Prefabricated housing in Edinburgh was a temporary solution to post-war housing shortages, designed to provide immediate shelter and eventually transition to permanent housing.

The thread about AIROH, ARCON, Tarran and Uni-SECO; temporary, prefabricated post-war housing in Edinburgh This thread is a bit of an A-to-Z of the different types of temporary, prefabricated, post-war housing built in Edinburgh immediately after WW2. In 1944, the Government passed the Housing (Temporary Accommodation) Act, in anticipation of a post-war housing and house-building crisis. While the primary intention of the act was to replace the c. 450,000 homes lost due to aerial bombing, a secondary consideration was to pick up where there pre-war slum clearance projects had left off in trying to provide better mass-housing for people. 300,000 temporary homes were planned to be built in the first two years after the war, to rapidly increase housing supply while the construction of new, permanent housing (be it traditional or prefabricated) tried to catch up. An AIROH house being erected – the road-transportable sections could be craned into place on a standardised foundation plate and quickly joined together. Historic England photograph.The Ministry of Works approved 4 (later more) standard designs of prefabricated, two-bedroom temporary bungalows which could be rapidly built and give a life span of 10-15 years. They made use of as little traditional housebuilding materials (brick, stone and timber) as possible and many made use of the skills and industrial capacity of wartime industries. All of the temporary houses were of almost identical dimensions of approximately 32.5ft x 21.5ft (9.75 x 6.5m), so were all had about a 60m2footprint and ceilings 7ft 6in high. This meant they could all be built on the same (standard) foundation panel, on the same sized plot, in the same densities. Estates were often built of a mix of types depending on what was available. All the temporary houses came with standardised, prefabricated kitchen and bathrooms units to designs approved by the Ministry of Works, including the Prefabricated Plumbing Unit which combined the kitchen sinks, water tank and hot water cylinder and was connected to the back boiler of the living room heater. Manufacturers had no flexibility to alter these, and only a small amount of leeway on the size and positioning of the other rooms. The Ministry of Works Prefabricated Plumbing UnitWhile central government provided the houses, local authorities were responsible for identifying, securing and planning the sites for the Temporary Housing schemes. They also had to do the groundworks for them; build the roads, sewers, and lay the electricity, gas (if used) and water supplies up to each house. Three standard foundation types were used to suit different ground conditions and the authority was responsible for surveying the site and specifying which should be used. They could also specify the colours of external paint to be used. AIROH and ARCON prefabs at Oxgangs Farm. A mobile shop is in the foreground. Modern council housing is being built in the background to replace the prefabs. CC-by-NC-SA Firrhill Community Council via ThelmaFour thousand temporary prefabs were built in Edinburgh post-war, the first arriving in June 1945. In that year the Corporation estimated it had 5,000 families on their waiting list for housing and had requested 7,500 of the houses from the government. There were delays, however and in July 1946 there had been little more progress than the first 100 houses. The three largest schemes accounted for over half of the provision and were at Moredun & Ferniehill, at West Pilton and Muirhouse and at “The Calders” in Sighthill. All were built on the fringes of the city, sometimes where there were few (or no) facilities for people and where public transport was poor. Innovations such as temporary schools and mobile shops were required. The Corporation’s libraries department deployed its first mobile “bookmobiles”. Edinburgh Public Libraries’ first bookmobile in 1948, an Austin 3-tonner, outside Central Library. Notice the title of “Suburban Library Service”, these vehicles were intended to provide a service to the parts of the city left devoid of facilities by peripheral expansion © Edinburgh City LibrariesWhere they were largely used for slum clearance and so displaced people away from their communities and families, meaning they could be quite unpopular. On the other hand, when new the houses were good, clean and modern and came with generous gardens. Distribution and volumes of temporary prefab building in Edinburgh. Note how they are scattered to the periphery of the cityNo temporary prefabs survive in Edinburgh (the ones you can still see were all built as permanent prefabs), all were demolished in a programme starting in 1964, after lifespans around twice what had been intended. Most were replaced by permanent council housing on the same sites, some of which in itself was prefabricated. Four