Red House in Bexleyheath, London, is famous as the home of William Morris, the founder of the Arts and Crafts movement, from 1860 to 1865. The 1859 Philip Webb building is also considered a triumph of design. In May 1950 The Times descibed the house as “the fountainhead from which the revival of a sound, honest, and comfortable domestic architecture sprang”. In 1960, it added: “The house is 100 years old. To say that it does not look its age is not an idle compliment. It was well and truly built by an architect who believed in sound building. More significant, it was, when built, a house in advance of its time.”

The word prefab conjures up the image of modular houses built in large numbers after the Second World War as temporary replacements for bombed housing. Despite the intention, many were inhabited years later, as noted by The Times in February 1960: “Over several years after the Housing (Temporary Accommodation) Act 1944 was passed, 124,455 ‘prefabs' were built in England and Wales. Some 13 years later 112,000 are still in use, most of them where slum clearance has taken precedence over the removal of homes that are, in the words of one council housing officer, ‘far from slummy, if not exactly perfect'.”

The 190m (619ft) Post Office Tower was designed by Eric Bedford and the other architects of the Ministry of Public Buildings and Works to form part of Britain's new microwave telecommunications network. On its official opening in October 1965, The Times architecture correspondent noted: “The vogue for high buildings has done damage to the London landscape partly because many of them are in the wrong place, but chiefly because nearly all the so-called towers are slabs - or else are too squat to have the effect proper to a tower. The Post Office Tower, however, is slim and elegant, with its unusual outline (which is not wilfully eccentric but derives directly from its multiplicity of functions) and has already become an established London personality, whether it is seen floating above a sea of rooftops or adding piquancy to a familiar ground-level vista.”

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