A paradise, what an idea! Defending the English council estate

This paper highlights my research on the Middlefield Lane council estate in Gainsborough, Lincolnshire, which was completed in 1965. The estate was the product of post-World War Two local and central government policy to provide new housing for working-class families, and of progressive, modernist, ideas in architecture and planning. ‘Progress’, however, has not been kind to council estates like Middlefield, which has been subject to a process of planned neglect, driven by disinvestment and decreasing support for the social democratic ideals of the welfare state. Strident critiques of the design and planning of the council estate from both media and academic sources have also underpinned a routinely negative view of these places to the point where they are routinely and stereotypically viewed as outdated, rundown and almost worthless. In contrast, this paper will celebrate the council estate. Through the examination of a number of overlooked physical details of the Middlefield Lane estate as it was originally planned and developed, the paper will call into question some of the criticisms that have been made of estates like this. By mixing architectural history, social history and, in particular, first-hand memories of the estate, the paper will show that it was a carefully planned environment with a rich and meaningful history and meaning of its own. In the final analysis, it will be argued that the estate was a model of the progressive optimism of the post-war decades, and that the deeper study of these estates can counteract the prevailing view that they are emblematic of a social democratic experiment that was, and still is, set up to fail

Darkness terrible in its own nature; Turner's Sublime in the common heathlands of South East London c.1796-7

When Viscount Torrington in 1791 described an expanse of common waste land in Lincolnshire as a ‘staring, black moor … a wild, dreary prospect’, it is understandable that this type of landscape could genuinely provoke a sense of threat and danger. This paper will examine some contemporary visual equivalents to Torrington’s description, JMW Turner’s dark and dense watercolour sketches of the common heathlands of Blackheath and Lewisham. On the face of it, these sketches appear to be typical products of a traditional view of Turner and his work: as an artist of the Sublime, and of a Romantic temperament. This paper will argue that these sketches were actually the product of a more conventional personal and artistic development, and will analyse them in relation to contemporary accounts of common heath and waste, and the more prosaic context of late eighteenth century urban development on the fringes of London. The paper will therefore consider some parameters of Romanticism – that while these sketches certainly accord with Burke’s typology of the Sublime via the experience of ‘darkness’, ‘privation’ and so on, they only accidentally evoke a modish and somewhat vicarious Sublime ‘thrill’ that could conveniently and safely be found in a very local and quite domesticated setting

The shepherd on the hill: comparative notes on English and German romantic landscape painting 1810-1831

The solitary figure in the landscape can be understood in relation to certain, fundamentally Romantic traits – solitude, contemplation, oneness with nature – and is most notably found in the work of Caspar David Friedrich. Less recognised however is the fact that the solitary figure can also be found in the landscape paintings of many English artists of the early nineteenth century, particularly within depictions of commonly held pastoral landscapes. Within the traditional terms of English art history, the landscape genre of this period has also been closely associated with the concept of Romanticism. This paper will study the use of the solitary figure in paintings of open, common field landscape, and will compare two paintings: Caspar David Friedrich’s ‘Landscape with Rainbow (The Shepherd’s Complaint)’ of 1810, and John Sell Cotman’s ‘The Shepherd on the Hill’ of 1831. It will examine the more conventional Romantic resonances of Friedrich’s painting in order to question whether Cotman’s shepherd is a comparative example of Romantic solitude and contemplation, or whether it was more of a prosaic image of a typically English ‘rustic type’ at a time when a particular sense of national identity was emerging that was closely associated with the countryside and country life. From there, it is hoped that we can begin to reconsider the conventional Romantic image of English landscape painting in the first three decades of the nineteenth century

‘One big playground for kids’: a contextual appraisal of some 1970s photographs of children hanging out on a post-World War Two British council estate

This article gives a broad assessment of a number of photographs taken in the early 1970s of children on a post-World War Two British council estate in Gainsborough, Lincolnshire. As one of the cornerstones of postwar social reconstruction in Britain, the provision and design of new public housing often had the well being of the future citizen – the child – in mind, and the photography of these estates at the time often included children as a way to promote a sense of well-being and community. This article offers a reading of these photographs as a representation of the child’s day-to-day life in this particular environment, and to present an understanding of how the planning and layout of the estate was intended to function as a crucial influence on the development of the children who lived there

Middlefield: the development of a provincial post-World War Two council estate in Lincolnshire, 1960–1965

Scholarly, local-historical, studies of provincial, low-rise post-World War Two council estates are rare. This article attempts to remedy this by examining one such example, the Middlefield Lane estate in Gainsborough, Lincolnshire, which was completed in 1965. Using two key primary sources, the minute books of the Gainsborough Urban District Council’s Housing Committee and the Gainsborough Evening News, the article will provide a narrative account of the planning and development of Middlefield, and of the experiences of the estate’s new residents as they settled in there. Post-war council estates have long been criticized as being socially and architecturally problematic. This article aims to present a more nuanced historical perspective on this by demonstrating that these estates were carefully and thoughtfully planned, and have rich and meaningful histories that are worth chronicling

Extramural: public art in Britain 1951-2016.

In 1953, the English postimpressionist painter, Duncan Grant was commissioned to decorate Lincoln Cathedral’s Russell Chantry with a set of murals depicting St. Blaise, the patron saint of wool workers. The mural was unveiled in 1959 at a time when publicly funded art was being produced across Britain as part of the postwar reconstruction of the country. This essay examines Grant's work within the context of a number of civic commissions of art and sculpture for new schools, churches, civic buildings, new town squares and pedestrian subways, that were intended to help bring the public realm back to life as local authorities began to repair and rebuild blitzed towns and cities, and develop new towns and new council housing estates. It forms part of a set of essays made to accompany the 2016 commissioning of artist Lothar Götz to produce a new mural inside a 1:1 scale reproduction of the Russell Chantry at The Collection, Lincoln

The Russell Chantry Lothar Goetz / Duncan Grant

Catalogue published in connection with exhibition with the same title at the Collection Lincol

Unearthing Middlefield’s Utopias

This short article summarises the aims and outcomes of archaeological excavations on a Lincolnshire social housing estate in 2016, focussing on what the finds revealed about the social value of 'Radburn'-type pedestrianised estate planning, and the impact that participation in the excavations had on today's estate residents