The rise and fall

This essay was commissioned as part of the Radical Essex programme of events curated by Focal Point Gallery in Southend, It is published as a chapter within the book Radical Essex and explores the history of modernist architecture in Essex. Beginning with factory workers housing built on Clockhouse Way, Braintree in 1918 - arguably the first modernist domestic architecture in the UK - the essay follows a number of key developments through the remaining twentieth century including one-off private houses, factory villages, holiday parks, leisure buildings and the New Towns of Basildon and Harlow. It concludes with the New Town of Woodham Ferrers and the rejection of modernist planning and architecture reflected in the Essex Design Guide. The essay forms part of an ongojng research programme into the relationship of modernism to rural development and experimental settlement types.