The Balstonia Estate

By far the largest proposed development was Homesteads Ltd. Balstonia Estate. Homesteads Ltd. was a major developer of housing estates principally in southern England in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. In the late 1890’s they purchased no fewer than 450 acres of farmland partly belonging to Potters farm and Abbots Hall Farm to the north of Southend Road and eastwards to the boundary of Corringham Parish. The area of this proposed development dwarfs anything we see today as land could be bought very cheaply at the time.

The company described the estate thus in their brochure “Here we have our Balstonia estate of 450 acres, half a mile from the station, land from £35 per acre, on main road to Southend, soil particularly suitable for market gardening. The village has a bank and post office, the surroundings are pretty, and the situation healthy. Tilbury docks are about nine miles distant, London 25.

Houses are being rapidly erected on this estate, and a good deal of land has already been sold for horticultural purposes.

This would be on what we call today green belt land although this concept, to try to prevent the connection of towns and villages due to urban sprawl, did not need to exist at the time, but it does show that the phenomenon of building on such land is by no means new. The detail of the plan is shown here.

As originally conceived the estate south of the railway line was to consist of seven avenues; First; Second; Third; Central; Fourth; Fifth; and Sixth with Branksome Avenue connecting their north ends and the existing Southend Road their south ends. Branksome in Dorset was the site of another of the company’s estates.

A crossing over the railway was proposed at the junction of Central Avenue and Branksome Avenue linking the south section of the estate to a second section on the north side of the railway. On this north side the roads were to be named Balston Road; Carter Road; Dawkins Road; and Emerson Road. We strongly suspect that the name of the estate, Balstonia, was derived from that of a senior officer of the Homesteads Company a Mr.Balston. One of the listed directors of the company was a Mr.Dawkins and another a Mr.Emerson Carter both of whom had the north side roads named after them. The company also had a prestigious development at Emerson Park at Great Nelmes near Romford and perhaps Mr.Carter also lent his forename to this.

The building plots were very generously sized and the company offered a variety of designs for houses and bungalows that could be erected on the estate to the order of the purchaser. In addition, land abutting the railway line was offered in lots of an acre or more with land adjacent to the roads on the north side of the estate being offered in plots of two acres or more for building or horticultural purposes. Each estate had an agent resident on site through whom orders and viewings could be arranged.

A rather flowery note at the side reads “Back to the land. The Storehouse of wealth, nature’s universal bank, a bank that never breaks and never dwindles, that honours every draft when drawn by labours hand a moral a physical a political and a National Regeneration.”

The next illustration shows an example of a dwelling on the Ramsden Bellhouse Estate but was a typical offering by the company, a three bedroomed bungalow with living room; kitchen; scullery and larder, with a rather nice verandah to the front elevation. As was common at the time though note that there was no separate bathroom. The toilet was accessed only by going out through the door to the rear of the living room or from the scullery. Baths would be taken using a tin bungalow bath that would be kept in the scullery.

A second type of bungalow is shown below. This is a two bedroom offering with parlour and living room with a scullery and larder. Again there is no separate bathroom and the toilet is accessed only from the outside. To us the asking price of £160 seems like fantasy and would be the equivalent of about £20000 today, still a fantasy, but one which reflects the soaring value of land over the years as the country becomes ever more densely populated and comprises smaller family units than a century or more ago. The population of the United Kingdom including Ireland was some 38 million compared with some 68 million today.

Remember that these houses when first built, they had no main drainage; electricity or gas and certainly no telephones; radio, television or broadband! They roads were unmade and unlit. A Spartan if very quiet life by our standards.

The next photo shows what is described in the brochure as “a typical pretty Homesteads bungalow.” This certainly appears to be a house rather than a bungalow and is more typical of the type of dwelling that was erected on other of the Homesteads Company developments. In some of their locations it could be imagined that such a house, suitably modernised, would easily sell for one million Pounds plus at today’s prices.

The Balstonia Nursery covered an area of two and a half acres and was subsequently sold by the Official Receiver along with the house adjacent known as Branksome by auction in November 1925 to Thomas Allen ‘English and Foreign Fruiterers, Coal Merchants and Motor Cartage Contractors’ who also established the major haulage depot in Victoria road.

Many of the residents of more modest plots and gardens would grow vegetables and flowers that they would sell on to the local community.

The Balstonia Estate did not of course realise anything like the potential envisaged for it by the Homesteads Company and the section on the north side of the railway was never constructed. Some of the plots near the Hassing Brook on the south side were prone to flooding and in later years the brook had to be run in a culvert to relieve this problem. As with other developments at the time, construction was halted by the First World War and the loss of life and poverty during the 1920s and early 30s that resulted from the conflict marked the end to a large extent of the concept of spacious living.

In the succeeding years many of the old houses with their large plots were sold off and demolished to make way for more densely packed housing. Potters Farm and Moore Place certainly succumbed as we have already noted. New roads and housing has taken their place. The estate would be virtually unrecognisable today to the original directors and planners of the Homesteads Company.