THE MODEL COTTAGE AT MERROW.
THE following statement was made by Mr. St. Loa Strachey at the inauguration of his model £150 weather- board cottage near Merrow Common on Saturday, July 26th.
It sets forth his object in building the model cottage, and contains his offer to persons who assert that they are able
to build a cottage with three bedrooms, kitchen-parlour, scullery, and other offices, for £100.
"The object of the model cottage is to show people in general and landlords in particular that it is possible out of ordinary materials and without recourse to any patent dodges or new-fangled con- trivances, such as the heart of the British builder abhors, to build for .2150 a cottage perfectly suitable for human habitation, a cottage in which a man may bring up a family under healthy conditions— in a word, a cottage with three bedrooms, a good kitchen-parlour, a scullery, and other necessary offices, and, above all, a cottage which, if built by a landowner who is able to give the land for nothing, can be let for 2s. 6d. a week, the tenant paying rates, without any serious pecuniary loss, or, if it is let at 3s. a week, without any loss at all. I am the last person in the world to suggest that this is any very magnificent achievement, or that I have done any very singular or public-spirited act in producing this cottage. I am fully aware that there are thousands of people scattered all over the country who have done as well, or a great deal better, in the way of cheap construction. All I wanted to do was to show by a concrete example that the old ideal with which I started the first Cheap Cottages Exhibition at Letchworth still holds good, the ideal of the £150 cottage. But though it was proved at Letchworth beyond all doubt that good cottages could be built for .2150, the world very easily forgets such simple lessons. At any rate, I have found that it has been very much forgotten in the south of England. During the last three or four years I have again and again heard people declare that it is impossible to put up a cottage in Surrey for .2150, and that the cheapest for which it could be done is .2250, and that very often it costs .2300. Now, though I am a newspaper man, I am not a very great believer in the power of the press, at any rate in matters of this kind. Experience has taught me that you may write beautiful leading articles about £150 cottages till you are black in the face, without the slightest result. I determined, therefore, that I would see if where writing had failed a working model might not succeed. I wanted once more to meet the argument= The thing cannot be done except on paper'—by showing it can be done in black weatherboard. And here I should like to put on record that I did not choose black weatherboard for this cottage because it was the cheapest material that could be used — I believe that brick, or rough-cast and timber, or ferro-concrete or cement blocks would be as cheap, or probably rather cheaper. I chose black weatherboard because experience has shown me that for a small house it is the material which best keeps out the weather and makes a dry and so a comfortable cottage. It is not, however, for me to praise my own cottage. There it stands for the criticism of my friends and neighbours. I will only add that anybody is most welcome to copy it in every particular, and, further, that if they do not find anybody willing to put up such a cottage for the sum named or a less sum, I am authorized to say that my friends, Messrs. W. and G. King, of Abinger Hammer, are pre- pared to repeat such a cottage as this for the price of .£150, provided the conditions are not less favourable than they were on Merrow Common.
My next object is to hand over a sum of £186 to the Rural Co-partnership Housing and Land Council, whose secretary and treasurer we have with us to-day, and who have kindly consented to preside over the inauguration of the model cottage. And here I may say that in future all information in regard to the model cottage may be obtained from them at the offices of the Council, 4 Tavistock Square, W.C. A word as to the origin of this not very munificent sum, but one which I hope will prove of use. At the end of the first Cheap Cottage Exhibition I found that I had some £150 over from the funds of that exhibition. This sum was placed in the hands of trustees, two of whom— Mr. Cooper and Sir William Chance—are here to-day (the other two were myself and Mr. Clough) with the intention that the money should be used for the encouragement of cheap cottage construction. I need not weary you with the whole history of the fund, and will only say that of late years it has been lying at the bank, or rather lying in the bosom of the two and a half per cents. and obtaining a somewhat small and tedious increment by way of dividend and of heavy decrement by way of fall in capital valve. My co-trustees and I have now agreed to hand it over to the Rural Co-partnership Housing and Land Council in order that they may use it in various ways to encourage cheap construction and to stimulate various inventions and devices by which we may to some extent grapple with and circumvent the rise in the cost of building which has been so unfortunate a feature of the last few years. We have decided, and I think wisely, not to tie the hands of the Council as to how they are to use it, for wo know that they are a body who have done excellent work already in the matter of housing, and that they will be able to use the money to the best possible advantage.
