Swedish homes for rural heroes

How a neutral nation supplied essential prefabs in the immediate post war period

One of several Swedish houses in Stocks Lane, Kelvedon Hatch, Essex

After the Second World War Britain faced an almost overwhelming housing crisis. The Blitz and then the waves of V1s and V2s pulverised the densest housing in working class areas near the London Docks and other strategic targets across Britain.

Resources and money were scarce, while few skilled construction workers had yet to return from military service building industry.

The solution was a building programme using non-traditional prefabricated construction, with the mass-produced homes planned to have a limited life of only 10-15 years. The Housing (Temporary Accommodation) Act 1944 planned 300,000 prefab houses in Britain over the next four years. In the end just over 150,000 were built.

Not all were in urban areas. There was a need for housing for farm workers and part of the demand was fulfilled through a contract with Sweden. Between September 1945 and March 1946, Sweden exported 5,000 prefabricated houses to the UK. The design was adapted by the Ministry of Works from a standard kit, with the all-timber houses arriving in flat sections, and then stored at the docks for allocation.

In England and Wales this was often in small numbers to rural areas for farm workers. The first were built at Abbots Langley, Hertfordshire, in January 1946.

There are two basic designs: semi-detached houses with a single storey utility extension and semi-detached dormer bungalows. A pair of the bungalows at Auckley near Doncaster (Grid Ref: SE651012) have been listed by Historic England, but none of the houses appears to have been listed.

The wooden construction means are easily identified among the more traditional brick construction of homes in rural England.

The Swedish houses — often with red-tiled gabled roofs and neat porches – also contrast strongly with the better known British "prefabs" to be found in urban areas where they frequently replace bombed out Victorian and earlier terraced homes. Typically, unless they have been re-clad, they have distinctive vertical wooden exterior planking. One pair of dormer bungalows in Ellers Lane, Auckley, Doncaster is listed Grade 11 by Historic England.

While the life of the houses was estimated at 50-60 years, many, often modernised and altered internally and externally, are now entering their eighth decade.

Many residents of the houses originally believed the homes were gifts from the Swedish government. However it was a purely commercial transaction -- around £7 million was paid to Sweden for the houses.

Scandinavian wooden prefabricated houses had been introduced to Scotland in 1920, with almost 1,000 being built up to the immediate pre-war period.A senior cicil servant with knowledge of the pre-war houses was coincidentally stranded in Sweden for VE Day and spent. However he spent the time designing kits for prefabricated houses which conformed to the recommendations of the 1944 UK government report Planning our New Homes.

But the process wasn’t all plain sailing. A secret memo to the War Cabinet shows that the Chancellor of the Exchequer opposed the plan on financial grounds.

In England and Wales pairs of semi detached houses with single storey ‘wash houses’ (style 1) and semi detached dormer bungalows (style B1) were erected individually or in small groups in mainly rural areas.

Elain Harwood, historian at Historic England, recounts in her book Space, Hope and Brutalism[i]: “Built of short waste lengths of tongue-and-groove boarding, they were quickly erected in rural areas and had excellent insulation standards, although redesigned by British government architects, the plank construction was distinctively Scandinavian. Local authorities provided sites and services, from 1945 using prisoner of war labour, but although 10,000 houses were promised, only 2,444 were erected because of restrictions on dollar imports imposed in 1947 that limited softwood supplies until November 1953.”

So far only two of these Swedish Houses, both bungalows, have been listed in recognition of their architectural and historical importance[ii].

This Swedish house in Kelvedon Hatch, Essex is for sale

Conservation Adviser to the Twentieth Century Society, Tess Pinto, said: “Despite the efforts of the Prefab Museum in compiling a list, it is still unknown how many survive close to their original condition. The few that do are very vulnerable. We are urging Historic England to undertake a wider assessment of Swedish Houses across the country – otherwise, we are at risk of losing a fascinating part of our post-war heritage.

[i] Elain Harwood, Space, Hope, and Brutalism: English Architecture, 1945-1975 (The Association of Human Rights Institutes series) 31 May 2014

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[ii] Historic prefab “Swedish Houses” under threat – The Twentieth Century Society (c20society.org.uk)