State housing became an integral part of the relationship between Ireland and Great Britain from the 1880s until the early 1990s. Using research from both Irish and Westminster sources, this book shows that there was recurrent pressure for the state to intervene in housing in Ireland in a period when the "Irish Question" was the major domestic political issue. The result was that the model of subsidized state housing subsequently introduced in Britain was first developed in Ireland, as a product of the tensions of British rule. An important corollary of innovative Irish housing policy was its influence, even in a negative sense, on developments in mainland Britain. This book also examines the cultural impact of imperialism, and in particular the way in which British ideas of garden suburb housing and town planning design came significantly to reshape the Irish urban environment. Fraser not only presents hitherto unknown material, but does so in a unique interdisciplinary blend of architectural, planning, urban and socio-economic history.

The Building Society Promise explores the accessibility of the early building society movement to working-class households before the Second World War. The study examines the historical records of building societies which existed in the past and reconstructs their mortgage portfolios to investigate the kinds of people that were buying houses with the help of building society finance during this period. Antoninus Samy shows how the accessibility ofdifferent building societies primarily depended upon the how individual societies were designed to do business, which in turn also affected their efficiency and stability. Societies that were small and highlylocalized (or large societies that had agency networks that were closely knit with the communities they served) were more likely to be accessible, efficient and stable, than larger societies that operated no differently than impersonal corporate banks.

This book, published in 1980, is an iconoclastic account of one of the pillars of the welfare state, British town and country planning, between 1945 and 1975. Always a fine balance between central control and market forces, it was challenged by strains within and between the environmental professions and protest by people dispossessed or alienated by re-shaped urban environments. Remaking Cities critiques the export of western-style planning to the developing world and reviews initiatives rooted in different understandings of ‘growth’ appearing in those years. Nearly forty years on, many of the same issues beset us, notably the depressingly familiar inner city problem, despite countless reports, funds and ‘programmes’. But now our infrastructure and services, once publicly owned, are privatised and fragmented, and local government progressively relegated. The very core of planning, development control, is being pared in a struggle to regain the ‘growth’ which led to our current crisis. This gives fresh importance to the need for new modes of creating liveable, sustainable environments, emphasised in this important work.

The industrial age has proved to be a formative period for Europe. Industrial heritage nowadays bears witness to the development that took place in differently structured regions. This volume presents different paths of industrial development and gives an overview of the concepts of regions, used among economic, social and cultural historians.

Childhood Transformed provides a pioneering study of the remarkable shift in the nature of working-class childhood in the nineteenth century from lives dominated by work to lives centered around school. The author argues that this change was accompanied by substantial improvements for many in the home environment, in health and nutrition, and in leisure opportunities. The book breaks new ground in providing a wide-ranging survey of different aspects of childhood in the Victorian period, the early chapters examining life at work in agriculture and industry, in the home and elsewhere, while the later chapters discuss the coming of compulsory education, together with changes in the home and in leisure activities. A separate section of the book is devoted to the treatment of deprived children, those in and out of the workhouse, on the streets, and also in prison, industrial schools and reformatories. Offering a fresh and more focused approach to the history of working-class children, this book should be of interest to all lecturers and students of nineteenth-century social history.

First published in 1982 at a time when housing policy featured prominently in the press and in political debate, Housing in Britain was written to provide an authoritative review of housing in Britain. The book is a comprehensive introduction to the major policy shifts from 1945 to the year of publication. It explores the many aspects of ‘housing’ as a matter of state policy; as a commodity with a certain market for its sale and exchange; as an essential item, with rules regulating access and eligibility; and as a vital element in the reproduction of social life. Particular attention is paid to the institutions involved within the British housing market, and the redistributional consequences of housing-market processes and state housing policy. Housing in Britain will appeal to those with an interest in the history of British housing policy and debates, and the history of social policy in Britain.