A collection of 5 black and white negatives, showing promotional images from the interior of an Airey Rural House in Chertsey, Surrey. The images depict a woman undertaking activities such as entering the home, cooking and organising clothes. The Temporary Housing Act of 1944/5 was intended to alleviate the acute housing shortages of the immediate postwar years, mostly through the construction of prefabricated, modular housing. The Ministry of Works was the government department tasked with the organisation and efficiency of the push for housing construction in the immediate postwar years. A number of individual designs and construction methods for housing were built during the 1940s. Airey Houses were a common form of postwar prefabricated housing and were developed by a Leeds based builder, Sir Edwin Airey. The exterior walls were made of precast concrete. Around 26,000 were constructed across the country during the late 1940s and early 1950s. By the 1980s many of the remaining Airey Houses were showing defects, ensuring that they were classified as defective and in need of repair by the 1984/5 Housing Defects Act. Gaining a mortgage on unmodified Airey Houses in the twenty-first century is consequently very difficult.
The original Ministry of Works storage envelope lists the operator as “E”.
3 of the 5 images were catalogued and digitised as part of a 2020 project.
This is part of the Sub Series: PSA01/04/H Housing; within the Series: PSA01/04 Negatives; within the Collection: PSA01 Property Services Agency
Source: Historic England Archive
Creator of Archive: Airey, Edwin: Ministry Of Works
Concrete, Mid 20th Century Prefabricated House, Domestic Interior, People
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