New Historic England New Towns Mark One: Architecture and Planning in Post-War Britain

Britain’s post-war new towns represent one of the most important programmes of modern planning globally. The most distinctive were the fourteen towns begun between 1946 and 1950: the so-called ‘mark one’ new towns. These places defined the image of the new towns in the popular imagination and attracted international attention.

This book sets out in detail the origins of the new towns programme and provides the first detailed architectural survey of the ‘mark one’ new towns, which included Stevenage, Harlow, East Kilbride, Crawley, Corby, Peterlee and Cwmbrân. The result is a new account of British architecture in the years immediately after the Second World War which uses the new towns to explore what it meant to be architecturally modern between the 1940s and the 1970s. The book charts the picturesque townscape and often Scandinavian-inspired design of the late 1940s, as well as the emergence of a harder-edged brutalism during the 1950s and new ways of planning towns that reflected the rapid rise of car ownership. It concludes with the emergence of a ‘mark two’ approach to new town design at Cumbernauld.

The book is extensively illustrated, with new photography as well as archival images. At a time when new towns are once again on the political agenda, the book is aimed at practitioners as well as historians and all with an interest in post-war architecture.