417, Wake Green Road

This is a prefabricated house with a shed and an Anderson shelter, built in 1945 under the Housing (Temporary Accommodation) Act by the Ministry of Works, with the City Council providing the site and foundations. It's a "Phoenix" design: a welded steel tube frame clad in cream-painted corrugated asbestos sheeting with internal timber lining and partitions. The roof is shallow-pitched corrugated asbestos, felt-covered, with a central apex and a low chimney. The house is one storey and follows the dimensions of the 1944 Portal house prototype (32’4” by 21’3”), including two bedrooms to the left of the hall, a living room to the right, and the standard Portal kitchen and bathroom unit, which was delivered ready assembled. It features timber windows with metal opening casements and toplights, the living room on the right having distinctive double casements mirrored around a central mullion. A central door is topped with an arched fanlight under a curved metal porch, a distinctive 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. A timber fence borders the front garden.

The interior was designed to be fully fitted, reflecting the post-war scarcity of furniture and kitchen fixtures. The living room includes fitted shelving, and the principal bedroom (at the rear) has fitted cupboards. The kitchen, bathroom, and separate WC are configured as a single unit, designed by the Ministry of Works, and some original features remain.

Approximately 2,428 Phoenix prefabs were erected in the UK as part of the Temporary Housing Programme, which erected around 156,623 temporary bungalows across Britain between 1944 and 1948. This scheme was devised by Lord Portal, Minister of Works, to address the post-war housing shortage when conventional materials were unavailable and wartime industries needed peacetime roles. It’s one of the rarest of the eleven approved prefab types, but also one of the most substantially built. These were based on the Portal prototype bungalow displayed at the Tate Gallery in 1944 and were notable for their fitted interiors, including kitchens with washing machines and refrigerators, and a carefully considered layout. Unlike other prefabricated housing of the period, these bungalows were detached and carefully planned with internal fixtures.

The group of prefabs in Wake Green Road represents a rare variant of the Portal bungalow and is remarkable for its exceptional state of preservation, with few alterations made.