In 1953, for the first time since 1922, Crittall Manufacturing issued a general catalogue and description of their works, processes and products. It is a glorious volume, at 22 pages, and was designed for them by John Lewis and printed at the noted works of W. S. Cowell in Norwich. In many ways it echoes the fine contemporary catalogues of their rivals, Henry Hope's of Smethwick, with whom they would eventually merge in 1965 bringing together their expertise and markets in windows and associated building ironmongery. Crittall's had their origins in the Essex town of Braintree in 1849 and began to manufacture windows in 1884. They jointly purchased the important German Fenestra patent in 1907 and the following year became established in the US market. After WW1 the company began to manufacture "standard" metal windows, to standardised dimensions as as house building increased, along with a more streamlined aesthetic that favoured minimal steel windows in the 1930s, the company expanded. By 1953 they had manufacturing plants in Braintree, Witham, Maldon, Silver End, Paisley and Colwick as well as works in Darlington. They also had overseas plants in Auckland, Dublin, Dunedin, Düsseldorf, Johannesburg, Melbourne, Port Elizabeth, Salisbury, Toronto and Waukesha.
The catalogue is lavishly illustrated with examples of their products installed since WW2 across a variety of buildings including housing, commercial and industrial structures both in the UK and abroad. Despite various claims for steel framed windows, notably that they did not warp like timber frames nor, if works treated and zinc plated they required less painting, the windows did have drawbacks; most notably in the form of issues around heat loss and condensation and very few 'originals' are now to be found. Later generations of steel framed windows, still manufactured by Crittall, are effectively double glazed units and have overcome many of the original failings.
This page shows three examples of fairly typical post-WW2 social, or 'council', housing schemes at a time when new housing construction was one of the nation's priorities for governments of both political persuation. The need to deal with slum clearance, wartime damage and population growth saw vast numbers of houses and flats constructed during the decade and these were, before the widespread advent of tower blocks in the 1960s, mostly of 'traditional' design. The requirement to speed up construction times and lower unit costs, as well as look to explore building methods that utilised less traditional materials or 'wet trades' saw a number of experimental styles of building some of which have fared better than others.
One of these methods was the "B.I.S.F. house", a design sponsored by the British Iron & Steel Federation, and that used workshop manufactured steel framework that conformed to the Ministry of Works specification although the BISF house was intended to be permanent rather than the temporary 'pre-fab' house. It was designed by famous architect and town planner Sir Frederick Gibbard. The houses shown here are in Plymouth, Devon. Another style of non-traditional construction was the "Unity" house seen here in the London suburbs of Chingford, Essex.
These were designed by Kendrick Findlay & Partners and also known as the Butterley system of housing. The housing was manufactured by Unity Structures Ltd and Unity House Construction in the 1950's to a series of designs, the final version of which saw about 19,000 constructed. The houses shown at the Ireland Wood estate in Leeds, West Yorkshire, appear to have been of more traditional design and were amongst the vast number of properties constructed by the City of Leeds Housing Department under the control of City Architect R. A. H. Livett.
All the properties shown use the standard S.M.W. "N" type windows.
