Introduction

p. 1This study has two principal objectives: first, to examine the process of building estate development in the south-west London suburb of Battersea, and, secondly, to look at the individuals responsible for the actual housebuilding itself, their origins and careers. As such, it is designed to examine models of suburban development which have been put forward by historians and geographers over recent decades, and to assess their applicability to a specimen parish. Since many of these studies have focussed on areas which have one or more substantial landed estates, belonging to members of the aristocracy, or to institutions, it was felt that taking Battersea as an example, where such territorial blocks are absent, would enable tentative models and typologies of estate development to be further refined.

The study is in three parts. Part I examines the previous literature on the subject, not only on the process of development and building, but also of the provision of services and infrastructure in suburbia, followed by a background sketches of the history of Battersea since the eighteenth century. Part II looks at the evidence for the history of building in Battersea – the building cycle, the builders and supply industry, and the topography of building. It also proposes a typology of estates based on the agency responsible for initiation. Part III then goes on to examine the various types of estate by means of examples drawn from the extensive range of documents available, with eight more detailed case-studies in Chapter 13. The appendices include a list of identifiable builders working in nineteenth-century Battersea, and details of the date, area and size of building estates, which are intended as a contribution towards a wider database for Victorian development in London.

It was originally intended that the case studies should be rounded-off by a fuller consideration of the population which came to inhabit the houses, and by some appreciation of the evolution of suburban house style, but the steady accretion of new material on the building process, especially related to estates whose history had hitherto remained largely unknown, precluded this. Both the social and architectural history of Battersea merit a study in its own right, but it was felt that work in these fields generally has proceeded further than that on building estates in the last twenty years. For example, my studies of the Carter Estate and Battersea New Town treat the socio-economic background to those estates. The agenda for urban historians sketched out at the Leicester conference in 1968 and subsequently amplified in overviews of progress in urban history has not led to the proliferation of case studies of London suburbs which would provide the materials for a synthesis of developers and their methods across the city, or for comparisons with other cities. This study aims to rectify that omission in part, by providing evidence for the creation of Battersea to put alongside that for Camberwell, Kensington and Hampstead, which are the only parts of the capital to have received comprehensive attention from historians.

I should like to acknowledge the assistance of Tony Shaw at the Wandsworth Local History Library over many years in making available documents, especially those being transferred from other departments/organisations prior to their cataloguing. The same is true of

p. 2the staff at the Greater London Record Office, and their willingness to take a liberal view of the fitness of some District Surveyors’ Returns, without which the analysis of the building cycle in Battersea would have been severely hampered.

Research began in the 1970s, and owes much to the unique knowledge of the late Professor H.J. Dyos, in discussion, at seminars, and at meetings of the Urban History Group. The same is true of the late Mr. Rutter, one-time archivist to Battersea Borough Council, who facilitated my first encounters with what turned out to be a very rich vein of source material. I should also like to thank my O.U. supervisor, Dr. David Englander for his comments on emerging drafts and patience in dealing with the minutiae of Victorian Battersea. It was not possible to do more than scratch the surface of the Booth archive in this study, but it is hoped to return to it in future.