BISF 'Type A' houses, Freeburn Causeway, Canley

Image: © A J Paxton Taken: 26 May 2023

The Second World War led to large-scale destruction in Coventry, but also to large-scale migration of workers to the city and its engineering industries that were essential to the war effort. To address the housing shortage, the city council experimented with designing prefabricated metal-framed houses that could be built quickly using components mass-produced in the same factories. These houses were never put into production, however, as central government offered Coventry two thousand prefabricated houses instead. These were made by the British Iron & Steel Federation (BISF) and were called 'Type A' houses. They too used a prefabricated steel-framed system, to which panels of corrugated steel were attached, forming the outer walls of the upper storey. The design was by the architect Frederick Gibberd and the engineer Donovan Lee. Owing to labour shortages, Coventry never built most of these houses, but over two hundred were erected in Canley in the late 1940s and most are still in use. Often the steel walls have been covered with insulating cladding, but the two in the foreground of this photo still display the panels of corrugated steel, although the original windows and doors have been replaced. For more information see Coventry: The making of a modern city, 1939-73, by Jeremy Gould and Caroline Gould, pp83-84, available at the Historic England site https://historicengland.org.uk/images-books/publications/coventry-making-of-modern-city-1939-73/ . Connoisseurs of BISF houses will find many examples on Geograph: see for example Image], Image] and Image

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