Publications

Rediscovered Utopias: Saving London's Suburbs

Edited by Bridget Cherry and Ann Robey.
Published by SAVE with the support of English Heritage.

London’s leafy suburbs form a giant garden city, of pleasant low-rise housing set amidst gardens and tree-lined roads. They fulfil the longstanding English dream of a house and garden in leafy surroundings and offer an impressive model for urban living.

The sheer number of suburbs – north, south, east and west – provide a quite astonishing housing stock. Yet while most Londoners know their own suburb well, and perhaps its neighbours too, not many people know more than a fraction of the whole.

This book is intended, like many other SAVE reports before it, to be a voyage of discovery. It focuses principally on planned suburbs and estates which have a particular harmony and sometimes a distinctive pattern of streets. It looks at suburban housing built in different ways, by landowners and speculative builders, by voluntary associations and the boroughs themselves.

Yet in many places the character of these areas is being constantly eroded, by small but accretive changes to details such as windows and doors, fences, gates and railings, roofing and paving materials.

In many places, conservation area protection is not working as effectively as it could. More ‘Article 4’ directions are needed to control features that give character to suburbs. The lists of listed buildings are also seriously out of date in some London boroughs, with many architect-designed houses of the early 20th century still unlisted. The sum of all the best suburbs is more than the parts. While houses have a sense of individuality it is the harmony of whole streets and neighbourhoods which make the suburbs a delight.

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Colchester: Back to the Future

Colchester is one of England’s most overlooked historic county towns. It retains its Roman grid, with a castle, town walls and street after street of handsome buildings. This report aims to highlight the wealth of Colchester’s built heritage, show the good work that has been done in conserving and augmenting these assets, and put forward ideas for the future - from the small scale to the highly ambitious.

Colchester, Back to the Future argues that the town must capitalise on its history and heritage rather than bend to the concrete will of those who mistakenly believe that economic development and physical development are one and the same. Only though conserving, and where possible, carefully adding to the town, can Colchester retain and strengthen its real identity. This will require patient discussion and negotiation, putting aside politics and working to a long-term plan. If Colchester can meet this challenge, it could be the envy of Britain.

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