| Blaenavon in the early
1930s, a classic industrial landscape developed in the 1830s and 1840s. We
can see here the early type of housing development that is usually lost in
a mass of later building. In Blaenavon, houses were built in isolated rows
at various angles with no idea of planning or design. Such inexplicable
alignments are typical of many urban areas.
The houses are all badly built
of the cheapest materials (a characteristic of the early iron industry).
Upper New Rank was completed by 1825, and was a typical design with one
large open sleeping room on the first floor, and a kitchen and back
bedroom on the ground floor. Apart from economy of building materials,
there was no real pressure on the builders to be economic with space,
which explains the large garden areas allotted to each cottage. The iron
workers would have grown vegetables and kept pigs. Large gardens are a
useful indicator of early housing, built when space was not a priority
issue. In denser urban areas the gardens were taken by later housing
developments.
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