Mobilising Housing Histories

Chapter Three Renewable Principles in Henry Astley Darbishire's Peabody Estates, 1864 to 1885

IRINA DAVIDOVICI¹

In the context of Victorian housing reform, the Peabody Trust, established in 1862, was among the first organisations to employ a professional architect. Between 1863 and 1885 Henry Astley Darbishire (1825–99) designed some 20 housing estates for the Trust, most of them in association with the same contractor, William Cubitt. Located throughout London in dense urban areas, often on sites reclaimed through slum clearance, these developments expressed the aim of housing the working classes as efficiently as possible, in conditions as hygienic as possible.² Anonymous and pragmatic, they displayed the logic of a system – yet remained subject ...