The legacies of the Cutteslowe Walls

Originally written as a column for Inside Housing.

Walk down Wentworth Road in north Oxford and you will come across the scene of one of the most famous episodes in housing history.

It’s a story that has come to symbolise the class divisions of the past but there are also contemporary resonances for housing and society more generally. 

About halfway down the street you’ll notice something strange: the house numbers suddenly go out of sequence and the street name changes to Aldrich Road. Look at the wall of the house opposite and you will see a blue plaque commemorating what happened there in 1934.

The story is very well told in a new series on Radio Four. The Shadow of the Cuttleslowe Walls does much more than just delve into the past, it also looks at the present and what has happened to the area since tells us about housing now.