Willowbrook and Woodstock House, Woodstock House, Mount Merrion Avenue, BELFAST, County Antrim, BT6 0FQ

Willowbrook House and Woodstock House are an identical pair of 11-storey-over-basement, modernist-influenced residential tower blocks, approved for construction in 1957, begun in 1959, and completed in 1962. They were the first tower block housing to be built in Northern Ireland, designed by the architects of the Northern Ireland Housing Trust and constructed by Unit Construction Company Ltd, a Liverpool-based company previously employed by Belfast Corporation to build flats on Annadale Embankment. Both blocks were renovated with alterations around 2010. They stand off Mount Merrion Avenue, adjacent to the Cregagh Estate, approximately two miles south-east of Belfast city centre. Willowbrook House is the north-eastern block; Woodstock House is the other. Each contains 44 flats across its eleven storeys. They are local landmarks in Castlereagh and are of considerable social and historic importance as the first multi-storey residential blocks of their type in Northern Ireland, symbolising the development of new social and architectural solutions to the post-war housing crisis in the context of the developing welfare state.

Both blocks are of square plan form with an adjoining single-storey service block. The exact structural composition is undetermined but is most likely a widely used reinforced concrete frame system with a blockwork outer skin. The blockwork is dashed with limestone chips and laid to stretcher bond. Roofs are flat, constructed in asphalt, surmounted by an inverted pitched lift shaft and plant room, with a parapet wall and mild-steel railing. Rainwater goods are replacement uPVC throughout. Glazing throughout has been replaced with uPVC and aluminium-framed units.

The principal elevation of Willowbrook House faces west and is symmetrically arranged. Each floor above ground floor is identical, creating a uniform arrangement of centrally located projecting balconies set within a recessed bay, flanked on either side by single bipartite windows. The thin concrete cantilevered balconies angle outwards towards the centre and have mild-steel railings; they are partitioned with full-height blockwork. Each balcony is served by a uPVC door and a bipartite window with a solid lower panel. At ground floor level, the entrance porch is located left of centre, occupying the space previously held by a ground-floor apartment. The ground-floor window to the left of the entrance has been blocked up and the walling has been partially smooth-rendered. A flat-roofed rendered front entrance was added around 2010. The former principal entrance has been significantly modified, with replacement doors and the removal of the original porch; it now serves as a secondary entrance.

The north elevation is symmetrically arranged, with full-height recessed central glazing to the stairwell and a secondary entrance at ground floor, with matching apartment accommodation to either side. The blockwork to the apartments on this elevation is a lighter shade than on the principal elevation and sits slightly recessed, framed by the darker blockwork. Each floor is partitioned by an exposed concrete course, and each apartment presents a uniform arrangement of a single bipartite window flanked by tripartite windows. Additional ventilation grilles are present to the left-hand side of the right-hand apartments. The ground-floor right apartment has been converted to form the new entrance lobby and has been smooth-rendered.

The east elevation is symmetrically arranged and matches the north elevation, with the exception that the ground-floor apartments have not been altered. The south elevation follows the same principle as the north — a central recessed bay flanked by apartment accommodation — however the central bay comprises a series of recessed balconies serving a refuse chute located to the left-hand side. At ground-floor level there is a single-storey service block with brick walling and a corrugated sheet-metal monopitch roof, added around 2010.

Woodstock House is identical to Willowbrook House, with the single exception that the apartment converted to create a new entrance is located on the left-hand side of the ground floor of the west elevation rather than the right.

The two blocks sit on a small site to the east of the Cregagh Estate, a housing development of around 1940 comprising a series of two-storey red-brick flat-roofed blocks. A principal road runs across the north of the site; immediately to the south and west are parking lay-bys. Much of the hard landscaping immediately adjacent to the buildings has been replaced with modern paving and tarmac. Overall, the exteriors of both blocks have remained largely unchanged despite minor inappropriate renovations.

The blocks were conceived as an adjunct to the 1945 Cregagh Estate, a development of low-rise terraced housing that adopted flat roofs rather than tiles or slates due to material shortages following the war, giving it a non-traditional character. The housing at Cregagh was used to decant tenants from what was regarded as substandard housing in overcrowded inner-city areas. The two tower blocks first appear on the Ordnance Survey map dating from the 1960s and 1970s and enter valuation records in 1962. Occupiers are noted for each flat, and the four flats on each floor are valued at £19, £14, £21 and £21 respectively, reflecting slightly different sizes and layouts. A laundrette in the basement of Woodstock House is also noted in the valuation records.

The tower block experiment took place in the context of a social housing boom throughout the United Kingdom in the post-war period. Northern Ireland had lagged behind other regions in building social housing during the inter-war years, but between 1945 and 1969, 64% of housing was built by public authorities, compared to 51% in England and Wales. Architects and planners were influenced by Le Corbusier's espousal of high-rise architecture and saw tower blocks as symbolising modernity and post-war progress. Industrialised building techniques, including the standardisation and replication of designs across many sites, were believed to lower costs. A brutalist aesthetic emphasised the use of exposed concrete, valued for its flexibility and economy. The first social housing tower block in the United Kingdom opened in Essex between 1949 and 1951, and by the mid-1950s the addition of point blocks — vertical multi-storey blocks — to estates was being debated by the Northern Ireland Housing Trust, which had been established in 1945.

The success of Willowbrook House and Woodstock House encouraged the Northern Ireland Housing Trust to build more tower blocks; over 40 were subsequently built across Northern Ireland, the majority in Belfast. However, multi-storey living proved less than successful in some parts of Belfast, and high-rise social housing was no longer built in Northern Ireland after the late 1960s, though high building continued in Scotland until the mid-1970s. Slum clearance and the decanting of tenants from inner-city areas proved controversial both politically and socially, often opposed by politicians, church leaders, and tenants themselves. Multi-storey buildings were considered especially useful in allowing people to be rehoused within their own familiar areas, but inner-city multi-storey developments were among the least successful of such experiments; the most notorious, Divis Flats, was ultimately demolished. In the late 1960s, politicians and decision-makers began to turn against the building of modern flats, and a proposal to build seven 20-storey blocks at Black Mountain was rejected, with Belfast's Housing Committee citing the unpopularity and social problems of high flats. The Northern Ireland Housing Executive, set up in 1971, imposed a blanket ban on multi-storey building, and new social housing since that time has tended to be of traditional design and construction. The majority of point blocks built by the housing authorities in Belfast have nonetheless survived and remain in use, although they are no longer considered suitable accommodation for families.