BARRY PARKER – THE ARCHITECT OF WYTHENSHAWE

In 1917 the government set up a committee under Sir John Tudor Walters - the
Housing (Building Construction) Committee. It was asked to 'investigate the
questions of building constructions in connection with the provision of dwellings, for
the working classes in England, Wales and Scotland'.

The future Wythenshawe had an important link with the Tudor Walters Commission as an
influential member of it was Raymond Unwin, partner and brother-in-law of Barry Parker,
the man Manchester would approve to mastermind its new garden city. Raymond Unwin's
influence can be detected in that the Commission looked further than the houses, and in
the recommendation that the site should be considered as a future location of a
community.

Tied to the Tudor Walters report was the Addison Act. This accepted that private
enterprise could not provide enough working-class houses to let, and therefore
government money, 'grant-in-aid', would be made available for municipal housing
over and above the money raised locally by a penny rate. The act required local
authorities to prepare and carry out adequate housing schemes. A completely new
era in the supply of working-class houses, 'council houses', was thereby ushered in.
Financed by the ratepayers and tax-payers but watched over by the Treasury and
the Ministry of Health, the onus for working-class houses was now on the
committees and officials of local authorities.

In every Town Hall the creation of homes had to be a co-operative venture of councillors
and officials, and the conversion of rural Wythenshawe into the huge satellite township,
or garden city, of Wythenshawe by Manchester was no exception. Nevertheless such a
mammoth task was not achieved, indeed could not be commenced, without the
foresight and leadership of a few devoted campaigners for ihis new concept. Of all
those concerned there were three men, all Mancunians-by-adoption, whose lives and
careers became so integrated with the Wythenshawe project that we need to look at
their stories and relationship more closely. One of these was the professional garden city
planner, Barry Parker, and the other two were militants on Manchester City Council,
where they had to wage long and often bitter battles before the new Wythenshawe
became a reality. These men of action were Alderman William Jackson and Alderman,
later Lord, Ernest Simon.
Historians of town and country planning in Britain agree that Parker's concept of
Wythenshawe displays his maturity and authority. It anticipates many of the
objectives and features of the post-war new-town developments. The realisation of
the concept, however, depended on having the scale of financial resources only a
city of Manchester's size could provide. These resources in turn would allow both the
rapid development of the satellite town and the careful co-ordination of amenity with
house building. But as Creese remarks in ‘The Search for Environment’
Wythenshawe's misfortune was that “it lay between two world wars and athwart a
great depression - various emergency programmes and expedient adjustments
would interfere with its systematic realisation”.

Its architect, Parker, was the third man, after Jackson and Simon, to be most
associated with the new Wythenshawe. He was to have a comparatively free hand
in its planning. He dreamt of it as the ultimate in garden cities and he regarded it as
his masterpiece.

To Parker the village was a microcosm of society and a living symbol of life itself. As
a Quaker, he was impressed by the compassion of Christianity and the concern for
the less well off as expressed in Guild Socialism. He saw the communal spirit in the
village as an important stabilising factor upon those living there: 'the village did not
just exist together but lived and worked together with the cohesion of a single entity'.

In March 1941 Barry Parker retired from his appointment as consultant architect-
planner on the Wythenshawe project. The minutes of the Wythenshawe Committee
recorded the unanimous warm praise for his achievement. Since his retention in 1927
the satellite town had grown from 5,500 residents to over 35,000, new industries had
been established and Princess Parkway, the first road of its kind in the country, had
been built. Moreover, much of the credit which is reflected in the achievement of the
Corporation must properly be attributed to advice and guidance given by Mr. Parker.

In reply, Barry Parker referred to the great pleasure and satisfaction he had had in
working on the project and pointed to the significance of Wythenshawe. For him it
represented the nearest he had got to realising the perfect garden city, a satellite
town in this case, closely and uniquely related to its parent city.

