It all started with a Type 27

 During the summer of 1973 my parents fell in love with the idea of buying a newly built house. That house had to be a Leech built Type 27 - semi-detached villa (other builders were available, but their offerings were summarily rejected). 

Location was less certain and we spent that summer picking out the prime plot on several different new developments. Preference went to those houses which would have an open aspect at the front and much time was spent in working out which way the sun would affect the garden. A definite choice was made more than once, one evening that summer I remember being encouraged to place a penny in a gap in the mortar of the foundation course of bricks of one such prospective purchase. As happened more than once that house was rejected a few days later and a purchase was made on another estate a few miles north. I think construction was too far advanced on that one to put a penny in the foundations! 

10 Beech Drive, Ellington, Northumberland
Home November 1973 - September 1976

Ironically just a few years later we ended up living in a house directly behind the one with the penny in the foundations. Those years in the mid seventies were characterised by extreme teenage angst, not helped by constant viewing of potential new houses, and several actual moves. But out of it came a passion for collecting the sales information for new houses across the UK. That unique collection has travelled with me ever since, only occasionally seeing the light of day but an endless source of fascination. These were decisive years in the history of private house building in the UK, which changed the shape of our towns and villages. This extract from an article in The Guardian explains: 

1970s

Britain had its first experience of a housing bubble during the so-called Barber boom of 1973. An easing of credit conditions by the Bank of England coupled with the go-for-growth strategy of the Conservative chancellor, Tony Barber, resulted in house-price inflation peaking at 36%. The average price of a home, which had risen from £2,000 to £5,000 between 1950 and 1970, doubled in the next three years. The boom ended when the Yom Kippur war and the Opec oil embargo ushered in the stagflation of the mid-1970s. 

A brief history of British housing | Housing market | The Guardian

This blog is part of my preparations for a period of sabbatical leave, during which I intend to explore how my encounters with places have shaped me, and how the world has reshaped during my lifetime. The sabbatical will happen in mid 2022, when I will set off on a journey to many of the places represented in those information packs, sharing both the builders' visions and the reality 45+ years later. I want to see how the buildings look, how they transformed communities and how those communities have adapted and provided for their new residents. I look forward to sharing that journey with you, meanwhile I will be writing occasionally about my preparations and some of the discoveries I am already beginning to make.