How Tang Hall set the standard for council housing 100 years ago

But when the first families moved into their homes in Carter Avenue just over 100 years ago, that's exactly what it was.

According to Michael Pavlovic, one of the Labour councillors for the area, the new estate was, in fact, one of the first large council housing estates planned anywhere in the country.

"It was a huge thing," he says. "My understanding is that York was only the second authority in the country, after an area of Liverpool, to have council housing."

York as an early pioneer in the building of social housing? Given the acute shortage of affordable homes in the city today, that may come as a surprise to some.

But it shouldn't. After all, almost 20 years before work began on Tang Hall in 1919, Joseph Rowntree had taken the lead in showing how decent homes could be built for working people with his 'model village' at New Earswick.

The principles established at New Earswick (a 'garden' village in which short blocks of houses were set in gardens along streets edged with grass verges) helped to influence the development of the new Tang Hall estate 20 years later - and of local authority housing across the country.

The new Tang Hall estate was planned as part of the 'Homes fit for Heroes' project at the end of the First World War, under which the government made funding available to local authorities to build good quality homes for returning war heroes and their families.

The Tang Hall estate seen from the air in about 1930

And, as York architectural historian Alison Sinclair wrote in a piece for York Historian magazine in 2015, one of the architects who had helped to design New Earswick, a man called Richard Unwin, was influential in later developing the design manual for the 'Homes fit for Heroes'.

The manual specified that 'houses should be designed to provide the sunniest aspect to the living-room and the majority of the bedrooms', and that each house should ordinarily include a living-room, scullery, larder, fuel store, lavatory, a bath in a separate chamber, and three bedrooms'.

That was the template that York council followed when, at the beginning of 1919, it decided to build a large estate of modern houses to the East of York on land deemed unsuitable for agricultural use. "The houses would (include) two and three bedroom semi-detached houses (and) three and four bedroom houses in blocks of four," says the Tang Hall Local History group, in a short history of the building of the estate.

In February 1919, the council bought 57 acres of land north of the railway line to the east of York. This was followed in 1920 by another 116 acres south of the railway line.

Work started on roads and drainage on July 28, 1919, and two firms, William Birch and F Shepherd, were assigned the responsibility for building the first phase of 185 houses.

The first house, No 1 Carter Avenue, was handed over by the builders to the housing authority on February 28, 1921. By the autumn of 1921, the Tang Hall local history group, says, Nos 1 to 32 Carter Avenue were fully occupied. And by 1925, most of Fourth, Fifth, Sixth, Seventh and Eighth Avenues, plus part of Melrosegate, had been completed.

Rents were set at between ten shillings and thirteen shillings a week, depending on house type - though rents were reduced by one shilling a week between 1922 and 1924 because there was so much unemployment in York. If you wanted a brick-built tool shed in your garden, you paid an extra fourpence a week.

You only have to look at photographs from the estate's early days to see the pride that was taken in the new homes - not only by those who lived in them, but also by those who helped to build them.

Proud: The Scaife sisters with their grandmother in Fifth Avenue in the 1930s. Picture: Tang Hall local history group

One hundred years on, they remain good homes, says Tom Gibson, who himself lives on Tang Hall Lane.

Tang Hall today has its problems, just like every other neighbourhood, he admits.

"Sometimes people feel a bit neglected - I think especially in the Covid pandemic," Tom said.

But those early homes are still big and spacious (some of the later ones to be built are slightly smaller), and they still have good gardens. And there's a great community feeling, Tom says.

"A lot of people who live here work in the service sector, which is low paid," he said. "But it is a place where neighbours look out for neighbours."

Cllr Pavlovic agrees that the building of the Tang Hall estate 100 years ago marked a real revolution in what today we would call social housing.

"Tang Hall has a proud history as the first council-built housing in York," he says. "It was designed to help move people out of unsafe and unsanitary conditions in the private rented sectors.

"It was an exemplar estate and, based on the garden village design of New Earswick, was copied by many other councils during the interwar years."

Whole generations of York families have known Tang Hall as a supportive, inclusive and welcoming community - and hopefully they will continue to do so for many years to come, he said.

Tom Gibson in his garden

But what makesCllr Pavlovic sad is that, while 100 years ago York could afford (with government help) to build decent homes for its working people, today it can't - at least, not enough of them.

"The residents of Tang Hall were the essential workers who built the vibrant city we now enjoy," he said. "Sadly, this generation of workers is now finding that finding a place to live in their city is increasingly unaffordable."

Council leader Keith Aspden acknowledges that the development of the Tang Hall estate 100 years ago was a 'historic milestone for York'.

But he insists that, just as it did a century ago, York today is once again delivering 'the UK's most ambitious council-led housing programme in a generation.'

The council has indeed committed itself to building 600 new homes across the city over the next few years. Of these, at least 40 per cent will be affordable, says the authority's executive member for housing, Cllr Denise Craghill.

But that means that many of the new homes will not meet ‘affordable’ housing criteria. And a recent report by a cross-party group of councillors, among them Michael Pavlovic, revealed that the city is currently, on balance, only getting around 19 new affordable homes a year. This is partly because of the low number of affordable homes being built - and partly because social housing is still being lost through right to buy.

Cllr Aspden lays the blame squarely at the feet of Whitehall.

"Were central government to recognise its role in addressing the housing need by supporting local authorities like York, this work (to deliver York's housing programme) could progress even faster,” he said.

Centenary postcards

Plans for a series of events this year to celebrate Tang Hall's centenary had to be postponed because of Covid. "But I would hope we could do something next year to celebrate the first families starting to move in," said Cllr Pavlovic.

In the meantime, the Tang Hall local history group has produced a series of postcards which reproduce photographs showing the early days of Tang Hall.

The cards are available, priced £4 for a pack of five, from from Bean on the Green and the Beautiful salon in East Parade, Heworth, and from florist Patricia May in Melrosegate.

One of the early postcard views of Tang Hall: Seventh Avenue seen from the Fourth Avenue junction