Until Wythenshawe was built, the garden cities of Britain (Letchworth and
Welwyn) and America, were not cities at all in any real sense but only
moderately-sized towns in terms of population, all having well under fifty
thousand inhabitants. Wythenshawe was to have a population of over 100,000
and so be the first to approach the proportions of a city, though in fact it would
have even less say in its own affairs than its predecessors. Its architect, Parker,
was the third man, after Jackson and Simon, to be most associated with the
new Wythenshawe. He was to have a comparatively free hand in its planning.
He dreamt of it as the ultimate in garden cities and he regarded it as his
masterpiece.

THE MAN
Richard Barry Parker was born at Chesterfield on 18 November 1867, an eldest
son. After education at Buxton and Wesley College he was apprenticed to T. C.
Simmonds at his Derby art college, but his artistic initiative was first triggered
when he was concerned with the Manchester Royal Jubilee Exhibition of 1887.
In the same year he became articled to G. Faulkner Armitage of Altrincham,
where the design of wallpapers was one of his tasks. While he was there he
attended the annual lectures given by William Morris in Ancoats and became
involved in the Northern Art Workers' Guild, founded in 1896. In that same year
Raymond Unwin, whose parents had known John Ruskin, married Barry Parker's
sister and the brothers-in-law set up at Buxton a consultancy that soon turned to
town planning. Parker was more concerned with the artistic aspect of their work
and Unwin with the engineering.

To Parker the village was a microcosm of society and a living symbol of life
itself. As a Quaker, he was impressed by the compassion of Christianity and the
concern for the less well off as expressed in Guild Socialism. He saw the
communal spirit in the village as an important stabilising factor upon those living
there: 'the village did not just exist together but lived and worked together with
the cohesion of a single entity'.

Parker's first commission was for three houses on a large plot of land purchased by his
father, manager of Evan's Bank, in the fashionable Park suburb of Buxton. The largest,
Moorlands, became the Parker family home.

Modest success came to the partners in 1903 when they contributed a town
planning exhibit to the Northern Art Workers Guild in Manchester and it attracted
wide attention. In the same year they undertook the planning of New Earswick,
near York, and this too enhanced their reputation. Barry Parker had been a
Member of the Society of Architects from 1895 and now, for his third accolade of
1903 he was chosen, with Unwin, to work on Letchworth, under Ebenezer
Howard. He retained the post of Consultant Architect to First Garden City Ltd.
until 1943. Parker became a Fellow of the Royal Institute of British Architects
(R.I.B.A.) in 1913, but that year also saw Unwin leave the partnership to join the
Ministry of Health as Chief Town Planning Inspector.

Letchworth was Howard's Utopian dream. In practice, it was a compromise with

Parkerand Unwin's down-to-earth ideas about the need for economic balance. There
was enough industry in Letchworth, with more commuters coming in than going out.
One of the few criticisms of Letchworth was the failure to provide civic centre
shopping facilities which resulted in piecemeal development.

Wythenshawe's civic centre plan by Parker was accordingly revised and much
enlarged after the Second World War. Nevertheless, the socially-balanced population
of Letchworth rose to around thirty thousand in 1970. It had already been agreed to
be a success within its first few years.

The government did not take up the idea of garden cities in spite of Letchworth's
success, so Howard, now 69, again went to the drawing-board. Welwyn, the second
garden city, began in 1919 and followed the Tudor Walters Report of the previous
year. Houses were kept to 12 per acre and, as with Letchworth, there were footpaths
for pedestrians and more than enough local industry. The population reached 40,000
in the 1970s, but long before then Welwyn Garden City, home of Shredded Wheat,
had made a world-wide impression. America borrowed many of the English ideas and
as part of Roosevelt's New Deal garden cities were built under the watchful gaze of
Unwin on his American visits.
Raymond Unwin was born at Rotherham in 1863, went to school in Oxford but
returned north as an engineer, first in Manchester, then at Chesterfield. Already
related to the Parkers, he married Ethel and partnered Barry at Buxton. A strong
Socialist, he campaigned for better working-class houses in Cottage Plans and
Commonsense. He worked on Letchworth from 1906, was elected Fellow of the
R.I.B.A. in 1910 and became second president of the Royal Town Planning Institute.
He was knighted in 1932 and from that time on he was a Visiting Professor of Town
Planning at Columbia University in America until he died at his daughter's home
there in 1940. Throughout all this time he exchanged ideas with Barry Parker and in
practical terms the partnership was as strong as ever.