The last item in my story is I hope a little less dull than the others. I want also to do a little bit on my own in the matter of encouraging cheap construction. I am in no way satisfied with the .2150 cottage. It is in my opinion too expensive. We shall not really solve the rural housing problem unless we can obtain the £100 cottage. Now that is what we ought to work for if possible, and I am glad to say that I under- stand there are gentlemen present to-day who believe that a cottage with three bedrooms, a good kitchen-parlour, scullery, and usual offices can be erected for £100. Now I am going to make a sporting offer to all devisers and inventors and patentees of cheap methods of building. It is this: As long as the piece of land which I have got near Morrow Common holds out, I will allow any man who gives proof of good faith and good sense to show his mettle by putting up a model £100 cottage on my land.
If his cottage will satisfactorily stand the test of wind and rain for a year, and show that it can keep them out and that it is not merely a butterfly house, I will purchase it from him for the £100 expended upon it, plus £10 for a year's loss of interest on capital. But I am to be the sole judge as to whether the cottage is a satis- factory one from the point of view of weather-tightness and general stability. It may be said, `That is not a fair offer. You are no doubt just the kind of man who would under it seize the poor inventor's building. You would say his cottage was not sound when in reality it was sound. But he could not then remove it from your land, and therefore by these underhand feudal methods you would practically obtain his cottage for nothing.' I admit the soundness of the criticism. Therefore I propose that if I am not willing to buy the cottage because in my opinion it is not a sound and weathertight cottage, I will undertake to give the man who built it the land on which it stands for nothing, and of course a reasonable means of access to it. I admit that at first sight this sounds a little like a premium on non-weathertight building, but as a matter of fact it is as far as I can see, the only way in which my sporting offer can be made practicable. I must add that as I am a busy man and no architectural expert, all com- munications by persons alleging that they can build a model £100 cottage should be addressed to the secretary of the Rural Co-partnership Housing and Land Council, 4 Tavistock Square, and not to me. It must be a further condition that before any man who proposes to put up a £100 cottage begins to build, he must first satisfy the Council that his proposal is a bona-fide one, and that there is a reasonable ground for thinking that he can do what he says, or at any rate that he ought to be allowed to have a fair trial of his scheme. I do not want on the one hand to encourage the complete building crank, while on the other I do not want to damp the ardour of the man who really has some- thing in his scheme, though at first sight it may look rather wild. I am sure that I am perfectly safe in entrusting this duty of discrimination to the Rural Co-partnership Council. It must be clearly understood that they have an absolute right of choice in the matter, and that I shall not accept an offer to build unless they advise me to do so. The Council must be the sole judges without any appeal. I have one more word to say on the Cottage Problem. I want to take this opportunity of drawing attention to the admirable scheme for financing rural housing put forward by Lord Lytton, whom we are glad to see among us to-day. I have always said—in fact,' it is obvious—that the chief item in that cheap construction of which I am a devotee is cheap money. Lord Lytton the other day, in a letter to the Spectator, remark- able alike for its literary qualities and its practical businesslike character, showed us a way in which cheap money can bo found to enable landlords to build cottages, and to enable them also to build without practically having to produce more than £10 in cash per cottage. I am not going to say more now about his scheme except that I believe it to be a thoroughly sound one, and that I hope as soon as it is launched to build another model cottage beside this one, which will not merely be a model in the way of material, but a model of how to finance a cheap cottage—how to raise the money as well as the walls."
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