Rented Worlds

Bedsits, Boarding Houses and Multiple Occupancy Homes in Post-war London, 1946-1963
1. Auflage 2026
ISBN: 978-1-032-99257-0
Verlag: Taylor & Francis

Buch, Englisch, 268 Seiten, Format (B × H): 156 mm x 234 mm, Gewicht: 720 g

Reihe: Routledge Research in Architecture

Rented Worlds examines the hidden yet ubiquitous world of bedsits, boarding houses, service flats, subdivided terraces, and other forms of private rented housing that continued to dominate post-war London, numerically as well as culturally, well into the 1960s.

While the rise of council housing and suburban homeownership have both been thoroughly documented, it was this other kind of housing – declining yet highly contested – that formed the ideological substrate of many key debates about the post-war politics of welfare, ‘race,’ class, and gender. Covering from the end of the Second World War to the end of the first post-war Conservative government, and drawing on a range of untapped archival sources, including rent tribunals, valuation lists, exhibitions, and photography, the book traces a sequence of specific ‘problems’ as they coincided with key moments in post-war British history: from the 1946 squatting movement and the problem of displacement after the Blitz; to the question of social isolation and new policies around mental health; to the chronic issue of overcrowding and a growing fire safety crisis in inner London.

Told through the experience of tenants and proprietors, this new history of post-war London challenges architectural history’s ability to account for the unexpected after-lives of built spaces; spaces that were re-made from the inside out through processes of speculation, regulation, and grassroots spatial practices.

Zielgruppe

Academic, Postgraduate, and Undergraduate Advanced

Autoren/Hrsg.

Cartwright, Alistair

Fachgebiete

• Geisteswissenschaften Architektur Gebäudetypen Wohngebäude
• Geisteswissenschaften Architektur Geschichte der Architektur, Baugeschichte

Inhaltsverzeichnis

Introduction. Chapter 1.The World Turned Outside In (Luxury Squats). Chapter 2. Lonely Londoners. Chapter 3. The Hearth and the Inferno. Chapter 4. The Landlord and His Doubles Conclusion.

Über Autor(innen)

Alistair Cartwright is an architectural and cultural historian, and a postdoctoral research fellow at ETH Zurich. He was previously a Leverhulme Early Career Fellow at the University of Liverpool, School of Architecture, and a postdoctoral fellow at the Paul Mellon Centre and has worked for various built environment charities. He has published widely on topics including the politics of immigration and housing in London, the aesthetics of the ‘un-ideal home,’ subdivision in the private rented sector, and the role of rent tribunals as spaces of resistance. His current research examines post-disaster reconstruction, housing and materials supplies in the cross-currents of decolonisation, focusing on connections between London and the Indian Ocean region.