types of temporary houses were built in Edinburgh: A is for AIROH This name is an acronym of Air Industry Research Organisation for Housing, developed by the British aircraft industry as a way to find use for its skills and manufacturing facilities in the postwar environment, and to make use of a glut of scrap aluminium from surplus aircraft. One of the 4 aircraft companies involved in their production was the Blackburn Aircraft Company at Dumbarton. These were the most common temporary prefab in both Edinburgh and across the UK, with 1,792 and 54,000 built respectively. The walls were aluminium trays sprayed with bitumen and filled with aereated concrete and coated on the inside with plasterboard. The roofs were lightweight alumnium trusses with corrugated aluminium sheet covering. AIROH house at The Calders. Note the curved canopy over the front door and 3 windows. The rear elevation had 4 windows, one per module of the house. CC-by-NC-SA Stuart Laidlaw via ThelmaThese houses have been described as an “airplane in house form“; manufactured in sub-assemblies on an aircraft production line, combined into 4 sections (complete with roofs, floors, windows, doors and all standard interior fittings) that could be transported by road and quickly joined together on site by unskilled labour. This material has its advantages; it is light, strong, does not rust or readily corrode and – initially – was readily available from scrapped aircraft. It took 2 tonnes of aluminium to build an AIROH house frame. So a single large fighter aircraft like a Typhoon give you all the aluminium for a house. The problem for aluminium houses of all types was that the price of the material soon rebounded and they became very expensive to produce, much more so than other types, but they filled a gap and were not the worst of the temporary prefabs by any stretch. Floorplan of the AIROH house. Note the 3 dashed lines, indicating where the 3 prefabricated modules of this house were joined together.Identification features are the corrugated roof, the three equally-sized windows (with 4 to the rear) and the curved canopy over the front door. Some of the first permanent prefab houses ordered for Edinburgh were of the Permanent Aluminium or Blackburn Mk.II design. Visually almost identical, it was to a generally more robust standard of insulation and weatherproofing and was designed to last 60 years instead of the AIROH‘s ten. A is (also) for ARCON The ARCON name was a portmanteau of Architectural Consultants, was founded as a collaborative research body between architects and builders. The. It was based on the steel-clad Portal House prototype by Tailor Woodrow . It has a similar tubular steel frame (designed by renowned Anglo-Danish engineer Ove Arup) but is covered with a double layer of corrugated asbestos sheeting, with a curving roof built out of the same material. A newly-built ARCON house at Sighthill in 1947. The men in the foreground are PoWs who are dismantling a wooden hut from their camp that was donated to Sighthill Bowling Club. CC-by-NC-SA Stuart Laidlaw via ThelmaARCON was the second most-produced temporary prefab after the AIROH, 39,000 were built across the UK with 757 built in Edinburgh. Many were prefabricated in St. Boswellsi n Roxburghshire, now the Scottish Borders.For recognition, these were the only temporary prefabs built in Edinburgh with a curving roof and corrugated cladding. They had the usual steel windows and doors, with two large windows on either side of the front door, which itself was next to two smaller windows for the WC and bathroom. Floorplan of the ARCON house. Note the shed; most prefabs came with a prefab shed.T is for Tarran The Tarran was named for its builders, Tarran Industries Ltd. of Hull. It was built of pre-cast, externally pebble-dashed, concrete panels with a timber floor and a lightweight steel truss roof covered in corrugated asbestos sheets. I cannot find a picture of a Tarran house in Edinburgh, this is a house in Wolverhampton in 2009. Note the tall panels of pebble-dashed concrete. CC-by-SA 2.0 John M19,000 Tarrans were ordered by the government, with 636 built in Edinburgh. The best recognition features are the distinct vertical, pebbled panels, two large windows to the front and a squat, tapering chimney with a large metal cowled ventilator on top. Sometimes they had the front door recessed to the side, creating a distinctive notch in the building and a small, covered porch area. Floorplan of the Tarran house. Note the offset front door, this layout was almost identical to the Uni-SECO.U is for Uni-SECO The name stood for Unit and Selection Engineering Co. Ltd. – the company that had been formed London to design and built them. The design was based off of that for temporary wartime military offices. These were built from pre-fabricated plywood-framed panels filled with wood waste and cement insulation, with a roof of similar construction covered in asbestos sheets and roofing felt. They were sent to sites as a