403, Wake Green Road

This is a prefabricated bungalow with a shed, built in 1945 under the Housing (Temporary Accommodation) Act by the Ministry of Works, with the City Council providing the site and foundations. It is a "Phoenix" design, featuring a welded steel tube frame clad in cream-painted corrugated asbestos sheeting and internal timber lining and partitions. The roof is shallow-pitched corrugated asbestos with a felt lining, a central apex, and a low chimney.

The bungalow is one storey and follows the dimensions of the 1944 Portal bungalow prototype (32 feet 4 inches by 21 feet 3 inches), including the provision of two bedrooms to the left of the hall, a living room to the right, and a standard Portal kitchen and bathroom unit installed as a ready-assembled unit. It has timber windows with metal opening casements and top-lights, with the living room windows on the right featuring distinctive double casements mirrored around a central mullion. A central door is topped with an arched fanlight and sheltered by a curved metal porch, a unique feature of the Phoenix design. Similar casement windows are present at the rear. A shed of identical date and construction is located at the rear.

The interior was designed to be fully fitted, reflecting the post-war scarcity of furniture and kitchen fixtures. The principal bedroom at the rear includes fitted cupboards. The kitchen, bathroom, and separate WC are a single, Ministry of Works designed unit, some of whose features remain.

Approximately 2,428 Phoenix prefabs were built in the United Kingdom as part of the Temporary Housing Programme, which constructed 156,623 temporary bungalows between 1944 and 1948, a scheme devised by Lord Portal. The Phoenix design is one of the rarest of the eleven approved types, but also one of the most substantially constructed. Inspired by the Portal bungalow prototype exhibited at the Tate Gallery in 1944, these bungalows were notable for their fully fitted interiors, which initially included kitchens with washing machines and refrigerators. The bungalows built under the Housing (Temporary Accommodation) Act are distinguished by their carefully planned design, internal fixtures, historical significance, and detached construction.

The group of bungalows in Wake Green Road represents an unusual and well-preserved example of a rare Portal bungalow variant with few alterations.