Each House Comes With Electric Lights And A Larder...

Nottingham embarked on a major council house building programme in 1920. Two large estates were built first, one at Sherwood and the other at Stockhill, Basford.  Other smaller schemes followed but by 1925, the city council built more large estates, as this meant the cost per house would be less. Houses were to be built with generous spacing – 12 to the acre. Carriageways on the new estates were to be relatively narrow – 14 or 16ft wide – but private car ownership on a mass scale was not then foreseen.  The new layouts on the early estates like Stockhill tended to produce houses with long front gardens and smaller back ones. All the new council houses had electric lighting. The first true "council house estate" was built at Stockhill. It was planned in 1919 and by May 1922, a total of 225 houses were occupied on a site covering 31 acres.  The great housing triumph of this period was the Sherwood Estate, adjoining the Basford parish.  It was designed as a "garden city" on 127 acres, south of the new Valley Road and astride Edwards Lane up to Mansfield Road. Several contractors were employed to speed the work and by June 1923, a total of 665 houses were occupied.  On the Edwards Lane estate, 422 council houses were occupied by August 1927. Such was the pride in this estate that parties were invited from the continent to see it.  Read more on the Nottingham Post website.