flat-pack kit to be assembled and it was amongst the cheapest of the temporary prefabs; the AIROH was 43% more expensive in 1947. Uni-SECO house at Moredun. Notice the corner living room window wraps-around. Where prefabs were built on sloping sites such as this, they required substantial brick foundations, which negated many of their benefits. CC-by-NC-SA via Thelma29,000 Uni-SECO houses were ordered, with 815 built in Edinburgh. The best recognition feature is the roof pitch, which was was so shallow as to appear flat. They had a small, tapered chimney and two large windows to the front; the door was either offset to the left or central (Mark III model), in which case the living room window wrapped-around to the side. Floorplan of the Uni-SECO House. Note the setback entrance door and that there is no internal hallway; the bedrooms lead off of other rooms.Note to readers: unfortunately in April 2026, a third-party plug-in more than exceeded its authority and broke many of the image links on this site. No images were lost but I will have to restore them page-by-page, which may take some time. In the meantime please bear with me while I go about rectifying this issue. If you have found this site useful, informative or amusing then you can help contribute towards its running costs by supporting me on ko-fi. This includes my commitment to keeping it 100% advert and AI free for all time coming, and in helping to find further unusual stories to bring you by acquiring books and paying for research. Or please do just share this post on social media or amongst friends and like-minded people, sites like this thrive on being shared. Explore Threadinburgh by map: Travelers' Map is loading... If you see this after your page is loaded completely, leafletJS files are missing. These threads © 2017-2026, Andy Arthur. NO AI TRAINING: Any use of the contents of this website to “train” generative artificial intelligence (AI) technologies to generate text is expressly prohibited. The author reserves all rights to license uses of this work for generative AI training and development of machine learning language models. #Lochend #Logan #Restalrig #StMargaret

Blackburns, BISFs, Orlits and Whitson-Fairhursts. The thread about pre-fabricated, permanent, post-war housing in Edinburgh This thread is a bit of an A-to-Z of the different types of permanent, prefabricated, post-war housing built in Edinburgh between 1945-1950. In the aftermath of WW2, hundreds of thousands of temporary, prefabricated houses were built across the UK, as part of a national crash-building programme to ease urban slum dwelling, replace war losses and provide housing for men returning from war until the construction of permanent housing could catch up with demand. In Edinburgh, some 4,000 temporary prefabs were built, of four types; AIROHs, ARCONs, Tarrans and Uni-SECOs. But prefab housing wasn’t just temporary, it was also for permanent construction. It was hoped that by mass-manufacturing standard designs of modern houses in factories, they could be rapidly built with limited skilled labour. A is for Aluminium Some of the first permanent prefab houses ordered for Edinburgh were of the Permanent Aluminium or Blackburn Mk.II design. These were based on the AIROH (Air Industry Research Organisation for Housing) single-storey, temporary, aluminium cottages – of which some 54,000 were built – but with thicker walls and insulation, designed to last 60 years instead of the AIROH‘s ten. These were developed by the British aircraft industry as a way to find use for its skills and manufacturing facilities in the postwar environment, and to make use of a glut of scrap aluminium from surplus aircraft. This material has its advantages; it is light, strong, does not rust or readily corrode and – initially – readily available from scrapped aircraft. It took 2 tonnes of aluminium to build an AIROH house frame. So a single large fighter aircraft like a Typhoon give you all the aluminium for a house. The Blackburn Aircraft Company of Dumbarton got on board. Blackburn Aluminium House (Craigour)They have been described as an “airplane in house form“; manufactured in sections on an aircraft production line, in sections that could be transported by road, and assembled quickly on site by unskilled labour. They came pre-fitted with standard kitchens and bathrooms, all of which just needed connected together on site on a simple brick or concrete plinth. The problem for aluminium houses of all types was that the price of the material soon rebounded and they became very expensive to produce, but they filled a gap and were not the worst of the temporary prefabs by any stretch. Edinburgh purchased 166 permanent Blackburn Aluminium Houses; 145 for the Craigour Scheme in Moredun and 21 for Muirhouse. Aluminium House in Craigour, with a porch and extra wing added, re-roofed, insulated and re-clad. These houses are quite easy to identify, as they are small, detached cottages with 3 regularly-sized windows and an offset