Hooded figure passing Community Center at Excalibur Estate Catford London. Excalibur Estate, post war prefabricated housing 'Hom

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Excalibur Estate is The UK's largest surviving estate of postwar prefab houses, described by conservationists as a unique slice of 20th-century social history. Erected from factory-built panels by German and Italian prisoners of war in 1945 and 1946, The Excalibur Estate is a post-war 1940s prefabricated housing estate in Catford, South London. The estate contains the last sizeable collection of post-war prefabricated houses in the United Kingdom. Following the London Blitz of the Second World War, London was facing a severe housing shortage. To quickly alleviate this problem, London, like many other British cities set about building temporary prefabricated houses using labour from German and Italian prisoners of war. Fifteen hundred homes in Lewisham were destroyed in the first year of the war alone. The estate consists of single-story prefabricated bungalows designed by the Ministry of Works; each with two bedrooms, a private garden and an indoor lavatory.

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Photo credit: © Edmund Sumner-VIEW / Alamy / Afripics
License: Licensed
Model Released: No

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