The former Salisbury Street was reimagined as Wilson Grove as part of Bermondsey Garden Suburb. Salisbury Street was already on the 1750s Rocque map, so is quite old.
The Labour party came to power in Bermondsey during 1922 and sought to raise the conditions of the people “by all means possible”. Two principal figures were husband and wife team Dr Alfred Salter and Ada Salter who had joined the Independent Labour Party in 1908, convinced that socialism could fulfil their Christian idealism and transform the conditions of the people among whom they lived.
The first test of the new council was the clearance of a notorious area of condemned housing in Salisbury Street where four acres housed 1300 people.
Instead of tenements, a small estate of 54 cottages was proposed – ‘trim structures of warm, red brick, some with bay windows, others with recessed doorways, sheltered by an arched doorway’. Each cottage would have three bedrooms, a living room, scullery, larder, bathroom and lavatory with hot and cold water. The new estate would house around 400 people.
It was built from 1926 by the Metropolitan Borough of Bermondsey. The estate’s designer was Ewart G Culpin – a leader of the Garden City movement. The estate was officially opened in November 1928. Each house had cost £550.