front door. The shallow-pitched roof has a small brick chimney stack and was originally aluminium sheeting. There were 3 overlapping joints on the façade where the 4 prefabricated modules were joined together. These houses were quite popular, they sit on large plots and have big gardens. They are detached and the frames have not been subject to corrosion. Many have been insulated, re-clad, re-roofed and even extended. Some have been demolished and new houses built on their plots. B is for BISF These houses were named after their manufacturer and designer, the British Iron and Steel Federation. The house is of a conventional, semi-detached design, but uses a steel frame with steel window and door surrounds and Critall-Hope steel framed windows. The lower storey was clad in render applied to a steel lath and the upper storey had steel sheeting formed to look like timber. Interior partitions were plasterboard or wooden fibreboard and insulation was glass fibre. Most have been stripped back to their frames, re-insulated and re-clad with pebble-dash, and given modern plastic double glazing units. The fibreboard walls were prone to damp and fire and most were replaced with plasterboard during refurbishments. In Edinburgh, c. 300 of these houses were built in Southhouse / Buirdiehouse (1947) and Moredun / Fernieside (1949) Schemes and most (if not all) remain to this day. They are somewhat unusual in that they were always intended to be permanent, and have not suffered from the usual structural degradation and corrosion that have plagued other non-standard houses. As such they are one of the few prefab designs that have never been designated as defective (which means you can get a mortgage on one). B.I.S.F. houses. That on the right is unusual in that it retains its original cladding (Southhouse / Burdiehouse)A “naked” BISF house showing the slender framework next to the completed house. There is a concrete block firebreak between the two houses in the block.Useful identification features for BISF houses are that they are always semi-detached; they have a single, squat, central chimney on a pitched roof; the re-clad houses often have a mix of brick and pebble-dash cladding; the main ground floor window extends almost to floor level; and they lack the heavy reinforced concrete door and window surrounds of the concrete houses. B is for Blackburn Orlit These houses were a collaboration between the Blackburn Aircraft Company in Dumbarton and the Orlit Construction Company (see under O). They were designed in 1949 and used an improved, simplified version of the Orlit reinforced concrete frame and wall panel system, combined with the lightweight aluminium roof structure and pre-fabricated internal partitions covered in plasterboard, by Blackburn. Kitchens and bathrooms were also prefabricated “pods” produced by the Scottish Myton Company, based on experience with the Tarran temporary prefab houses. Four houses were built as a prototype in Clydebank in 1949, followed by 214 in 1950-51 on the Saughton Mains Scheme in Edinburgh, as semi-detached and terraces. Around 1,300 were built in total across Scotland. Blackburn-Orlit (Saughton Mains South)These houses have the usual heavy, PRC door and window surrounds of Orlit houses and the irregularly-spaced concrete “quoins” on the corners. The ground floor front room window is deep (deeper than standard Orlits), but has often been in-filled with a shallower window. They have a shallow-pitched, gabled Blackburn roof (the roofs of Scotcon Orlits and those added to earlier Orlits are “hipped”) and lack the usual Orlit narrow, first-floor window over the front door. Instead they have 3 windows squeezed into the façade upstairs. B is for Blackburn Mk.IV Another collaboration between Blackburn and Orlit. These houses were of a more traditional construction, with walls constructed out of pre-cast “no fines” concrete blocks on a concrete slab foundation and Crittal steel-framed windows. I assume given Blackburn‘s involvement there were aluminium internal components used. You will find these in Edinburgh at the West Mains Scheme in Blackford,where 134 were built in 1951 as 4-in-a-block terraces. Nearly all have now been re-rendered, hiding their original concrete blockwork structure. Because they lack the Orlit‘s PRC frame and steel joints, they have not been classed as defective. Blackburn Mark IV (West Mains)Identification features are the blockwork walls (where you can see them); the lack of the heavy, PRC door and window surrounds of most Orlit houses; the door surround has as small concession to detail (usually absent from such houses) with a moulding line around it; the central bay windows at ground floor level originally had a copper-sheathed roof. B is for Blackburn Permanent Also known as the Blackburn Mk.III, as the name suggests, this was a permanent house making use of Blackburn’s prefabricated internal partitioning and shallow-pitched aluminium roof structure, which was originally covered in aluminium