5 and 6, Stow Road

TL 9370 19/3/10006

IXWORTH STOW ROAD Nos.5 and 6

GV II Pair of council houses. Designed 1892, built 1893-1894 by Mr Whitmore, the Suffolk County Surveyor, for Thingoe Rural District Council. Red brick, slate roofs with ridge crest. Central shared stack.

Two-storied semi-detached pairs with rear single storey back kitchen/wash house and lavatory. Timber casement windows under arched brick heads to No.6, which has timber door under toplight; the windows and front door to No.5 have been renewed. Single sill band to first floor. Interiors not inspected.

One of four pairs of houses understood to be the first rural council housing built in England, under the Housing of the Working Classes Act 1890, and surviving in little-altered condition. The 1890 Act was the first to permit local authorities to acquire and develop land for housing but was adopted by just eight rural authorities, despite increasing recognition that agricultural labourers endured housing conditions every bit as bad as those of the inner cities.

Listing NGR: TL9341170195