Romford Garden Suburb (otherwise known as the Gidea Park Exhibition Estate), is a late-Edwardian housing development in Gidea Park, in the London Borough of Havering. The object of the new suburb, which was built on land belonging to Gidea Hall, then occupied by the Liberal politician Herbert Raphael, was, according to his parliamentary colleague John Burns, to "provide families with a well-built, modern home regardless of class or status" and "to bring the towns into the country and the country into the towns".

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Romford Garden Suburb
Romford Garden Suburb map, 1910
Romford Garden Suburb Location within Greater London
London borough	Havering
Ceremonial county	Greater London
Region	London
Country	England
Sovereign state	United Kingdom
Post town	LONDON
Postcode district	RM2
Dialling code	01708
Police	Metropolitan
Fire	London
Ambulance	London
UK Parliament	Romford
London Assembly	Havering and Redbridge
List of places UK England London 51°35′24″N 00°11′33″E

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The garden suburb was conceived to be an example of early 20th-century domestic architecture and town planning. They were popular in Edwardian England; Hampstead Garden Suburb, established by Henrietta Barnett in 1906, was one example. The garden suburb at Romford comprised 159 fully-furnished houses and cottages each funded by the architects who designed them, in either the Arts and Crafts or Art Nouveau styles. Upon completion an exhibition was organised to showcase the dwellings for prospective buyers and a competition was held to find the best building, with a first prize of £250 and a gold medal being awarded to the winning architect. The best detached houses were awarded Class I status, which would allow the property to be sold for £500, while Class II buildings were marketed for £375. The buildings were judged on their utility and economy of management and maintenance.

One hundred architects and urban planners took part in the Gidea Park development, including William Curtis Green, Philip Tilden, Raymond Unwin, Richard Barry Parker, George Val Myer, Geoffry Lucas and Baillie Scott. The exhibition opened in the spring of 1911 and with it came the establishment of several roads, including Balgores Lane, Squirrels Heath Avenue and Crossways to the south of Hare Street (now Main Road) and Heath Drive, Meadway, Reed Pond Walk, Heaton Grange Road, Risebridge Road and Parkway to the north. In 1934, using land left over from the first competition, a second exhibition was held, this time hosted by Raphael's nephew, Major Ralph Raphael MC. These houses were designed in the Art Deco style, a taste that was dominant at the time. Six of the 1911 exhibition houses were later designated as Grade II listed buildings by Historic England. The suburb was designated as a conservation area in 1970. The winner of the 1934 competition, 64 Heath Drive, by Francis Skinner, a founding member of Berthold Lubetkin's Tecton Group, was also listed at Grade II in 1997.

Thomas Cooke, a Yorkshireman who became London Mayor in 1462, was granted a Royal Charter for Havering-atte-Bower. This enabled him to build a country house, which he named "Geddy Hall". The word "geddy" derived from the lake and its livestock; ged, meaning pike, and ea (water). The house remained unfinished for at least a century because of his numerous incarcerations within the Tower of London for High Treason. Upon his death in 1478, the estate was passed down through the Cooke family and eventually to his great-grandson, Anthony Cooke, tutor for Edward VI,^[1] in October 1579.^[2]

After a brief period abroad, Anthony returned to Havering-atte-Bower and completed the building of Geddy Hall, which became Gidea Hall.^[3] In 1657, the hall and its grounds were sold to Richard Emes, a local businessman, for £9,000. Upon the Restoration in 1660, the estate was bought back by the Crown and passed through the ownerships of various nobilities; it was eventually sold through public auction, before the Coronation of Queen Victoria.^[4] Gidea Hall sold to the Black family in 1802 under whose ownership it remained until 1883 when it was bought for redevelopment by a company that was associated with Jabez Balfour. The company was unsuccessful in its plans and in 1893, Gidea Hall was again put up for sale.^[5]

The English landscape designer Humphry Repton designed a small hamlet in Gidea Park and lived there in the early 1800s^[6] in a small cottage, out of which he worked,^[7] adjacent to Balgores Lane at the junction of, what was then, Hare Street.^[6] The cottage survived until the 1960s when it was demolished to make way for a bank.^{[citation needed]}

The Liberal Member of parliament, Herbert Raphael, purchased Gidea Hall, Romford, in 1897.^[8] It came set within 150 acres (610,000 m²) and Raphael purchased a further 480 acres (1,900,000 m²), which he divided up, giving 20 acres (81,000 m²), which included a lake, for use as a public park; Raphael lent his name to it in 1904.^[9] He formed the idea for a garden suburb after the construction of Hampstead Garden Suburb, which was established by Henrietta Barnett in 1906 on land purchased from Eton College.^[10] Barnett had set up the Hampstead Garden Suburb Trust Ltd and appointed Barry Parker and Raymond Unwin as its chief architects. Raphael decided to capitalise on the success seen at Hampstead^[8] and other garden suburbs, such as at Ealing, Tottenham and Tooting, and set about organising an his own exhibition at Gidea Park.^[11]

Raphael enlisted the help of John Tudor Walters, an architect and surveyor, and Charles McCurdy, who had been a director for the Hampstead Garden Suburb Trust, to set up the Gidea Hall Development Company,^{[8][n 1]} the head office for which was based at 33 Henrietta Street, in Covent Garden, London.^[13] Raphael designated 450 acres (1,800,000 m²) to the building of the garden suburb, on the west side of the Gidea Hall estate; to the east, 90 acres (360,000 m²) was used to establish a golf course.^[14] Each acre within the suburb area was to contain no more than six dwellings.^[15]

Upon completion, a competition was held in the summer of 1911 to find the best building, an event that was witnessed by Raphael, Walters, McCurdy, and Sir Frederick Treves, among others.^[23] A first prize of £250 and a gold medal was awarded to the winning architect and builder.^[33] The judges, Guy Dawber, Henry Vaughan Lanchester and Mervyn Macartney, gave the best detached houses a Class I status, which would allow the property to be sold for £500. The best detached cottages were given a Class II status which allowed them to be marketed for £375.^[17] Smaller prizes were given for best internal decoration, best town plan, best garden design, drawings, and excellence in craftsmanship and construction.^[23] Admission to the public, and prospective buyers, was free.^[34] A sales office was opened at 75 Main Road, opposite Balgores Lane, in 1913 to cope with purchase enquiries and viewings. The building was thought by Nikolaus Pevsner to have been originally built for the Japan–British Exhibition in White City, but was relocated to its current site.^{[35][n 4]} Balgores House, which was built in the 1850s, since renamed to Gidea Park College, served as the exhibitions refreshments room.^[37]

A second competition, separate from the first, was held in Romford Garden Suburb between 31 July and 20 August 1934 and was called the Gidea Park Modern Homes Exhibition.^[48] It was the idea of Raphael's nephew, Major Ralph Raphael MC,^[49] who shared his uncle's 1911 vision; to build affordable, economical housing which benefited from the concept of rational design by competing architects.^[49] 35 houses were built and each were marketed from between £650 and £1,475.^[50]

The exhibition was opened by the Earl of Crawford and was visited by the Prince of Wales. It ran for 18 days^[51] but failed to achieve the kind of success that the 1911 exhibition did.^[49] The competition was won by Francis Skinner, then aged 26, who had been articled to Berthold Lubetkin two years previously and who was a founding member of Lubetkin's Tecton Group.^[52] The dwelling, 64 Heath Drive, was built at a cost of £900^{[n 7]} and was one of Tecton's first designs.^[49]

The suburb was made a conservation area by Havering Council in June 1970.^[53] On 24 March 1997, 64 Heath Drive was designated as a Grade II listed building by English Heritage.^[54]