Sir Arthur Arnold's achievement in rethinking social housing endures
In case you missed it, yesterday was Arnold Day. Arnold Day? This new annual celebration marks the birthday of the Liberal politician, newspaper editor and reformer Sir Arthur Arnold, chairman of the London county council in the mid-1890s. It was Arnold who led the council in its attempt to raise local authority housing into something approaching an art form, if not quite an earthly paradise. The LCC's Boundary Estate, off Shoreditch High Street, was opened by the Prince of Wales in 1900. Its 20 five-storey housing blocks were designed and built to enviable standards set by William Morris's Arts & Crafts movement. Radiating from a circus crowned with a handsome bandstand, this was not just a replacement for some of the most infamous of all Victorian slums, but architecture, designed by Owen Fleming and his young LCC team, of a very high order. The estate was feted throughout Europe. The circus at its heart was named after Sir Arthur and yesterday summer planting around the bandstand was completed by local residents working with the Friends of Arnold Circus. A band played. Tea was served with Arnold Biscuits baked on the estate. Council housing has rarely been so prized. Arnold himself was concerned that the new estate might shift the poorest people into new slums further away from the city centre ? it did ? yet his achievement in rethinking social housing endures. Arnold Day is now a fixture in the calendar of London life, European architecture and British city planning.
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