A pair of BISF Type A houses, Charter Avenue, Canley
Introduction
The photograph on this page of A pair of BISF Type A houses, Charter Avenue, Canley by A J Paxton as part of the Geograph project.
The Geograph project started in 2005 with the aim of publishing, organising and preserving representative images for every square kilometre of Great Britain, Ireland and the Isle of Man.
There are currently over 7.5m images from over 14,400 individuals and you can help contribute to the project by visiting https://www.geograph.org.uk
A pair of BISF Type A houses, Charter Avenue, Canley
Image: © A J Paxton Taken: 7 Oct 2023
There are around two hundred of these houses in Canley, a post-1945 Coventry council estate; for more information about them, see Image], which links to some other examples depicted on Geograph, from various parts of Britain. In brief, they were an ingenious attempt to turn metal-bashing war industries into peacetime makers of prefabricated housing, to address an acute housing shortage at a time when labour, and especially skilled building labour, was also in short supply. The architect Frederick Gibberd and the engineer Donovan Lee designed a steel house, with steel panels set in a steel frame, to be made by the British Iron & Steel Federation (BISF), in prefabricated parts that could be assembled easily. The right-hand house appears little changed, with steel panels and steel-framed windows visible - a well-preserved historic building, but a rather chilly one to live in, I suspect - the much-modified left-hand house looks much cosier.
Images are licensed for reuse under creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/2.0
Image Location
Latitude
52.393499
Longitude
-1.583049