Informal Housing 20/04/2020

Forgotten Plotlanders:
Learning from the Suvival of
Lost Informal Housing in the
UK
Richard Bower (2017)
Housing, Theory and Society, Vol. 24, No. 1 (79-105)

What is the main argument presented in this piece?

Bower presents a re-reading of Colin Ward’s discourses on the

plotlander movement from the 1970s, in order to discuss how
alternative and informal housing can have positive potential in a
twenty-first century westernised context.

How is this useful to my research?

Although the main argument is concerned with the housing

market and development, it might be interesting to see what
Bower sees as positive in informal building practices, and why this
no longer exists in the UK. Also what informal building would be
like in the 21st century, and what the conditions would enable it.

Cues Notes

 Current conditions of neoliberal economic policy and

developer housing has engulfed the landscape of
plotlander housing. (p79-80)
 Studd Hill, on the north Kent coastline, is a newly
discovered plotlander housing development (p81)
 Allows for an opportunity to:
 critically examine how informal architecture can
confront prevailing UK housing models
 ‘re-imagine the social production of informal space
as an opportunity to confront, context and disrupt
the seemingly unending housing crisis in the UK’
(p81)

Anarchism, Global Informality and “Plotlanders”

 Summary of Ward’s work and his precedents in anarchist

political and social theory: (Kropotkin, Boulding, Landauer,
Buber) (p81)
 Ward was reacting to Marxist theory in his day by
engaging with anarchism (bottom-up)
 ‘Ward’s interpretation is grounded in practice and
offers a model of anarchism as a theory of
organization and social agency. His analysis of
principles of self-organization in relation to housing,
schooling, family, self-management and
governance is an attempt to relieve the tension

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between practicality and ideological aspiration’ (81)

 Other explorations of alternative UK housing Models:
 Walter Segal (self-build council housing in
Lewisham)
 Nabeel Hamdi (modified John Habraken’s
“Supports” housing system)

 ‘Even by 1939 only about 18 per cent of working-class

families were owner-occupiers (compared with the
national figure of 31 per cent (Glynn and Oxborrow 1976).
… Sandwiched between the two, however – between the
artisans of the council estates and the petty bourgeoisie of
suburbia – were many others, swayed by the arguments
for home ownership yet without the economic means to
enter the main race. It was from would-be property owners
such as these that many of the plotlanders came to make
their own distinctive bid for a house and some land. A little
cottage in the Essex plotlands – painstakingly built with
materials carried on a bus and bicycle from East London
on days off work, and aptly named “Perserverance” (sic),
typifies the immense sacrifice needed to achieve what
became almost a mystical objective of acquiring a home of
one’s own.’
(Hardy and Ward 1984, 18) on p83

 ‘The word “plotlands” is used by town planners as a

shorthand description for those areas where, in the first
forty years of this century, land was divided into small
plots and sold, often in unorthodox ways, to people
wanting to build their holiday home, country retreat or
would be smallholding. Sometimes they simply squatted
and eventually gained title through “adverse possession”,
the legal phrase for squatter’s rights’.
(Ward and Hardy 1972, 63) p84

 The plotlanders sought to escape the poor conditions of

urban life in London, and were driven by the desire for
home ownership and the idealisation of tranquil rural life
(at the time of social activists such as William Morris). P85
 The impact on landscape provoked outcry from the ‘liberal
intelligentsia’ who wanted to protect their image of the
English countryside. p85
 Plotlander sites have either been demolished, fragmented
or gentrified. P86

Studd Hill

UK Informal Housing Today

Key Questions:
 Is there a cultural empathy for alternative forms of
housing? If not, (how) can we seek to agonistically (Mouffe

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2013a) produce one?

 What are the political and economic
challenges/implications of an informal housing economy?
 And how might we engage with space and architecture
differently in order to facilitate new models of alternative
housing in the UK?

 There are still user-driven housing, and community/social

collective housing projects in Europe. Money that would
otherwise be profits for developers are channelled into
better architecture. P96
 In the UK: Architecture 00 are founders of “wikihouse”
engaging with oopen source

 ‘The economic, political and social confrontation offered

by a user-defined building system strikes at the
fundamental sociocultural hegemonies of formalized
Western space and life.’ p97

 So what prevents ‘a new informal landscape from

emerging’?p97

 There are no remaining marginal and leftover sites in the

UK – all have been purchased. In the case of the
plotlanders they relied on marginal farming land with low
economic value. p97
 If there is marginal rural land then it is covered by
planning law which seeks to ‘protect’ the countryside
 Buildable land under planning law is therefore ‘swallowed
up’ by commercial developers

 Alistair Parvin: An alternative could then be to introduce a

C5 class of land which separates the markets into
commercial market housing and user/developer/builder.

 More freedom doesn’t necessarily mean lower quality

buildings, especially if users set the standards.
 It does have implications for taste though, but Bower
believes the outcome has been proven to be rich and
interesting ‘bricolage’

Questions

1. To what extent was the plotlanders movement out of

necessity for housing or out of a desire for space and
leisure?

2. What would the ‘C5' equivalent be in NZ?

3. Are there legitimate reasons to ‘protect’ the landscape?

Summary

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Informal Housing 20/04/2020

Bower suggests that a shift in planning policy – allowing a

different class of land for a parallel user-occupier-builder housing
market to emerge – would open up possibility for anarchic self-
build to occur. He believes this is generally positive as it would
destabilise the hegemony of neoliberal housing market which
does not serve the user, and provide opportunity for better
quality architecture with richness and variety.