During 1919, the Minister of Health, Christopher Addison published his ’1919 Housing and Town Planning Act’. Part of the initiative was due to Lloyd George’s ’homes fit for heroes’ slogan – the Act was part of the post-First World War plans to provide improved housing for working people.
Woolwich Metropolitan Borough identified a site of 344 acres, bisected by the Southern Railway, that same year. The name ‘Page’ was inherited from Sir Gregory Page. In 1733, Sir Gregory bought the nearby manor of Well Hall for £19 000. He built Page House – later known as Well Hall House. Until its 1931 demolition, Well Hall House was home to watchmaker John Arnold and later to socialist Hubert Bland and author Edith Nesbit.
What became named the Page Estate was designed to provide 2700 new homes using the then-fashionable garden city model – a density of only around 12 houses per acre and all constructed with both front and back gardens and bathrooms. The estate was ’all-electric’ – not a gas fire or stove in sight – designed for a future of vacuum cleaners and electric irons. Four new schools were built to serve the incoming population.
One of the attractions of the location was that to the east and south, the new area was already served by two railway stations and by trams.
85 acres of the purchase by Woolwich Council was deemed unsuitable for building and set aside for large open greens, smaller greens and children’s playgrounds.
The total cost of building the Page Estate was just over £1 million and in February 1920, the estate was formally inaugurated by Minister Addison who called the estate the “largest housing scheme undertaken by any Metropolitan Borough”.
The official opening year was 1923 and building continued through the 1920s.
A shopping parade was opened late in the 1920s including a chemist, a baker, a fishmonger and a branch of the Royal Arsenal Cooperative Society. In 1929, the 2186th house (49 Kidbrooke Lane) was completed.
The smallest homes on the estate had a living room and three bedrooms – these were let at just over 14 shillings a week. The largest houses, with a living room and four bedrooms, had a rent of 19/-.
