[Diggers350] What are 1920s/30s Plotlands and how might they help solve 2020s UK housing crisis, by Stefan Szczelkun
Tony Gosling
tony at cultureshop.org.uk
Sun Nov 9 13:14:21 GMT 2025
What are 1920s/30s Plotlands and how might they
help solve 2020s UK housing crisis, by Stefan
Szczelkun https://tlio.org.uk/plotlands/
<https://tlio.org.uk/plotlands/>30 October 2025
<https://tlio.org.uk/author/tony/>Tony Gosling
<https://tlio.org.uk/plotlands/#respond>Leave a comment
Plotlands books by Stefan Szczelkun
<https://stefan-szczelkun.blogspot.com/2020/10/new-book-plotlands-of-shepperton.html>Plotlands
of Shepperton by Stefan Szczelkun
<https://stefan-szczelkun.blogspot.com/2018/09/chalet-fields-of-gower-bookshop-and.html>Chalet
Fields of the Gower by Stefan Szczelkun and Owen Short
<https://stefan-szczelkun.blogspot.com/2017/12/the-conspiracy-of-good-taste-25-year.html>Why
Plotlands were suppressed as a form of housing by Stefan Szczelkun
Video: <https://youtu.be/NI4GG6ubkSo>UK Forgotten
Self-Building Tradition with Stefan Szczelkun on
1920-30s Plotlands, Shepperton & Gower
Emacs!
Plotlands and the Housing Crisis by Stefan Szczelkun
What can we learn from the plotlands, that
started in the 1920s and 1930s, that could solve
the current housing crisis? The key thing is that
one starts with something cheap and small and
gradually adds to and evolves this starter structure.
1. Land must be made available for self-build
development in a way that does not make the plots
prohibitively expensive. Ideally maintaining
agricultural value per plot. This might imply a
legislative change in planning permissions.
2. This might mean some kind of organisation
structure that obtains and holds the land for
this use. Users could get secure land tenure when
they had proved their commitment and availability
to build. Resale could only recoup investment
made in building materials etc. Additional value
might go back into providing more land.
3. Planners would have to be ready to accept a
rough and ready aesthetic to start with. With the
knowledge from plotlands that the houses will
gradually achieve a more coherent architectural
aesthetic as they develop over a decade or two.
The appreciation of improvisation might require a
light hand from Building regulation and planning?
Keeping in mind their higher purpose of communal well-being.
4. A motorhome could provide basic amenities at
first as the building goes through its initial
stages. ie groundwork and initial shelter. Cost
of a second-hand motorhome or converting a van could be as low as £5000.
5. The cost of initial ground works (ideally
collectivised for 10 or more dwellings) and basic
enclosure would constitute a basic level of
investment. It would be good if this could be in
the region of £20 £30,000. At this point
permanent occupation as a first home would be
expected in exchange for security of tenure and a rent to pay back land costs.
6. The initial shelter might be as simple as a
single living space with kitchen and bathroom as
per motorhome technology. The structure of this
space might be a factory made and insulated
timber structure. Or, depending on the site and
building skills available, the walls might be
rammed earth, straw bale, stone or other material
as available locally. Recycling of window and door units?
Designed so additional rooms can be added to
external walls or through subdivision of the
internal space with internal panels.
7. An architectural reference to the Low cost,
loose fit, low energy, long life. Promoted by
Alex Gordon in 1972 also Alison Ravetz.
8. This could be applied to multi-storey re-used
structure with a more challenging aesthetics?
(although they could be developed behind an agreed skin/ cladding.
Multi-storey flats would be built by a
co-operative of builders that included training in required skills.
Groups plan the internal layout and surface finishes of their own flats.
9. The original plotlands used railway carriages,
showmans wagons or buses as the starter shelter.
There could be a national reuse of all lorry
bodies and larger vans coming to the end of their
mechanical life. These might only need insulation and ventilation to be useful.
10. More abstractly: a. The working class
produces all value including housing. b. The UK
Plotlands shows us what was possible when working
class people were allowed half a chance in the
1920s and 1930s. Surviving examples needs to be
recognised and protected as our working class
cultural heritage. This recognition that we have
the power to directly solve our basic human needs is empowering.
11. National extent: Bower, Richard 2021. Lost
plotlands: regulatory consequences of forgotten
places. Town Planning Review 92 (5) , pp. 643-666. 10.3828/tpr.2021.8
Bowers points to the significance of JA Steers
(1944) remarkable walked survey of the British
coast in which he identified plotlands as areas of bad scattered development!
Full Res maps and paper here:
<https://orca.cardiff.ac.uk/id/eprint/135909/1/R%20Bower%202020%20Plotlands%20TPR%20post%20print.pdf>https://orca.cardiff.ac.uk/id/eprint/135909/1/R%20Bower%202020%20Plotlands%20TPR%20post%20print.pdf
Emacs!
Set amongst the houseboat community on the Thames
near Fulham, A.P.Herberts popular 1930 novel,
The Water Gypsies, portrayed a collection of
people at odds with society. Colin Ward and
Dennis Hardys research saved Plotlands from the
oblivion of official planning histories
Photographer Jason Orton and writer Ken Worpole
documented the changing landscape and coastline
of Essex and East Anglia, particularly its
estuaries, islands and urban edgelands. In 2013
they published their second book, The New English
Landscape (Field Station | London, 2013), the
second edition of which was published in 2015.
Emacs!
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