The Addison Act of 1919 was passed in response to the housing crisis that Britain faced after the First Word War. It was the first experiment in subsidised council housing in the country and produced some notable building designs with the involvement of architects such as Raymond Unwin, Frank Baines and E.C.P. Monson.

For this talk Michael Passmore will present some findings from his ongoing research into the housing estates and flats built by the 28 London Metropolitan Boroughs under the act. The focus will be the former Metropolitan Boroughs of Hackney, Shoreditch and Stoke Newington, which make up the current London Borough of Hackney.

Michael is a Visiting Lecturer at the Department of Built Environment at the University of Greenwich. In 2015, King’s College London awarded him a PhD in Contemporary British History for his thesis on the politics of council housing, a copy of which is kept in the library section of Hackney Archives. Michael is a Fellow of the Royal Institution of Chartered Surveyors (RICS).