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The Council on this estate has provided homes for displaced
residents in clearance areas, in addition to homes for the
newly married and the aged. The clinics, schools, shops,
public houses, community centre, etc., have provided the ancilary
services which complete the requirements and make the
estate a community.
It is an achievement for which the Council is fully entitled
to take pride and credit.
CLEARANCE AREAS
The Council's scheme for the redevelopment of the Gascoigne
area took a leap forward with the confirmation order for the compulsory
purchase of the 222 properties in the Clearance Area known as
Gascoigne Road(Area No.l).
The public enquiry occupied two days and aroused much interest
in the Borough.
The following extract from the official representation is given
because not only does the description apply to the houses within
This first clearance area, but in the main it is true of the 2,200
houses in the 75 acres of the Gascoigne area in which redevelop-
ment is proposed.
"The area is well known because of its dreary surroundings, its mean
streets, its general squalor of the back yards and rear access paths or alley-
ways.
The houses were built in the main between 1893 and 1901. They are not
all old nor are all serious disrepair.
They are badly arranged on the site, badly arranged internally, inadequate
by modern standards for family life and unfit for human habitation because of
certain principal defects. They are uncomfortable to live in. Both occupiers
and owners must constantly fight a losing battle against disrepair.
The whole picture of the area is one in which occupiers and owner occupiers
in particular have themselves strenuously attempted, by adding temporary
and unsatisfactory structures, to make a home fit for occupation, but failed to
do so.
Of the 222 premises in the area there are 103 with ugly temporary back
addition structures which have enclosed the W.C.apartment, drains and sinkwaste
gully. The rooms so constructed have become principal rooms where
food is prepared and eaten, insanitary, badly lighted and ventilated, and obstructive
to the natural lighting and ventilation of the remaining ground floor
rooms. In consequence there is the dampness of condensation added to patches
of rising dampness with generally excessive humidity in the occupied rooms.
Further discomfort is caused by the absence of an entrance passage from the
street. This defect with the inadequate size of the rooms converts the ground
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