Hostname: page-component-cd9895bd7-7cvxr Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-12-26T03:12:13.443Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

London of the Future: The Metropolis Reimagined after the Great War

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  21 December 2012

David Gilbert
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Abstract

An abstract is not available for this content so a preview has been provided. Please use the Get access link above for information on how to access this content.
Image of the first page of this content. For PDF version, please use the ‘Save PDF’ preceeding this image.'
Type
Research Article
Information
Journal of British Studies , Volume 43 , Issue 1: Transforming Metropolitan London, 1750–1960 , January 2004 , pp. 91 - 119
Copyright
Copyright © North American Conference of British Studies 2004

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

1 Webb, Aston, ed., London of the Future (London, 1921)Google Scholar.

2 Lord Montagu of Beaulieu, “Commercial Aviation and London,” in Webb, ed., London, p. 94.

3 Sir Arthur Fell, “London and the Channel Tunnel,” in Webb, ed., London, p. 121.

4 See, e.g., “London of the Future,” The Times (5 October 1921), pp. 11–12; “London of the Future,” The Builder (18 November 1921), p. 665.

5 The most detailed account of the origins and development of the London Society is to be found in Beaufoy, Helena, “‘Order Out of Chaos’: The London Society and the Planning of London 1912–1920,” Planning Perspectives 12 (1997): 135–64CrossRefGoogle Scholar. Beaufoy is particularly concerned with the London Society as an example of the emerging civic amenity movement. See also Ross, Cathy, Twenties London: A City in the Jazz Age (London, 2003), chap. 7Google Scholar.

6 For comparative comments on these “complete plans” and London of the Future, see “Editorial: The Future of London,” Town Planning Review 9 (1921): 133–34CrossRefGoogle Scholar; and “London of the Future,” Town Planning Review 9 (1921): 191–93CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

7 “London of the Future,” The Times (5 October 1921), p. 12. As the quote suggests, the contributors were all male.

8 O'Shea, Alan, “English Subjects of Modernity,” in Modern Times: Reflections on a Century of English Modernity, ed. Nava, Mica and O'Shea, Alan (London, 1996), p. 26 Google Scholar.

9 See, e.g., the various contributions to the study of English metropolitan modernity in O'Shea and Nava, eds., Modern Times; and in Daunton, Martin and Rieger, Bernhard, eds., Meanings of Modernity: Britain from the Late-Victorian Era to World War II (Oxford, 2001)Google Scholar.

10 For a recent perceptive restatement of this basic narrative, see Hebbert, Michael, London: More by Fortune than Design (Chichester, 1998)Google Scholar.

11 Adshead was the first professor of town planning at London University. Unwin is best known as the architect of the first garden city at Letchworth and of Hampstead Garden Suburb. See Miller, Mervyn, Raymond Unwin: Garden Cities and Town Planning (Leicester, 1992)Google Scholar.

12 Stanley Adshead, “Central London,” in Webb, ed., London, p. 151.

13 Ibid.

14 Beaufoy, “Order Out of Chaos,” p. 135.

15 Journal of the London Society 1 (October 1913): 2.

16 The importance of civic education in a holistic approach to modern planning owes much to the influence of the Scottish biologist, sociologist, and pioneering planner Patrick Geddes. See Beaufoy, “Order Out of Chaos,” pp. 141–45; Miller, Unwin, p. 7; E. Morris, Smith, British Town Planning and Urban Design: Principles and Policies (Harlow, 1997), p. 47 Google Scholar.

17 Membership of the Society peaked at about 800 in 1920, with a predominantly elite and middle-class constituency.

18 “Art and the People,” Journal of the London Society 27 (May 1920): 3–4 Google ScholarPubMed.

19 In this article the term “postwar” is used to refer to the years after the 1914–18 conflict.

20 “A Nobler and Reconstructed London,” Journal of the London Society 27 (May 1920): 2 Google Scholar.

21 London Society publicity leaflet, undated (probably 1920), Guildhall Library Collection.

22 See below for discussion of accommodations between planning and preservation that were apparent in London of the Future.

23 This was exacerbated by the Conservative landslide in the “coupon” election of 1918, when forty-three of London's sixty-one parliamentary seats were won by the party.

24 Journal of the London Society 25 (March 1920): 4.

25 Unwin, Raymond, Town Planning in Practice (London, 1909)Google Scholar.

26 See Miller, Unwin, pp. 107–8.

27 London Society publicity leaflet, undated (probably 1920), Guildhall Library Collection.

28 Transcripts of dinner speeches were later published in the Journal. See, e.g., “London as I Should Like to See It,” Journal of the London Society 25 (March 1920): 5–10 Google Scholar; 28 (June 1920): 7–10.

