Land Settlement Association houses, 61-66 Tile Barn Lane, Ardleigh (EHER 40584)

Inter-war houses and associated small-holdings provided by the Land Settlement Association. Although all but two of the original houses remain, extensive modernisation and extension of most of them has taken place since they became privately owned, so the external appearance and internal spaces have altered considerably.

Influenced by the Carnegie UK Trust, the Land Settlement Association Ltd. (LSA) was founded in 1934 with the aim of providing work on small holdings for unemployed industrial workers such as miners, principally from the north of England. In each scheme existing agricultural land was divided into plots of varying sizes and houses, out-buildings, glass houses, piggeries and poultry huts were built. Roads and a central storage and administrative centre were established, the latter usually based on a pre-existing farm. The plots and hence the houses were strung out at wide intervals along the frontage of the roads. Two of these estates were two established in Essex. The houses were designed by architects Pakington and Enthoven to provide adequate accommodation as cheaply as possible according to the requirements of the Housing Act. They were built with two bedrooms upstairs and a third downstairs along with the living room and scullery. Originally mainly semi-detached houses were built, but then detached houses were preferred, although the Foxash Estate only has two detached houses out of a total of 90. Four-bed houses were provided in a ratio of 1:10, which was later raised to 1:6. Originally houses had just one external door, but two were introduced later. Also originally the bath was in the scullery before being in a separate ground floor room and then finally upstairs. The copper which was originally in an outhouse, was moved into the kitchen. All houses were brick built with plain tile roofs, low eaves and boarded gable ends. The lowest cost of building a three-bed house was £271, £330 being more typical, while the four-bed houses cost £400. The Ministry of Agriculture took over the LSA estates in 1948 and these were then sold, mainly to the tenants, although the LSA marketing operation at Lawford continued to be successful well into the second half of the century. Although all but two of the original houses remain, extensive modernisation and extension of most of them has taken place since they became privately owned, so the external appearance and internal spaces have altered considerably.