THE CHEAPEST COTTAGES.*
THOSE who have professed to disbelieve in the possibility of building agricultural labourers' cottages for £150, less cost of land and the other expenses which the owner of an estate does not expect to be recouped, should see Mr. Alderman Thompson's extremely useful companion volume to The Housing Handbook. It reports that at Altrincham the Urban District Council has been able to put up ten cottages for 21,577, although the foundations had to be taken down five feet. Then the municipality of Exeter completed two years ago about fifty cottages at £149 each. At Neath there are a number of two-bedroom cottages built for 2121, and a dozen with three bedrooms costing 2141. Some thirty-eight cottages near Merthyr Tydfil are being erected for £150, which includes cost of drainage and road. The contractor is reported to be willing to build duplicate cottages at the same price in similar conditions elsewhere. The cost of some municipal cottages at Stretford, a plan of which is given by Mr. Thompson, is stated as 2148 apiece. Fourteen five-roomed cottages are said to have been erected near Ton- bridge at 2126 each. The author of Housing Up to Date asserts that "the average cost of municipal cottages has been reduced by 20 per cent. since the holding of the [first Cheap Cottages] Exhibition, as the result of the stimulus given to cheaper building." He also says that "the demand for cheap- ness has, so far, guided us towards better rather than worse sanitary conditions for our dwellings." It is plain that one of the causes of economy in the case of the municipal cottages was the fact of their being erected in considerable numbers. At the same time, rural landowners have also advantages in their cottage-building. It is doubtful, however, whether they always get full value for their money.
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