Description:This photograph provides visual evidence of the designs of houses on the Moor Pool Estate at Harborne. <a href="http://www.search.suburbanbirmingham.org.uk/engine/resource/default.asp?resource=1418">John Nettlefold</a> was invited to become Chairman of Harborne Tenants Limited in 1907. Its most unique aspect was the concept of joint-ownership, with tenants encouraged to buy shares in the company and become ‘co-partners’, a concept championed by Nettlefold in Practical Housing.<small><sup>1</sup></small> Largely completed by 1912, <a href="http://www.search.suburbanbirmingham.org.uk/engine/resource/default.asp?resource=1420">the estate</a> comprised nearly 500 homes housing around 2,000 residents. Amongst its striking design features were the extremely <a href="http://www.search.suburbanbirmingham.org.uk/engine/resource/default.asp?resource=1462"> narrow streets</a> lined with wide lawns and trees, with carriageways of just 16 feet, to regulate traffic flow and create a sense of rural tranquillity. Housing was built at a density of 9 or 10 per acre, with spacious back gardens, contrasting with modern examples of private-sector affordable homes.<small><sup>2</sup></small> A 2009 scheme for a 340 house development by Barratt Homes in Aveley, Essex, envisaged a density of 39 per hectare (16 per acre) with 30-50 per hectare models encouraged.<small><sup>3</sup></small>
The most interesting aspect of this photograph is the bridge-like entrance from the street to the top floor on houses. Houses were occasionally built into hillsides to keep costs low, utilising existing gradients to avoid excavation and adoption of combined sewerage systems. Contrast this with the more conventional designs on Moor Pool Avenue, and we see how designers worked with the landscape, maximised the variation of design features and avoided the rigid uniformity prevalent in <a href="http://www.search.suburbanbirmingham.org.uk/engine/resource/default.asp?resource=1466">suburban terraces</a>. This variety was reflected in the rents charged, from just four shillings per week to a maximum of eleven. With the average wage of an adult male labourer standing at £74.04 per year (about £1 11s per week), the more expensive houses would have been affordable only to more affluent sections of the working-classes, a skilled engineer or builder expecting to earn anything between £105.14 (about £2 4s per week) to £125.21 (about £2 12s per week) per year.<small><sup>4</sup></small>
The estate did not solely benefit the skilled workman. A glance at the Education Census returns for Carless Avenue for the period reveals a socially-diverse community, labourers and artisans living amongst clerks and middle-class professionals, with tenants generally settling on the estate for long periods of time.<small><sup>5</sup></small> Although never affordable to Birmingham’s poorest classes, the estate provided a model for a relatively harmonious mixed community that might have been replicated on a larger scale if the will had existed across the private and public spheres. The Garden Suburb <a href="http://www.search.suburbanbirmingham.org.uk/engine/resource/default.asp?resource=1417">housing templates</a> also influenced the council houses built in the 1930s on developments like Weoley Castle.
<font color="#666633"><small><sup>1</sup> John Sutton Nettlefold, Practical housing (Letchworth: Garden City Press, 1908), pp.131-8
<sup>2</sup> Proceedings of Birmingham City Council, minutes of meeting, 13 October 1908 [BA&H: L 34.3]
<sup>3</sup> Consultation document ref: 09/00091/TTGOUT ‘Aveley Village Extension South Of Aveley Bypass Aveley’, Thurrock Council Planning Committee, 30 March 2009 (document available on Thurrock Council website at http://democracy.thurrock.gov.uk/CMISWebPublic/Binary.ashx?Document=12933)
<sup>4</sup> Jeffrey G. Williamson, ‘The structure of pay in Britain 1710-1911’, Research in Economic History, 7 (1982), pp.1-54
<sup>5</sup> BCC Education Census returns, vol. 114, pp. 93-149, and vol. 2794, [BA&H: BCC] pp.93-131</small></font>