Original Design Principles
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For Henrietta Barnett the model for the Suburb was the country town, but the emphasis was on the country rather than the town. She wanted to show "how thousands of people, of all classes of society, of all sorts of opinions, and all standards of income, can live in helpful neighbourliness", and that this was to be achieved in such a way that "from every part there shall be good views or glimpses of distant country".

In accordance with the general ideas underlying the whole conception of the estate, Unwin's aim was "so to lay out the ground that every tree may be kept, hedgerows duly considered, and the foreground of the distant view preserved, if not as open fields, yet as a gardened district, the buildings kept in harmony with the surroundings". Ideas that originated in the 18th Century landscape garden were applied to the planning of streets and the siting of houses for the accommodation of a working community. This is an outlook which comes back to one of the first aims of the founders "to do something to meet the housing problem by putting within the reach of the working people the opportunity of taking a cottage with a garden within a 2d. fare of Central London".



 
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