The Tower Gardens Estate has a very special place in the history of Council house building. It was one of the first ’garden suburbs’ in the world and its architecture is of extremely high quality.
At the turn of the twentieth century Tottenham was a suburb served by new railways and at the end of the tram lines. It was surrounded by fields which the newly formed London County Council (LCC ) could acquire using as-yet hardly-used powers to buy land and build housing.
Early experiments in housing design for workers had produced beautiful picturesque estates outside London modelled on traditional rural housing, such as Port Sunlight and Bourneville. They were designed by some of the most progressive architects of their day and funded by rich social reformers. Their architectural philosophy respected co-operation between architects and craftspeople and was called the ’Arts and Crafts Movement’.
The LCC wanted to improve housing conditions for the working classes by providing well-constructed homes in pleasant surroundings for rent. The provision of local authority housing to supply the needs of working people only became possible following an 1885 Royal Commission Enquiry into the provision of housing for working people. The result was the 1890 Housing of the Working Classes Act. The Act, for the first time, gave general powers to local authorities to build housing for the needs of working people.
In 1898 Ebenezer Howard published ’Tomorrow-A peaceful path to real reform’ – the book which launched the Garden City movement and Town Planning.
Immediately after its publication, the Jewish entrepreneur Samuel Montagu (later made Lord Swaythling) donated £10 000 to purchase land and build at lower density to provide accommodation in a ’garden suburb’ setting. This donation was tied to the rehousing of Jewish workers resident in the Tower Hamlets parishes and required an area of land to be set aside for public gardens: hence the name Tower Gardens.
Between 1898 and 1914 the LCC provided 2915 housing units on four estates at Tooting, Hammersmith, Croydon and at Tottenham. The 954 housing units on Tower Gardens form about one third of the total and make it the largest enterprise. Tower Gardens was also the first LCC estate to be built outside the LCC area. Tower Gardens was the foremost housing achievement of the early London County Council . It demonstrates the unequalled idealism, boldness and scale of operation of the early LCC under the Progressive Party, whose political will brought together the professional skills and financial resources to undertake such large scale social housing projects.
The estate was planned on a grid – a layout which has successfully resisted modem rat-running by cars. Each phase of development was designed with its own theme and containing architectural variety. The western portion of the estate in Wood Green Borough developed only after a special Act of Parliament gave right of exemption from building regulations for garden suburb developments. This freed it from regulations as to road widths, height of rooms and design of party walls.
Streets were named after lords of Tottenham Manor. Sir John Risley was lord of the manor in 1507.
First phase between Tower Gardens Road and Risley Avenue was completed before 1910. 1914-15 developments extended up to The Roundway and continued beyond it through the 1920s. Topham Square was added in 1920s. Later sections owe less to the Arts and Crafts movement and become progressively more standardised.
