Illustration of ‘Axminster’ linoleum, in ‘Catesby’s one-piece linola squares’, Catesbys Colourful Cork Lino (1938).
About 20% of the UK’s current housing stock was built before 1914 and an astonishing 17% was built between the wars. Home ownership was facilitated by the interwar house-building boom when nearly 3m houses were built for private sale and more than a million moved from rental to owner occupation. The ideology of Britain as a nation of homeowners emerged along with the desirability of a more home-centred way of life. It is this period that laid the foundations for the popularisation of the idea of the home as central to identity in Britain.
More than a million houses were built by local authorities following the 1919 Addison Act that demanded “homes fit for heroes”: troops that had served in World War I. They were also for the heroines who had undertaken munitions and other war work. These homes raised the standards of house building and set minimum standards for space. Despite being proposed as a solution to slums, they were only affordable for the better-off working classes.
Houses were rarely the riot of Art Deco that some museums would have you believe. In fact, there were remarkable consistencies in UK homes throughout the 20th century with furniture chosen to last and dark paint to hide the grime of everyday life. Fixture, fitting and furnishings often combined different styles and periods.
The mid-1930s was the most affordable period for home ownership in British history due to falling prices, the availability of compact three-bedroom houses and cheap credit. In 1910, 90% of people rented their homes – by 1939, owner occupation had risen to 31%.
The small family of two or three children was typical of the respectable working and aspiring lower middle classes in the interwar years who sought to improve their standard of living and was also dictated by the size and number of bedrooms in the typical interwar semi.
As a former V&A curator, I [Deborah Sugg Ryan] restored and curated Rosamund Road, living out a 1930s lifestyle. I turned the tiny lean-to “kitchenette” extension into an interwar ideal. It already had a deep Belfast sink accompanied by an enamel top table and a few shelves. I acquired an original 1930s Easiwork kitchen cabinet with storage hidden behind its doors, incorporating a flour hopper and a metal-lined meat safe and a pull-down work surface. This was theprecursor to fitted kitchens in Britain, which did not take off until the 1960s.
A note of caution about gadgets and electrical appliances. Washing machines and refrigerators may have been available in 1934 but that does not mean their use was widespread. In fact, the most popular appliances were curling tongs and irons. And even in the case of the latter only about a third of households had one in the 1935. If households had income for the luxuries afforded by the convenience of electrical appliances they were more likely to spend it on a wireless – leisure was valued more than saving women’s labour.
[Deborah Sugg Ryan is series consultant and onscreen expert for A House Through Time, Twenty Twenty Television for BBC Two. She received funding from the British Academy for her research on the interwar home, published by Manchester University Press as Ideal Homes, 1918-39: Domestic Design and Suburban Modernism.]
75 years after the end of WW2 in Europe, air raid sirens continue to help save lives in Britain. They are the last part of the civil defence network that used to protect civilians from the Luftwaffe - and these old machines are used today.
