Old Oak to White City: a walk through London’s 20th century social housing

A walk exploring how social housing developed in London in the 20th century. We’ll see an incredible range of architectural styles and layouts in less than three miles, including work by Noel and Alina Moffett and Darbourne & Darke.

The walk kicks off on the Old Oak Estate where the London County Council (LCC) applied garden city ideas to build cottages for working class people before and after World War I.

We'll then walk through the Wormholt Estate, built by Hammersmith borough council as part of Prime Minister Lloyd George's "homes for heroes" program after World War I and completed by the LCC.

We’ll then explore the 1920s and 1930s, looking at Peabody Trust's Cleverly Estate and the LCC's White City Estate, which offered new levels of comfort for tenants in high-quality self-contained flats.

We’ll move on to a 1960s system-built modernist block, whose hexagonal design is inspired by the Giants' Causeway. We'll end up in the 1970s at the Wood Lane Estate, Darbourne & Darke's small dense low-rise estate.

We’ll touch on many of the dilemmas that still plague social housing in London today – the respective roles of the public and private sectors, finance, affordability, quality and density.