sheeting. The form was basically the same as the Blackburn-Orlit house, but without the heavy PRC window and door frames and walls are traditional blockwork. Edinburgh built these as semi-detached and 4-in-a-block terraces, at Moredun in 1949 and the then Midlothian County Council as semi-detached houses in Currie in 1950. Blackburn Permanent (Moredun)Blackburn Permanent (Currie)Identification features are the shallow roof pitch, squat chimneys, and the strip of 4 windows with brick infill on the first floor. Again there is a very deep sitting room window. These houses are usually harled or pebbledashed. O is for Orlit The Orlit System was developed by the Czech architect Erwin Katona, a Jewish refugee who had come to London in the late 1930s. He developed a modular, pre-cast reinforced concrete (PRC) system of construction that could be built in a factory and rapidly assembled on site with limited and unskilled labour. PRC columns and beams slotted together to form the structure, in-filled with an interlocking system of concrete tiles. Floors and roofs were of concrete channels. The roof could be a flat concrete slab covered in bitumen paper or a traditional wooden, pitched structure with tiles. Windows were Critall steel-framed, set within PRC concrete frames of standard sizes. The Orlit System could build a range of buildings, from single-storey cottages and municipal buildings to tenement flats. Usually they were semi-detached houses though. An Orlit Type 1 House with its original windows and flat roof on Mountcastle Drive South, now demolished. CC-by-NC-SA via Thelma. The System was meant to be for permanent houses, with a 60 year lifespan, but was unfortunately riddled with flaws and weaknesses. Over time, PRC deteriorates, particularly at construction joints and junctions between components, with a gradual reduction in structural effectiveness. It suffers from inadequate thermal insulation, as well as thermal bridging – making houses cold and prone to condensation on the walls. As early as 1949, people in Edinburgh were writing to the newspapers to complain about the flaws in brand new Orlit houses. The original Type 1 system was replaced with the Type 2 to try and remedy the deficiencies. By 1950, they had abandoned the pre-cast frame system almost entirely (except for the window surrounds) and moved on to modular concrete block construction, which eliminated the structural weaknesses at least! All Orlit houses built to the original Type 1 or 2 systems have been designated defective. Orlits were popular with Scottish local authorities and set up a subsidiary – the Scottish Orlit Company – with its headquarters and factory in Sighthill. Around 6,000 were built across Scotland, of which half have been subsequently demolished. Edinburgh built around 668, 410 of which have been demolished. These were a mix of the usual 2-storey semis and tenement flats; all of the latter were built at Bingham and were demolished in 1985. 134 semis were built at Saughton Mains (in 1948) and 80 at Southhouse / Burdiehouse (in 1947), all of which remain. This post does not cover the later 1950s-built Orlits at Ratho Craigpark, Oxgangs Farm and Gilmerton Dykes. One of the last remaining Orlits in Scotland in its original state (excepting windows), at Fintry in Dundee in 2016The Orlit (Southhouse/ Burdiehouse)Orlit (Saughton Mains North)The Orlit System evolved over time, and has a large amount of variety available due to the flexibility of the system, however the best things to look for are the heavy outlines of the pre-cast concrete window surrounds, the narrow windows over the front door and to the side, and the bulky outline of the original concrete flat roof slab to which the later hipped roofs were added to remedy the deficient nature of the structure. I believe all Orlit System houses built in Edinburgh were originally flat roofed. S is for Scotcon Orlit Scotcon (from Scottish Construction Company) were a subsidiary of the Scottish Orlit Company, formed expressly to undertake local authority housebuilding in Scotland. While much of their work was prefabricated tower blocks, they also built on the standard Orlit system. 296 Scotcon Orlit houses were built in Edinburgh in 1950-51, a mixture of semi-detached houses and 3-storey tenements. 