Homes with “an exterior of outstanding loveliness”*.
Last month I wrote about Wates-built houses in New Malden, mainly in the area south of the A3 Kingston Bypass. Drive around the side streets and you can’t help noticing all the chalets, most built by Wates. At a quick glance you might think them all the same but not so.
(licensed from LB Lambeth)
The first chalets in Malden date from c.1932 – they are semi-detached and the roof slopes rise to a common ridge. Pictures (A) and (B) show two variants: I’m fairly sure that (A) with the front facing entrance door is the earlier and (B) with the side facing entrance door and Dutch gable (the small vertical tile-hung triangle at ridge level), later.
What came next – the semi-detached SC chalets or the more common link-detached variant? Once again we really need the RBK archive to tell us. My hunch is that the link-detached came first. Why? The 1935 Wilverley Park brochure offers buyers both options, promoting the semi-detached chalet as ‘New’:
C4 detached 3-bed chalet: “This wonderful Wates Chalet retains the sweeping roof lines which are so charming a feature of Wates original Chalets. Fully Detached with all its accompanying advantages of peace and privacy – a complete absence of ‘neighbour noise’ – the grand feeling that you really ARE in a house of your own – these are considerations which affect your personal comfort as a discerning Homeseeker.
Come and see for yourself the charm of these new wonder Chalets with their wide bays extending right to the eaves, mellow faced brickwork and smooth rendered walls blending into a delightful harmony – the new Wates Detached Chalet representing a standard of unrivalled value in planning, equipment and beauty.
SC3 Semi-detached Chalet: … For many years now Wates have been famed for their Chalets …. The New Semi-detached Chalet retains all the beauty of design, the bold sweeping roof lines and pleasing elevation which characterises every Wates-Built Chalet. With its newly revised arrangement of rooms it has won the approval of all purchasers. Come and see the improved planning, generous equipment and delightful appearance of these new semi-detached Chalets.
Urban legend had it that the link-detached option gave the advantages claimed above whilst allowing the house to be rated as semi-detached since it was (if only by the brick arch) connected to another house. True? I don’t know.
3-bed link-detached (C) and semi-detached chalets are by far the most common variant but there are others too. Two-bedroom chalets (D) – recognisable by the entrance door being towards the front of the flank wall – were created by deleting the front ground floor third bedroom. 4-bedroom chalets (E) are identifiable by a two-storey section at the rear; most also have a ground floor WC. Lastly, and very rare, are the detached chalets with integral garage (F) – this variation doesn’t work for me – and the corner chalets (G) which do.
Some chalets have a round porthole window lighting the first floor box room, others don’t. Some have a flat front-facing window to the ground floor third bedroom, others have an oriel window. Were these extra cost options?
Buyers were offered the option of buying freehold (FH) or leasehold (LH), the latter making housing more affordable. Here’s a summary (all 3-bed):
Detached chalet: FH £929, LH £749, weekly outgoings £1:12:9d/£1:10:11d, TFA ~95m2, lounge 14’3”x13’0” (4.34×3.96m)
Semi-detached chalet: FH £819, LH £639, weekly outgoings £1:8:11d/£1:7:1d, TFA ~95m2, lounge 14’3”x13’0” (4.34×3.96m)
And for comparison, traditional Wates ‘Tudor’ semis:
TDL Tudor Deluxe: FH: £729, LH: £579, weekly outgoings £1:5:9d/£1:4:3d, TFA ~98m2, lounge 14’3”x12’3” (4.34×3.73m)
TDL Tudor Major: FH: £649, LH: £499, weekly outgoings £1:2:11d/£1:1:6d, TFA ~79m2, lounge 13’1”x10’9” (3.99×3.28m)
Thus it can be seen that 1930s buyers paid a premium for chalets, justified by the space and architecture.
Ground rent, included in the LH weekly outgoings, was £9 a year for chalets, £7.10 for Tudor SDs, equating to a 5% return to Wates. I wonder how many people took the leasehold option, given that the saving was less than two shillings a week. Perhaps the reduced deposit was the key attraction. There was also an option to rent: in the 1930s many working class people had an aversion to going into debt even though we now see mortgage debt as ‘good’ debt.
