The planning and architectural contexts

The small suburban detached house in its own garden is a peculiarly English ideal. It became popular with the middle classes in the later 18th century. Nash's villas in Park Village East and Park Village West in London (begun 1824) are an important early example of the development of such houses. The development also includes semi- detached houses - the "semi" that was to become the ideal of Everyman in the 1920s and 30s. Nash must be regarded as the pioneer of the middle-class planned housing estate. He must also be recognised as the father of the suburb because he brought devices of illusion to play upon the problem of creating complete housing estates. At Park Village West, Nash broke away from the square-and-crescent formula in favour of detached and semi-detached villas in a variety of styles (emerging Italianate and gabled Tudor) and set out along a little winding street; picturesque houses arranged picturesquely. His terraces around Regent's Park and the villas half hid in groves in the park, gave and give their owners the illusion of looking out on to a great landscaped estate and, with it, a sense of "Mine, all mine".

The ideal of the villa set in its own "acres", designed in one of several styles and linked to its neighbours by a serpentine road was taken up by the Victorians for their suburbs. In the confined space of London the "Mine, all mine" illusion was not possible. At Woolton Park it was more nearly possible, and the detached villas designed in a variety of styles and linked by a sinuous drive stand in their own acres but share a common prospect of the landscape to the east. Indeed, their principal fronts face east but do so without overlooking one another.

That Woolton Park was a middle-class estate is a matter of record; to what extent it was planned in the sense of being the product of a guiding hand (The Walton Park Co.?) cannot as yet be determined.

But whoever created Woolton Park had precedents nearer home than London. In 1836-7, the sylvan suburb of Rock Park, Birkenhead, was laid out. It consists of a looped and winding driveway along which stand detached and semi-detached houses of varying style. Then in 1842, Paxton laid out Princes Park and followed it, in 1843, with Birkenhead Park. Both have terraces of villas informally combined and sharing views of the park - all this being a development of the Regent's Park principle.

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