New Earswick, Hampstead Garden Suburb, Letchworth and Welwyn were test
pieces compared to the proposed full-scale garden city of Wythenshawe that Barry
Parker would soon be invited to design. Raymond Unwin was no' longer his partner,
overtly at least, but he was conveniently placed as an Inspector with the Ministry of
Health and it was Unwin, with a Mr. W. G. Weeks, who came to hold the local inquiry
into the proposal to purchase land in Wythenshawe. Negotiations for the buying of
the Tatton Estate of 2,568 acres had begun, but the Minister of Health's sanction for
the borrowing of £210,000 was needed. The Minister gave his approval and intimated
that he saw no objection in principle to a city buying land outside its boundaries. The
Inspectors went further by suggesting that the city should purchase more land
adjoining the Tatton Estate.

In order to enable the scheme of development to be carried out and to secure the improved
values for business, industrial and other purposes which the self-contained development of
such an area will create, the Corporation should consider the desirability of purchasing such
further areas as may be required to round off the estate.

A Wythenshawe committee was set up by Manchester City Council early in 1927.

The committee almost immediately asked for a scheme from Barry Parker and for
the next two decades he supervised and ordered the building of the new
Wythenshawe.

Generally, the relationship was amicable, though on more than one occasion his
contract came close to the point of not being renewed. He lived to see work
commence again after the 1939-1945 war, but he died at Letchworth in 1947.
Whilst working on Wythenshawe he, in 1929, was appointed President of the Town
Planning Institute. In 1941, when he retired as consultant architect-planner of
Wythenshawe, he was awarded the Howard Medal for his services to the Garden
City Movement. Even the work undertaken after the Second World War, although
modified in 1945 by Manchester's own architect, Nicholas, was based on the
principles and general schema of Parker.

With all the aggression of the next few years during the takeover from Cheshire,
the depression and the war, the Parker principles could easily have been
submerged. The common bond between Jackson, Simon and Parker might be
thought to be on Socialist principles and a concern for the working class. This is
essentially true, although in other hands such principles have sometimes had
unfortunate outcomes, such as the high-rise flats so confidently erected in London,
Leeds, Liverpool, Birmingham and, fortunately less so, in Manchester, on the
assumption that working people would want to avoid the labour of gardening.
Jackson and Simon had both been impressed by the work of Councillor T. R. Marr
on various Improvement, Building and Housing Committees, and it was his firm
belief that high-rise flats were aesthetically and socially less desirable than semi-
detached and short-terraced houses in an open-garden setting. Parker and Unwin
were both keen members of professional associations such as the Institute of Town
Planners, and both men regarded the furtherance of good architectural standards
in house building as an essential part of their creed.
Parker was a vegetarian as well as a Quaker.

A reflection of his strict upbringing is seen in his battles to prevent over-ostentatious

design in the larger houses in Northenden and in his campaign to ensure that
council houses should be well-equipped and architecturally respectable. The houses
he designed for the New Earswick Estate at York and the earlier council houses in
Wythenshawe, built before the economic cutback in the 1930s, are generally held to
be particularly pleasing to look at and comfortable to live in.

But there was still some time before the first houses, municipal or private, would be
built in Wythenshawe. In 'The Review of the Municipal Year' in its 29 December 1925
issue the Manchester Guardian reminded readers that a further seven thousand
people had registered for working-class houses in the year. It concluded:
‘As a parting gift 1925 has bequeathed to its successor the question of the
Wythenshawe Estates. The Council has toyed with the Wythenshawe idea for five
years, but now it appears to be confronted point blank with the offer either to take or
to leave it. The decision, whatever it may be, is bound to affect profoundly the
chronicles of Manchester's development, not only fifty years hence but immediately’.