We are slowly putting together a history of the two estates known as the Sandringhams.
Which estate is which?
These are two quite different estates, linked by Sandringham Drive.
The first, of interwar design, consists of 220 flats built after 1937, and completed just before war broke out in 1939. These were developed by Bradford Property Trust, which held the freehold and let individual flats to a series of tenants. From the 1970s BPT (later acquired by Grainger) began to sell long leasehold interests in flats to sitting tenants, owner-occupiers and landlords. Grainger remains as the freeholder, providing services to the whole estate, and levying service charges on individual owners. This estate has one very unusual feature - it is a stipulation that every unit has to be painted in the same manner. This is what used to be associated with council housing - a strict uniformity - and for that reason many outsiders assume that the Council must have developed the estate.
The Mount estate was developed later, from the 1950s. It was developed by Leeds City Council, but many units were sold to sitting tenants under the Right to Buy legislation of 1980 onwards, and many units have subsequently been sold. The Council is still the landlord of some units, although these are now managed by its arms-length organisation.
We are not sure when these became known together as The Sandringhams, but this is now commemorated by a stone near the junction with Shadwell Lane.
The Adel/Lawnswood estate
There is one other estate of similar appearance to the older Sandringham estate. This is at Lawnswood, near the crematorium and the road to the village of Adel. This was developed slightly earlier, but is of similar design and under the same decorative regime. The freehold is also owed by Grainger and managed by its in-house managers. Unlike Sandringham, the roads are mostly culs-de-sac rather than providing access to other flats (like those at Ingledew Court), although, like Sandringham Way, a section fronts onto the main road.
Garden cities and model villages
Britain features many model villages, like New Earswick, New Lanark, Styal, Port Sunlight and Saltaire, generally developed by employers like the Salt family at Saltaire. The latter has another place in history; it is where Fred Gresswell, a Bradford estate agent, began the process of selling properties to the tenants who occupied them. They obtained a conventional mortgage and the "deposit" was the subject of a separate mortgage. He began in the 1930s, having bought the landlord's interest in the village. It all seemed to work, which is why Saltaire is mostly owner-occupied today. The name of the company that Gresswell used to acquire the properties and sell them was - Bradford Property Trust. BPT went on to organise many "break-ups" of freehold estates, including blocks of flats for which long leasehold interests were created and sold.
Garden cities, inspired by a book from 1898, were a consequence of Victorian urban expansion and the growth of town planning as a solution to the poor conditions, especially in housing, that this brought. Letchworth Garden City and Welwyn Garden City are probably the best known of the formal garden cities, which in turn inspired the New Towns programme begun by the Labour government of 1945-51. There were more modest versions of this, in new housing estates laid out on "garden city" lines, with much public open space, careful design of roads and houses. A lesser-known example, owned by the adjacent steel works of John Summers and Sons, was Sealand Garden City at Deeside on the Welsh border, founded around 1917. These were often known as Garden Suburbs, such as Hampstead Garden Suburb, founded in 1906. Many interwar council housing estates tried to employ the principle of the garden suburb, sometimes successfully.
The earlier Sandringham estate seems to have been developed on similar principles. There was no through traffic, flats were laid out in areas of common gardens, at a low density, with much greenery, bushes and trees. There was, it appears, plans for a tennis court, although the garage block may well have replaced this. The Lawnswood estate had very large open areas behind flats, and several blocks of garages. Unfortunately, given the time of design - the 1930s - roads were designed slightly too narrow for the number of cars driving through and, especially, parking.
The Area - Moortown, Alwoodley or High Moor Allerton?
There are ambiguities over the title of the area in which the Sandringhams are set. It is in Alwoodley ward, and the area on the south side of the Ring Road is clearly Moortown. Moor Allerton, with its shopping centre, is mcuh further west, along the ring road. However, there was a small settlement in the vicinity of the roundabout, and that was clearly known as High Moor Allerton.
More to come - the rest is under construction.
