1-9, Windmill Green

A terrace of nine houses forming a composition around a green, built between 1947 and 1949 by the former Loddon Rural District Council, designed by architects Tayler and Green. The terrace is part of a larger development including numbers 10-17 Windmill Green and numbers 12-20 Thwaite Road. The houses are constructed of colourwashed 'wire cut' bricks in varying colours above a black tarred plinth, with an orange pantile roof and red 'wirecut' chimney stacks featuring pitched concrete copings and red clay pots. The wide frontage plans are approximately 30-33 feet (9-10 metres) wide and contain three or four bedrooms, with single or dual aspect depending on orientation. Each house incorporates recessed porches and stores to create a through route from front to back, a design feature intended to avoid the traditional 'tunnel' back of a terrace. The window openings originally contained standard steel casement windows, some of which have been replaced with UPVC, though the original Saul-division window modules have been retained. Projecting cover panels define the frontage of each house, positioned over the cavity party walls. Numbers 18-30 feature three-light casements on the first floor, with wide central panes, and on the ground floor, a full-length casement with a central transom to the left. Porches are incorporated with glazed doors and side lights, featuring deep central transoms and a flat canopy supported on slender steel columns. A low patterned steel infill panel with trelliswork runs over the ground floor cloakroom window, and a boarded store door with a glazed panel is situated to the right. The design's elegant proportions and attention to detail distinguished it as an exemplary scheme from its inception. The layout of the housing blocks around a broad, tapering green south of Thwaite Road was intended to recreate the best aspects of traditional vernacular design, while fulfilling the social purpose of post-war rural housing. A shared pedestrian/vehicular access to the garage court in the south-west corner of the scheme was an original feature, requiring a departure from Ministry housing standards. The scheme was featured in the Ministry of Health Housing Manual in 1949 and received a Ministry of Health Housing Medal in 1950. The planning of individual homes is notable, but there are no internal features of significant merit.