100 Buildings 100 Years

1921: Durlocks Housing, Folkestone

Type: Housing
Architect: Culpin & Bowers
Location: The Durlocks, Folkestone, CT19

Built for Sir Philip Sassoon, MP, as low cost housing for rent, the ‘Durlocks’ was planned on garden city principles. The 33 houses had to contend with a steeply sloping site and Sir Philip’s desire that they should complement his recently completed country house at Port Lympne (now the safari park) by Herbert Baker, newly returned from South Africa – hence the slightly ‘Cape Dutch’ feel to the gables.

Culpin & Bowers were well known through the 1920s for their public housing projects. Ewart G. Culpin, the senior partner, was both a successful journalist and an active member of the Labour Party; he was later an MP and chair of the London County Council. As secretary of the Garden City Association from 1906, he revolutionised the Garden City movement (founding the International Garden Cities and Town Planning Association) and extended its influence into all aspects of contemporary town planning, particularly the housing estates built in the years after the First World War in response to Lloyd George’s ‘Homes for heroes’ programme.

by Ian McInnes