Dormer additions: As built, chalets have a large under-roof box room next to the front bedroom. It’s relatively simple to build this out as an extra bedroom and many owners have done this (H). During my BCO days (1976-84) two local builders, Malcolm Carter and Tony Forte, did little else. Malcolm’s reputation was such that he ran an eighteen month waiting list. You didn’t decide whether to appoint him or not; he decided whether or not he wanted you as a customer. Another common alteration was adding a ground floor WC under the stairs: the space is tight but it can be done.
Other comments: Given Malden’s shrinkable clay subsoil, subsidence problems requiring underpinning were not unknown across my patch. Wates built houses were almost immune to such problems – the filed plans showed them as being built on Twisteel reinforced concrete rafts.
The plan above (for a chalet in Streatham, so may not reflect what was done in Malden) is interesting in that it shows cavity walls on three sides and a one-brick solid wall for the wall facing the mirrored chalet. When I was in primary school we were taught that cavity walls were introduced to improve insulation. They do, but the real reason was to eliminate the problem of driving rain finding its way through the wall. The facing walls are not, obviously, subject to driving rain.
1930s Wates houses also show the durability of concrete roof tiles: they were only introduced in the late 1920s so when these houses were built they were a new and untried innovation. Most roofs are original and still in excellent condition.
Click on an image to enlarge it; click again or press [Esc] to return. Please excuse the quality of the pics: I only had one day free when last in the UK and it was a wet, grey one.
* Weekly Dispatch (London) – Sunday 21 January 1934
Addendum Jan 2026
My attention was recently drawn to a book, ‘Something in Linoleum‘ in which BBC Radio presenter Paul Vaughan recounts his 1930s upbringing in South London: Copies of the book are available from AbeBooks.
“One of the biggest new estates in New Malden lay to the west of the town centre and it was being developed by Wares, the builders. ‘My father’s choice was undoubtedly influenced by the fact that his younger sister, my Auntie May, had married a scion of the Wates family, who had not followed his father into the building trade but worked in a succession of jobs, which included, for a while, and to my father’s considerable satisfaction, managership of an off licence.
A central tenet in my father’s view of life was a belief in the useful connection, the friend or, preferably, relative in the know, who could be relied on to do you a good turn, pass on a bit of discount, help you jump the queue. l suspect this way of thinking figured in his decision to become a Freemason. So l dare say he hoped for some kind of preferential consideration through his sideways connection with the Wares clan, perhaps a few quid off the price of the house. No such advantage materialised, and my father had to find the full sum of £1,000 for the house they chose.
It was on a corner, semi-detached, in the ‘Swiss chalet‘ style, and so supposedly had a faint resemblance to some mountain retreat, the phrase suggesting a peaceful, sheep-dotted landscape bathed in continuous sunshine. It had a steeply pitched, red-tiled roof, which side by side with the house next door made the shape of an inverted W. The facade was rendered in pebble dash, protecting the brick and so thriftily obviating the need for re-pointing. The house was a ‘semi’, but the detachment was almost complete, the only link between our house and its neighbour being a thread-like arch of brick above a thin sliver of ground, about two feet wide, separating the two flank walls. This area of dead and uncultivable land was more or less permanently littered with builders’ rubble.
Our house was the last in a row of about twenty in the same style, but it was a little bigger than the others and £250 dearer. This conferred a small but lasting social advantage, as did the fact we were on a corner, and had a garage at the end of the garden. Inside, the bedrooms were larger.
There was an extra room downstairs too for which, as it happened, my parents found it difficult to hit upon any specific use. It was variously designated the Breakfast Room, the Morning Room, and the Study, even. though none of the functions indicated by those names was important enough to deserve a special room in our household. This extra living space was next to the front door, and it would finally come into its own in 1940 when my father had the floorboards removed, the ceiling and walls strengthened and the windows sandbagged. With bunk beds installed for all the family it would look like nothing so much as a dug-out in a quiet sector of the line round about 1917 and it was known as the Shelter. ….“
