My local walks sometimes take me through the Well Green Estate, which is always of interest as many of the houses are of a concrete system build construction, the Unity House, so are very distinctive. They were put up in the early 1950s as one of the quick design solutions by councils to the housing shortage and were only expected to last 25 years. But despite that, they are now increasingly owned rather than rented and many have had work done to correct faults with the construction system. The house was built using a steel frame, and then the concrete panels were slotted together to build up the inner and outer walls. There was no insulation system and water creeping in often causes the frame to weaken in places.
Yet while taking all this in, until recently I have never noticed the gates.
These are wrought iron and clearly put up at the same time as the houses. So every house had the same front gate, and many remain 70 years on. Obviously some have gone, others have been replaced, but I would think the majority are still there even when the property has been improved in other ways. Exactly where the builders sourced the gates I’ve no idea, and they are not of any great visual merit, but I do like to think of the guys fitting them up as the gardens were first fenced off and wonder if they expected them still to be in situ so many years on. The top photo shows one of the gates which shows up a poorly made replacement
The house owners (or in some cases the council tenants) have painted and repainted them over the years, and I decided to photograph a few of them (albeit discreetly, not wanting to antagonise any home owners – I know I would be very suspicious if someone had been seen snapping our gate!) recently. I might do some more anon. I have now been noticing the same gates on a few other estates in the city, so it was a decent contract for some iron works back at the time. The gate below has been customised (pimped I suppose in current TV parlance!) with a bespoke metal house number inside a horse shoe, but the owner has lacked the equipment to weld this to the gate, so it is fixed to a wooden plate instead. You can also see a bit of the original house construction on the one next door.
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