Although today Barnet is among the most affluent boroughs in the country it was not always so.
In the 19th Century and earlier, poverty was the lot of most citizens - many living in appalling slums built around the time of the Napoleonic Wars. But with the coming of the railways and the huge growth in population in our area, there was an increasingly urgent need for more and better public housing.
The borough's first council houses were built by Barnet Urban District Council in Mays Lane, Barnet, in 1911, largely at the instigation of one Councillor Olney.
Soon after on March 18, 1918, as the First World War was coming to a close and the promise of a 'land fit for heroes' was made, a letter from the Local Government Board was sent to all local authorities which led in 1922 to Friern Barnet Council issuing a compulsory purchase order to Leicester Holman to sell land in Whetstone for £7,200.
On March 5, 1920, F.H. Shearley of Hampstead was appointed architect for a fee of £1,644 and on July 7, 1921, Messrs Walter Jones were awarded the contract to build 45 homes in the Oakleigh Park area for £30,805.
The council borrowed the money to pay for this development at a rate of six-and-a-half per cent a year over 80 years - that debt was originally due to have been paid off this year. By March 1922 the Barnet Gas & Water Company had connected its services and the first tenants moved in early in 1923.
Finchley Urban District Council was also hard at work. It had bought part of the Woodhouse estate for housing as early as 1915 and completed Ingleway in June 1921. By far the most ambitious scheme, however, was in Edgware where in 1924 the London County Council (LCC) bought the 390-acre Goldbeaters Farm.
It was to be the largest of the LCC at that time. Work began in 1927 to designs by architect G. Topham Forest and, by 1931, some 4,021 houses and flats had been completed.
Special care was taken to retain old trees and create a rural atmosphere by laying out winding roads and including weatherboarded houses.
East Finchley was badly bombed during the Second World War on the night of November 15.
After the war, the opportunity was taken to redevelop the whole area around the Old Market Place.
The council built a mixture of towerblocks and low-rise homes which like so many similar schemes, while tackling the housing shortage, killed off much of the character and social life of the area.
Other major contributions to public housing included the 274 flats and 109 houses built in 1975 on East Finchley's Strawberry Vale Estate near the North Circular Road; the Dollis Valley Estate at the foot of Barnet Hill in Barnet, built around 1965 for £1.75million on a former sewage farm; the 1938 Red Lion Estate in Finchley and the Grahame Park Estate on the site of Hendon Aerodrome.
The whole question of council housing for rent was turned on its head by Finchley MP turned Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher's government which, in 1979, introduced schemes to sell council housing to sitting tenants.
Politically, it was a popular move but presented social and economic problems which have still not been solved to this day.
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