10-17, WINDMILL GREEN

This is a terrace of sixteen houses, numbers 10-17, forming a planned composition around a green space together with numbers 1-9, 18-30 Windmill Green and numbers 12-20 Thwaite Road. Built between 1947 and 1949 by the former Loddon Rural District Council, the architects were Tayler and Green. The scheme represented a departure from pre-war housing trends and was the first to move away from predominantly semi-detached designs.

The houses are two storeys high and constructed of colourwashed ‘wire cut’ bricks in varied colours, set above a black tarred plinth. They have an orange pantile roof and red ‘wire cut’ chimney stacks topped with pitched concrete copings and red clay pots. The houses have wide frontages, ranging from 30 to 33 feet (9 to 10 metres), and contain three or four bedrooms, with single or dual aspect depending on orientation. A key design feature is the recessed porch and store which provides a through route from front to back, avoiding traditional 'tunnel' backs found in terraced housing. This plan was developed by the architects to address this common design problem. Standard steel casement windows were originally fitted, with some now replaced by UPVC, but retaining the original Saul-division module. The frontages of each house are defined by projecting cover panels over the cavity party walls. The window arrangement for numbers 10-17 is 2:1:4:3 on the first floor and 2:4:1 on the ground floor. A broad recessed porch provides access to the left, with a store to the right. Light steel railings with a trellis panel are situated in front of the porch. The informal layout of the housing around the broad, tapering green south of Thwaite Road was intended to reflect vernacular design principles and serve a social purpose post-war. A shared pedestrian and vehicular access to the garage court in the south-west corner of the scheme was an original feature and required an exception to Ministry housing standards. The scheme was documented in the Ministry of Health Housing Manual in 1949 and recognized with a Ministry of Health Housing Medal in 1950. While the overall planning of the individual houses is considered of particular interest, the interiors lack distinctive features.