29 “London in 1971,” Journal of the London Society 39 (May 1921): 3 Google Scholar.

30 David Barclay Niven, “The Parks and Open Spaces of London” in Webb, ed., London, pp. 235–50. This technological excitement can also be found in a contemporary scheme for a new linear Thames island in central London to act as a kind of traffic bypass: Rings, F. and Hood, T. C., “A Suggested Solution of the London Traffic Problem,” Engineer 25 (1922): 200 Google Scholar.

31 Lewis, Wyndham, The Caliph's Design: Architects! Where Is Your Vortex? (1919; reprint, Santa Barbara, Calif., 1986)Google Scholar.

32 Atkinson, David and Cosgrove, Denis, “Urban Rhetoric and Embodied Identities: City, Nation and Empire at the Vittorio Emmanuele II Monument in Rome, 1870–1945,” Annals of the Association of American Geographers 88 (1998): 28–49 CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

33 Sir Aston Webb is best known for his prewar work as the principal architect of London's new ceremonial core, notably the new frontage to Buckingham Palace, the widened Mall, and the new Admiralty Arch. See Smith, Tori, “‘A Grand Work of Noble Conception’: The Victoria Memorial and Imperial London,” in Imperial Cities: Landscape, Display and Identity, ed. Driver, Felix and Gilbert, David (Manchester, 1999), pp. 21–39 Google Scholar.

34 London Society, Development Plan of Greater London (London, 1919)Google ScholarPubMed. The plan, published by Stanford's, included seventeen maps and a booklet authored by Aston Webb.

35 The north and south circular roads were “built” almost exactly as designated on the Development Plan in the early 1930s. Rather typically of London planning, very little new construction took place, but existing roads were redesignated as part of the ring route.

36 Development Plan, booklet, p. 7. See also Herbert, Ernest, “Edgware and the Stanmores,” Journal of the London Society 15 (December 1917): 9 Google Scholar.

37 Webb, Aston, “The London Society's Map with Its Proposals for the Improvement of London,” Geographical Journal 51 (1918): 273–92CrossRefGoogle Scholar (report of talk to the Royal Geographical Society on 11 February 1918).

38 W. R. Davidge, “The Housing of London,” in Webb, ed., London, p. 204. Collcutt, Thomas, a long-time rival of Aston Webb, set out the case for a different approach to housing in his book provocatively titled London of the Future: A City of Pleasant Places and No Evil Slums (London, 1923)Google Scholar.

39 Webb, ed., London, facing pp. 180, 184, and 216.

40 Davidge, “Housing,” p. 209.

41 Raymond Unwin, “Some Thoughts on the Development of London,” in Webb, ed., London, pp. 177–92.

42 “Higher London Stores,” The Times (2 December 1921): p. 7. See also Rappaport, Erika, “Art, Commerce, or Empire? The Rebuilding of Regent Street, 1880–1927,” History Workshop Journal 53 (2002): 94–117 CrossRefGoogle Scholar, for discussion of conflict between retail commerce and the architectural establishment.

43 “Skyscraper Bank of England,” The Times (5 December 1921), p. 5. Richardson was professor of architecture at London University; he was not a member of the London Society.

44 For a contemporary discussion of stepped skyscrapers and their suitability in London, see Milne, O. P., “Higher Buildings for London,” London Mercury 8 (May 1923): 33–44 Google Scholar.

45 The London Society lobbied against any change in the existing height restrictions. Journal of the London Society 45 (November 1921): 1–2 Google Scholar.

46 “London as I Should Like to See It,” Journal of the London Society 25 (March 1920): 5–10 Google Scholar (reports of speeches by Conway and others).

47 Le Corbusier's plans for La Ville Contemporaine (a planned city of towers and green spaces) were first exhibited in 1922. Ward, Stephen V., Planning the Twentieth-Century City (Chichester, 2002), p. 99 Google Scholar.

48 “An Exalted London,” Journal of the London Society 25 (March 1920): 1–2 Google Scholar.

