12 Views of Kensal House - ACE149.4

Caption: "The Dawn Sky over Kensal House." Commentary asks what sort of memories remain of Kensal House around the war years. Cole talks about amateur dramatics, and putting on Love on the Dole around 1939. She recites some of her lines. Commentary reads from notice of appointment of Air Raid Warden. The Wilsons relate an anecdote about an air raid. Parsons tells how a tombstone, blown across the road by a bomb, split open a nearby gas holder. Film of empty flat. Woman’s VO talking about a man who committed suicide after the death of his wife. Caption: "The Middle Window of Number 328 Ladbroke Grove." Commentary asks about the origins and reception of the "new ideas" which inspired the architects. Fry says that, a decade after the Great War, everyone was looking forward to a better future. He saw pictures of Bauhaus, Le Corbusier, and other continental architecture (photographs) and used these ideas in miniature. Stephen Bayley, Victoria & Albert Museum, describes the debate in which people saw flats as "a continental import" which would destroy British urban life. Fry talks about similar attitudes and resistance to change. Caption: "Westminster Lorry Park on Kensal Road." Commentary asks about the link between the campaign for the modern flat and the cause of "improved housing for workers". Bayley says that the Modern movement believed that flats were the rational solution to the housing problem, and points out that Britain already had mansion blocks and workers’ tenements.