JUNE 2025 LECTURE: From Singular Experiment to Sustained Policy: Liverpool City Council’s Housing Programme 1890-c.1914
Another chance to see our June 2025 lecture. Against a backdrop of ever-increasing social malaise and ongoing private sector inertia, Liverpool Corporation embarked upon an energetic programme of slum clearance and concomitant working-class housing construction. Such was its success that by 1914 it was, with the sole exception of the London County Council, the largest single provider of municipal social housing in country. This talk will provide an overview of both the changing nature of policy and the individual developments constructed by Liverpool Corporation in the pre-WWI period.
This lecture took place via Zoom on Wednesday 18 June 2025
Speaker: Dr Bertie Dockerill, editor of the Society’s journal, Transactions, and lecturer in Planning History.
The global-first of municipally-constructed social housing occurred within Liverpool with the opening of St Martin’s Cottages in 1869. Though specifically built as a singular experiment for the private sector to emulate there was, in the years that followed, a total failure of the same to construct equivalent housing for the city’s working-classes. Against a backdrop of ever-increasing social malaise and ongoing private sector inertia, the Corporation subsequently embarked upon an energetic programme of slum clearance and concomitant working-class housing construction. Such was its success that by 1914 it was, with the sole exception of the London County Council, the largest single provider of municipal social housing in country. This talk will provide an overview of both the changing nature of policy and the individual developments constructed by Liverpool Corporation in the pre-WWI period.