49 Ibid., p. 1, emphasis in original.

50 For discussions of the anxieties about London as imperial capital, see Port, Michael, Imperial London: Civil Government Building in London, 1851–1915 (New Haven, Conn., 1995)Google Scholar; Schneer, Jonathan, London 1900: The Imperial Metropolis (New Haven, Conn., 1999)Google Scholar; Gilbert, David and Driver, Felix, “Capital and Empire: Geographies of Imperial London,” GeoJournal 51 (2000): 23–32 CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

51 Statham, H., “London as a Jubilee City,” National Review 29 (1897): 594–603 Google Scholar.

52 See, e.g., the discussions of the development of the Kingsway-Aldwych schemes in which concerns of imperial symbolism, urban efficiency, public health, and social control overlapped. Schubert, Dirk and Sutcliffe, Anthony, “The ‘Haussmannization’ of London? The Planning and Construction of Kingsway-Aldwych, 1889–1935,” Planning Perspectives 11 (1996): 115–44CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

53 Adshead, “Central London,” p. 146.

54 T. Raffles Davison, “The Opportunities of London,” in Webb, ed., London, p. 43.

55 London Replanned: The Royal Academy Planning Committee's Interim Report (London, 1943)Google Scholar.

56 Hebbert, London, p. 70.

57 Black, Iain, “Rebuilding ‘The Heart of the Empire’: Bank Headquarters in the City of London, 1919–1939,” in The Metropolis and Its Image: Constructing Identities for London, c. 1750–1950, ed. Arnold, Dana (Oxford, 1999)Google Scholar.

58 For example, Adshead commented that “whilst a road cannot be truly a war memorial of itself, yet no real memorial can be designed that does not depend for its setting on a good road.” Adshead, Stanley, “London and the Future of Its Roads,” Journal of the London Society 21 (July 1919): 6–9 Google Scholar.

59 “The Emblems of Victory,” Journal of the London Society 19 (January 1919): 1–2 Google Scholar.

60 Ibid., p. 1.

61 “War Monuments and Their Setting,” Journal of the London Society 21 (July 1919): 1–2 Google Scholar.

62 London Society, Exhibition of Designs for a New Bridge at Charing Cross: Catalogue of Drawings, Models Etc. (London, 1923), Guildhall Library CollectionGoogle Scholar.

63 “A Monument Pure and Simple,” Journal of the London Society 19 (January 1919): 9 Google Scholar.

64 (Cambridge, 1999), pp. 40–60. See also Winter, Jay, Sites of Memory, Sites of Mourning: The Great War in European Cultural History (Cambridge, 1995)Google Scholar; King, Alex, Memorials of the Great War in Britain: The Symbolism and Politics of Remembrance (Oxford 1998)Google Scholar.

65 For London memorials, see Connelly, Mark, The Great War, Memory and Ritual: Commemoration in the City and East London, 1916–1939 (Woodbridge, Suffolk, 2002)Google Scholar.

66 Lord Meath, “London as the Heart of the Empire,” in Webb, ed., London, pp. 251–58.

67 Aalen, F. H. A., “Lord Meath, City Improvement and Social Imperialism,” Planning Perspectives 4 (1989): 127–52CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

68 Meath, “London as the Heart of the Empire,” p. 252.

69 Lord Meath, “The Green Girdle Round London,” The Sphere (20 July 1901), p. 64.

70 Meath, “London as the Heart of the Empire,” pp. 257–58.

71 Vaughan, Father Bernard, “London as I Should Like to See It,” Journal of the London Society 25 (March 1920): 6–7 Google Scholar. Vaughan was a leading British Jesuit of the period. See Dale, M., Fr. Bernard Vaughan: A Memoir (London, 1923)Google Scholar.

72 Smith, Elaine, “Jewish Responses to Political Anti-Semitism and Fascism in the East End of London, 1920–1939,” in Traditions of Intolerance: Historical Perspectives on Fascism and Race Discourse in Britain, ed. Kushner, Tony and Lunn, Kenneth (Manchester, 1989)Google Scholar. See also Panyi, Panikos, Immigration, Ethnicity and Racism in Britain, 1815–1945 (Manchester, 1994)Google Scholar.

73 H. L. Paget, “The East End,” in Webb, ed., London, pp. 161–73.

74 Huw Thomas has explored the ways in which racial disadvantage was built into the British planning system after 1945, but there has been little direct consideration of the connections between racism and planning practices in earlier periods. See Thomas, Huw, “‘Race,’ Public Policy and Planning in Britain,” Planning Perspectives 10 (1995): 123–48CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

75 Munton, Richard, London's Green Belt: Containment in Practice (London, 1983), p. 17 Google Scholar.

76 Meath, “London as the Heart of the Empire,” p. 252.

77 Lord Crewe, “The Spirit of London,” in Webb, ed., London, pp. 271–79.

78 Ibid., p. 271.

79 “London of the Future,” The Times, p. 11.

