He was a prodigy, my dad.

At fifteen, he won a place at the country’s leading architecture university but had to wait until he was sixteen to take it up. So, in the meantime, he studied Civic Design. He went on to become a Fellow of the Royal Institute of British Architects and a Master of Civic Design.

During the 1960s and 1970s, his companies built thousands of homes throughout the South East of England.

His principles were simple: Every house must be of a different design: the houses must be crafted rather than merely built: At least 50% of the area of any estate must be open, green space: Wherever possible trees must remain with sufficient area around them to breathe: Communities must not be segregated but integrated – starter homes should be mixed in with larger, more expensive houses: All houses must be affordable – no mortgage should cost more than 20% of income (the average is approx. 70% today): No houses must be sold to corporations or “investors” for rental: Each community of houses must be completed and landscaped before any were marketed (no selling “off-plan”).

Here are a couple of examples of his work (apologies for the poor picture quality). The houses in these pictures sold for an average of £3,000 (approx. £180,000 in today’s money). In 2020 houses from the estate on the left sold for between £560,000 and £1.3 million). Such is house inflation.

By the early 1980s, he had become disheartened by government directives which, amongst other measures, dictated excessive targets for the number of houses per hectare and lowered building quality controls thus allowing shoddy design and unscrupulous building practices.

Much against his will, he abandoned the construction industry altogether in 1985.

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Pictures: Emmer Green, Caversham and Burghfield, Berkshire

© Rod McRiven2021