126 have since been demolished, but 170 remain; in the Niddrie Marischal Scheme (tenements and semis); at Saughton Mains (only 3 semis, perhaps built as demonstration models given their proximity to the Scottish Orlit Co. factory at Sighthill); Dunsmuir Court in Corstorphine (tenements) and at Easter Drylaw (tenements). Because they use the Orlit system of PRC beams and columns, with pre-cast interlocking concrete block walls and PRC window and door surrounds, they are designated defective. They have traditional timber-framed, pitched roofs. Scotcon Orlit (Niddrie Marischal)Scotcon Orlit (Saughton Mains)Scotcon Orlits look like other Orlits, with the heavy PRC window surrounds, but that of the ground floor front room is much deeper. They have the trademark narrow window over the front door, and (where they haven’t been covered up with pebbledash), irregular concrete “quoins”. The “hipped” roofs were built as pitched timber and tile structures, so they lack the heavy slab of the early Orlits built with flat roofs (to which a pitched structure was later added). Scotcon Orlit Tenement (Drylaw Mains)Scotcon Orlit Tenement in the originally finished state, before later pebbledashingThe tenements can be recognised by the heavy PRC window surrounds, with the usual wide and deep front-room window, and narrow windows over the front door. All the Scotcon Orlit tenements in Edinburgh are 6-in-a-block. The ground floor houses have their own entrance doors to the side. S is for Swedish Timber House The Swedish government sold 5,000 flat-pack timber houses of a standard design to to the British Government after WW2. Half went to Scotland, particularly for rural housing, and the first 350 arrived as early as October 1945. Similar houses had been built in Glasgow in 1937 by the Swedish Government to demonstrate them to Scottish local authorities. 100 were gifted to Edinburgh Corporation by Sweden as a gesture of post-war good will, with 50 each erected in West Pilton and Sighthill under the supervision of Swedish foremen, as a mix of semi-detached and 4-in-a-block terraces. An additional handful were built by the SSHA at their Sighthill Demonstration Site. Because they are of traditional timber construction with pitched, slate roofs, they have never been designated defective. Most have been externally insulated, and re-clad with harl or render, but some retain their original timber cladding. Swedish Timber House (West Pilton)The Swedish Timber Houses at Sightill not long after they were built Cc-by-NC-SA Bill Lamb via ThelmaThe original tongue-and-groove timber cladding of thin strips, with those of the first floor overlapping the ground floor, are the best identification feature. They have a large front room window on the ground floor and a small canopy over the door. Most of those that still retain their timber cladding have been treated with dark brown or red preservatives, but originally they were brightly painted in cream. The roof is tiled and well pitched, with a single, central chimney to the front. W is for Whitson-Fairhurst These houses are named after their designers, W. A. Fairhurst and Melville, Dundas & Whitson Ltd. They were of a modular, prefabricated concrete system built by the Scottish Housing Group, a post-war conglomerate of housing builders who had pooled their resources to meet government and local authority contracts for mass construction. They use a system of PRC columns and beams to form the structure of the house, which are in-filled with an outer skin of brick and an inner skin of breeze blocks. Window surrounds and door frames are relatively heavy PRC structures. A traditional timber roof structure was covered in concrete roof tiles and they were harled or pebbledashed. 3,400 Whitson-Fairhurst houses were built in Scotland,. In Edinburgh they were only built in the Southhouse / Burdiehouse Scheme, where 100 semi-detached houses were built. They are designated defective. Whitson-Fairhurst (Southhouse / Burdiehouse)At first glance they could be confused for an Orlit house, with heavy PRC window surrounds. The biggest difference is that the roof is of the gable-type (when seen from the front, the sides of the house are flat all the way to the top of the roof), not “hipped” as in Orlits (when seen from the front, the sides of the roof are pitched towards the top) The front window is much deeper and they lack the Orlit‘s signature narrow window above the front door. Note to readers: unfortunately in April 2026, a third-party plug-in more than exceeded its authority and broke many of the image links on this site. No images were lost but I will have to restore them page-by-page, which may take some time. In the meantime please bear with me while I go about rectifying this issue. If you have found this site useful, informative or amusing then you can help contribute towards its running costs by supporting me on ko-fi. This includes my commitment to keeping it 100% advert and AI free for all time coming, and in helping to find further unusual stories to bring you by acquiring books and paying for research. Or please do just share this post on social media or amongst friends and like-minded people, sites like this thrive on being shared. Explore Threadinburgh by map: Travelers' Map is loading... If you see this after your page is loaded completely, leafletJS files are missing. These threads © 2017-2026, Andy Arthur. NO AI TRAINING: Any use of the contents of this website to “train” generative artificial intelligence (AI) technologies to generate text is expressly prohibited. The author reserves all rights to license uses of this work for generative AI training and development of machine learning language models. #Lochend #Logan #Restalrig #StMargaret