When Basingstoke reinvented itself as a manufacturing centre in the second half of the 19th century it had a tremendous effect on the size and shape of the town.
Burberry’s, John Mares’ and Gerrish, Ames and Simpkins’ clothing factories, Wallis and Steevens engineering works, the LSWR and GWR railway companies, followed by Thornycroft in 1898 led to a doubling of the population from 4,654 in 1861 to 9,793 in 1901.
By the end of the century, the town’s population was increasing at double the national rate.
All these extra people needed somewhere to live.
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The parish of Basingstoke in the 19th century contained some 4,000 acres.
Before the growth in population, most people lived in the town area, covering about 200 acres.
The remaining 3,800 acres were mostly farmland or meadows.
To accommodate the growing population land had to be made available for housing beyond the existing built-up area.
The South View Estate on rising land to the north of the railway line was auctioned in 1869 with 40 “very desirable building sites” in Sherborne, Vyne and Burgess Roads.
There was a further auction in 1882 of part of the estate comprising freehold building land with frontages to the newly laid-out Darlington, Richmond and Cromwell Roads.
Additional scope for middle-class housing on higher ground to the south of the built-up area of the town became available when the Corporation obtained permission from the Treasury in 1882 to grant building leases on the Fair Fields to the west of Cliddesden Road.
The 1894 revision of 25-inch Ordnance Survey map shows that new houses had been built fronting the west side of Cliddesden Road and that Beaconsfield, Fairfields and Jubilee Roads had been laid out and most of the houses in those streets had already been built.
The town expanded along the Loddon valley to the west of the town to provide mainly terraced housing for the working classes.
In 1869 land at “the west end of Brook Street”, which later became May Street, was auctioned with 180 plots “for the erection of large or small houses”.
By 1901 there were 187 houses in May Street and 62 houses in Lower Brook Street.
In 1870 Alfred Tyrell, who came from Hadleigh in Essex, bought a large plot of land in the west of the town and laid out Essex, Southend, Rayleigh, Rochford and Solbys Roads for building.
Following the arrival and expansion of the Thornycroft works there was further development in the west of the town.
In 1899 John Mares, the owner of the Worting Road Estate, announced his intention of developing the estate by building a series of villas and semi-detached houses in Worting Road between the Queen’s School and Highfield House and making three new roads – Queen’s Road, Alexandra Road and George Street - for building.
The prospectus for the Worting Road Estate in August 1901 showed that some blocks of land fronting those streets had already been sold, and in some cases had been built on, but there were 205 plots remaining “of various sizes suitable for the immediate erection of dwelling houses, cottages, shops, etc”.
Evidence given at the Borough Licensing Sessions held on 3 February 1903 was that the whole of the Worting Road Estate had been sold for building and that the houses in Queen’s Road, Alexandra Road and George Street had been built in the last two or three years.
Queen’s Road had 35 villas, three shops and a builder’s workshop and store, eight villas almost completed, and the foundations dug for five more.
Alexandra Road had 37 villas, a shop, a builder’s workshop, and two more villas almost completed. George Street had 82 cottages, one shop and four cottages being built and in Deep Lane there were 18 cottages and two villas.
At a meeting on 8 May 1902, the Town Council approved plans for a new road leading off Reading Road to be called Coronation Road to be developed for building purposes.
By 1911 there were 50 inhabited houses in Coronation Road.
Twenty-eight houses in Cranbourne Lane in 1914 were the first council houses to be built in the town. Between 1920 and 1922 a further 135 council houses were completed between Kingsclere and Sherborne roads.
By 1938 581 council houses had been built.
Between 1851 and 1861 the number of inhabited houses in the town had only increased by 53, or a little over five new houses a year.
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By contrast, the number of inhabited houses more than doubled from 945 in 1861 to 1,997 in 1901.
The building boom between 1901 and 1911 led to a further increase of 476 inhabited houses, mainly to the west of the town, bringing the total up to 2,473.
This gave employment to the building and allied trades. In 1901 there were 559 males in the town (17.7 per cent of the male workforce) who were categorised as being employed on building and works of construction and who were thus making a significant difference to the Basingstoke landscape.
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