HOSTEL TOWNS

Wairarapa Times-Age, 17 April 1942, Page 4

HOSTEL TOWNS

BRITAIN’S BUILDING BILL. TEMPORARY SHOPS IN BLITZED AREAS. Hostel towns are springing up throughout Great Britain around the new factories, some of them covering a square mile of land, for making munitions and other war material. The factories have to be built well away from congested areas, and the workers instead of travelling long distances backwards and forwards, can now live on the spot in huts built in parts elsewhere and assembled where required along with canteens, refrigerated stores, emergency hospitals and shops. After the war, all these buildings can easily be taken down and put up again where wanted. They are a considerable item in Britain’s building bill of £1,000,000 a day. Army camps and aerodromes are also going up all over the country, and for the “Home Front” there are air-raid shelters, first-aid posts, rest centres, emergency housing and feeding centres. Even temporary shops are put up in “blitzed” towns to carry on without interruption the distribution of food and other essentials. In Coventry whole rows of these shops were run up for the bombed-out traders.

Practically all this war-time building is under the direction of Government departments, working through the Ministry of Works and Public Buildings set up about a year ago under the direction of Lord Reith.