80 The Times review of London of the Future commented that if all the proposals had been put into effect, “not only Charing Cross bridge, but practically the whole of existing London might well be blown up to clear the ground” (“London of the Future,” The Times, p. 12).

81 Crewe, “The Spirit of London,” p. 273.

82 “Formalism v. Naturalism,” Journal of the London Society 21 (July 1919): 2–3 Google Scholar.

83 Zemgulys, Andrea, “Building the Vanished City: Conservationism in Turn-of-the Century London,” Nineteenth Century Prose 26 (1999): 35–58 Google Scholar.

84 Matless, David, Landscape and Englishness (London, 1998)Google Scholar.

85 Anonymous review of The Vandalisms of Peace, by Randolph, W., Journal of the London Society 17 (June 1918): 12 Google Scholar.

86 The term “Victorian” is anachronistic in this context, and it was not used as a term of opprobrium in the writings of the London Society.

87 Adshead, “Central London,” p. 142.

88 The London Society had links with the Society for Checking the Abuses of Public Advertising (SCAPA). See Journal of the London Society 70 (December 1923): 6 Google Scholar. For general comments on SCAPA, see Williams, Raymond, “Advertising: The Magic System,” in Problems in Materialism and Culture (London, 1980), pp. 170–95Google Scholar; and Carey, John, The Intellectuals and the Masses: Pride and Prejudice among the Literary Intelligentsia, 1880–1939 (London, 1992), pp. 105–7Google Scholar.

89 “Prognostications,” Journal of the London Society 13 (May 1917): 1–2 Google Scholar.

90 Earl of Lytton, “Inns and Taverns of London: Their Better Adaptation to the Public Need,” Journal of the London Society 29 (July 1920): 5–9 Google Scholar.

91 Pick, Frank, “The Art of the Street: As Illustrated in London,” Journal of the London Society 64 (June 1923): 6–9 Google Scholar.

92 Saler, Michael, The Avant-Garde in Interwar England: Medieval Modernism and the London Underground (Oxford, 1999), p. 27 Google Scholar.

93 Saler traces the influence of W. R. Lethaby, particularly his Form in Civilization (Oxford 1922)Google ScholarPubMed, on Pick's emphasis on tidiness as a civic virtue. Pick mentions Lethaby's call for “tidy towns” in his lecture.

94 Pick, “Art of the Street,” p. 8.

95 Ibid., p. 10.

96 Rasmussen, S. E., London: The Unique City (London, 1937), p. 341 Google Scholar.

97 Adshead, “Central London,” p. 149.

98 Regent's Quadrant Advisory Committee minutes, 12 November 1912, UK Public Records Office, file CRES35/3615, quoted in Rappaport, “Art, Commerce, or Empire,” p. 107.

99 Langham Hotel Guide to London (London 1913), p. 178 Google Scholar.

100 See Winter, Jay, London's Teeming Streets, 1830–1914 (London, 1993)Google Scholar.

101 “A Brighter London Society,” The Times (12 January 1922), p. 7.

102 “Brighter Embankment: Savoy Hotel Rooms to Be Lit Up,” The Times (20 January 1922), p. 7.

103 Collcutt, London of the Future: A City of Pleasant Places and No Evil Slums, p. 87.

104 Gilbert, David, “ London in All Its Glory—or How to Enjoy London: Guidebook Representations of Imperial London,” Journal of Historical Geography 25 (1999): 279–97CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

105 Webb, Aston, “London of the Future,” Journal of the London Society 3 (April 1914): 16–22 Google Scholar.

106 Webb, ed., London, p. 15.

107 O'Shea, “English Subjects of Modernity,” p. 28. The following comments are based in part on O'Shea's analysis of English modernity.

108 John Reith, the BBC's first director-general, argued that broadcasting should be a public service that provided mass education, enriching the intellectual and cultural life of the nation. The Reith Lectures given by a leading expert in a particular field have been broadcast annually since 1948.

109 Adshead, “Central London,” p. 151.

110 Light, Alison, Forever England: Femininity, Literature and Conservatism between the Wars (London, 1991)Google Scholar.

111 The term “Tudorbethan” refers to an architectural style common in new suburban housing developments of the 1920s and 1930s. It incorporated some superficial elements of English sixteenth-century architecture and has often been condemned by the architectural and intellectual elite as a cheap sham.

112 Light, Forever England, p. 10.