeded in a cyclical fashion, governed by the economic factor and by demand for housing. Although more than sixty thousand houses to accommodate the burgeoning population after 1860 were built, progress was far from smooth, with periods in which hundreds of new houses stood empty awaiting tenants, to others where builders scrambled to lay the bricks, timber and slates fast enough. There was, however, relatively little gross overcrowding and degeneration into slums locally, and this is a measure of how much the builders achieved.

The third part of the paper looked at the builders themselves, their generally ephemeral appearance on the local scene, and how it took the efforts of several thousand men and firms to complete the suburbs (tens of thousands if the supporting workers are included). Indeed, the building industry was probably the largest single source of employment in the Wandsworth area during this half century. As such, it was a major source of demand not only for housing itself, but for all the other goods and services, from shops and pubs to railways, schools and sewers. Provision of this infrastructure in turn required the activities of builders and craftsmen, although it has not been possible to treat non-residential building here. The millions of bricks and other materials consumed by local railway viaducts, stations and works, and by the great three-storey Board schools which sprang up after 1870, not to mention places of worship of every denomination, all needed builders, craftsmen and labourers.

It is hoped that some readers will be moved to investigate further the creation and completion of the hundreds of building estates which replaced the fields and gardens of once rural Putney, Streatham, Tooting and Wandsworth, and also the lives and work of some of the builders.

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References

1. H.J. Dyos, Victorian Suburb: A Study of the Growth of Camberwell (Leicester, 1961); F.M.L. Thompson, Hampstead: Building a Borough 1650–1964 (1974); D.J. Olsen, The Growth of Victorian London (1976); L. Clarke, Building Capitalism (1992).
2. K.A. Bailey, The Metamorphosis of Battersea 1800–1914: A Building history (unpubl. PhD thesis, Open University 1995).
3. Bailey, op. cit., chaps. 7–13.
4. W.W. Pocock, Reminiscences (n.d., c.1885–1890), typescript by M.A. Powel c.1961–2 in RIBA Library.
5. J. Parry Lewis, Building Cycles & Britain's Growth (1965).
6. D. Gerhold, Wandsworth Past (1998).
7. H. Hobhouse, Thomas Cubitt, Master Builder (1971).
8. L. Clarke, Building Capitalism (1992).

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Appendix 1: Houses Built by Parish, 1856–1915

Note: n/a = not available, but unlikely to be a significant number

[Em Fig. 7: Elspeth Road, Battersea. Apart from the ten larger houses in the right foreground, built by H. Legg, 1895–6, the remaining long terraces are by Walter Stanbury (with R. Garton), 1891–2. (Patrick Loobey Collection)]

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Appendix 2: Duration of Wandsworth Builders by Decade of First Local Appearance & Houses Built

Number of builders, cross-tabulated by duration of activity and houses built, assigned to the first decade in which they worked in Wandsworth.

Note: Builders and their total output are assigned to the first decade in which they worked in Wandsworth.

[Em Fig. 8: Kettering Street, Streatham. One on a block of streets south of Mitcham Lane developed from 1897. These houses are by A.B. Coomber, 1900–1. (Patrick Loobey Collection)]

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Appendix 3: Wandsworth Builders: Total Dwellings by Duration and Decade of First Local Appearance

The full cross-tabulation showing number of houses built by builders according to their duration of activity and the decade in which they first appeared locally. House totals refer to all erected by builders who began work in the appropriate decade, and hence reflect their output, rather than the number of houses built in any given period by all builders.

[Em Fig. 9: Lindore Road, Battersea. Developed from 1875 by a variety of builders, despite the close similarity in style, typical of the period. Most visible on the left were by Alexander Bryce (1877), and on the right by John Price (1877); those in the distance are by Joseph Flitton (left, 1876) and G. Bugg and C. Peacock (right 1876/1878). (Patrick Loobey Collection)]

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Appendix 4: Selected Builders: Biographical Details

Note: The Census data on birthplace and age are not always consistent. Localities abbreviated: B Battersea; P Putney; S Streatham/Balham/Tooting Bec; T Tooting Graveney; W Wandsworth.

[Em Fig. 10: Albert Bussell had a long career as a local builder, active from 1880 to 1906, he worked mainly in Battersea. In 1891 he employed 45 men, far more than most of his contemporaries. Here is an advertisement for his firm from c.1890. (Wandsworth Heritage Service)]

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Appendix 5: Builders in Wandsworth 1891

Builders appearing in both the 1891 Census and the District Surveyors' Returns for that year, with their output. Key: B Battersea; P Putney; S Balham/Tooting Bec/Streatham; T Tooting Graveney; W Wandsworth. * = built in 1891 only.

Source: 1891 Census Enumerators Books and District Surveyors' Returns

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Appendix 6: Builders of More Than 100 Houses, 1856–1915

Notes:
1. Green (36) and Twilley (3) also applied individually, making a grand total of 149.
2. See also H. Kerven. Additional houses by C. Kerven (90) and J. Kerven (7) make a family total of 437.
3. A complex series of fathers, sons and brothers make it difficult to allocate buildings to individuals, and so they are treated as a single firm, working in two periods, 1862–1884 and 1890–1913. Altogether, Mulliners were responsible for 330 dwellings.
4. See also A. Heaver. Additional houses by members of the same family firm, Edward (6) and John (19) make a grand total of 894, the largest in LB Wandsworth.
5. Also his brother Alfred Coomber, 22; grand total 173.
6. Another ten houses in partnership with Atkinson, grand total 169.
7. See also Ryan & Penfold; partnership of Ryan & Amwell built 12 houses. Grand total involving Ryan 328.
8. Turtle also built 15 houses in his own name; grand total 190.
9. Originally the firm of F. & H.F. Higgs.
10. See also J. Barwell and Barwell & MacCullum. Grand total involving Barwells 694.
11. See also Iles & Wood. Grand total involving Iles, 595.
12. Building also by Frederick Peacock (74, 1890–1905) and Charles Peacock (76, 1880–1906). Grand total for the family 433.
13. Also applications by Swain (17) and Selley (77) in their own right. Grand total 873, second highest in LB Wandsworth.

[Em Cover Map: A map of the present Borough of Wandsworth indicating the area covered by this booklet, and marking the ancient parishes within it. Tooting Bec and Balham were in Streatham parish, only part of which is in the present Borough. The small unlabelled area between Balham and Battersea was a detached part of Clapham parish. (Wandsworth Heritage Service / Map 1 updated version)]

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