Table Of ContentSELECTED WORKS OF PEARL
JEPHCOTT: SOCIAL ISSUES
AND SOCIAL RESEARCH
Volume 5
HOMES IN HIGH FLATS
HOMES IN HIGH FLATS
Some of the Human Problems
Involved in Multi-Storey
Housing
PEARL JEPHCOTT
with
HILARY ROBINSON
First published in 1971 by Oliver & Boyd
This edition first published in 2023
by Routledge
4 Park Square, Milton Park, Abingdon, Oxon OX14 4RN
and by Routledge
605 Third Avenue, New York, NY 10158
Routledge is an imprint of the Taylor & Francis Group, an informa
business
© 1971 Pearl Jephcott
© 2023 Josephine Koch
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reprinted or
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or other means, now known or hereafter invented, including
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Trademark notice: Product or corporate names may be trademarks
or registered trademarks, and are used only for identification and
explanation without intent to infringe.
British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data
A catalogue record for this book is available from the British
Library
ISBN: 978-1-032-33020-4 (Set)
ISBN: 978-1-032-33029-7 (Volume 5) (hbk)
ISBN: 978-1-032-33042-6 (Volume 5) (pbk)
ISBN: 978-1-003-31788-3 (Volume 5) (ebk)
DOI: 10.4324/9781003317883
Publisher’s Note
The publisher has gone to great lengths to ensure the quality of this
reprint but points out that some imperfections in the original copies
may be apparent.
Disclaimer
The publisher has made every effort to trace copyright holders and
would welcome correspondence from those they have been unable
to trace.
New Foreword to the Reissue of
Homes in High Flats
The slums of the 1920s and 1930s, alongside the ravages of war in
the 1940s and the subsequent call for homes for heroes meant that
the UK needed to invest heavily in housing to ensure that people
had decent places to live that reflected the aspirational post-war
period. In most instances, urban planners looked to the brutalist
and minimalist styles of architecture that were working so well
in continental Europe. Such designs enabled significant numbers
of people to be housed in multi-occupancy, multi-storey concrete
tower blocks that used vertical space. To build up rather than build
out, using modern building techniques and materials offered an
efficient and effective way to solve the problems associated with
slum dwellings. Homes fit for a modern era. Glasgow and other
UK cities such as Manchester, Sheffield, and Birmingham were at
the vanguard of this change. Building ‘up’ in a high-rise meant
to move away from the squalor and unsanitary conditions of in-
ner-city tenement housing. In Glasgow, this meant sweeping away
decades of problems and the wholesale modernisation of a city. Al-
though ironically, the tenement-style houses so denigrated during
this time would become incredibly fashionable, desirable, and very
expensive in subsequent decades.
Given this modernisation push and Pearl Jephcott’s established
interest in family community and young people, it is obvious for
Pearl to turn her attention to the realities of living in high-rise ac-
commodation. Her book, Homes in High Flats, possibly the very first
study of what it was like to live everyday lives at ‘height’, is typi-
cally ‘Jephcottian’. Having moved to Glasgow for her book, A Time
of One’s Own, Glasgow offered a prominent locale for studying high-
flat living. Yet not content with merely observing lives in high flats
from a distance, Pearl moved into one of the ‘slab blocks’ herself to
experience first-hand life in the tower block. Funded by the Joseph
Rowntree Memorial Trust, Jephcott and her team considered the
social implications of domestic housing in high flats between July
1, 1966, and 1969. As part of this study, the team interviewed 60
people in the pilots and then nearly 1000 as part of the main sam-
ple. Alongside the main study, Pearl also undertook smaller studies
involving interviews and observations comparing multi-storey and
low-rise households, the experiences of young people aged 15 to
22, experiences of mothers with children and the views of caretak-
ers. She undertook interviews with tenants’ associations. She also
documented services and facilities, lift waiting times, playgroups,
and the use of gang-based graffiti. As with her other studies, Homes
in High Flats becomes much more than a simple study of domestic
housing. Pearl considers ‘whole situations’ as to how people are ex-
periencing life at height. What results is a richly precisely detailed
and thoroughly documented study combining interview data, dis-
cussion group data, photographic materials, maps and diagrams.
It is Pearl Jephcott at her very best – imaginative, creative, lateral
thinking in a way designed to document the reality of everyday life
for ordinary people.
More than any of her studies, it was the use of photography that
sets this book apart. For example, to highlight the loss of commu-
nity that living at height brings, Pearl photographed one resident
sitting in her chair to document what she could see from her win-
dow – which, when sat down, was the sky and the clouds. Only
when stood up was it possible to see the other houses and signs
of life below. Pearl has neatly captured the impact of social isola-
tion that came with homes in high flats in these two photographs.
Jephcott also includes pictures of children playing and laments the
sparsity of provision in the high-rise flats for young people’s social
and leisure time. Finally, in appendix C, there is perhaps one of the
first critical discussions of the role and function of graffiti. Here
Pearl records the graffiti offered by Glasgow gangs of the time,
including the marks made by the ‘Tiny Shamrock’ and floats the
idea that graffiti is a mark of territory designed to intimidate or
provoke.
Homes in High Flats, for me, serves another purpose. It was writ-
ten when one way of life was swept away in the Glasgow tene-
ments. This way of life was to be replaced by what, at the time,
was perceived to be something better. Pearl’s study captures the
moment the mothers of Glasgow tenements had to change their
behaviours and move away from cosy meetings on the doorstep or
chats out of the tenement windows. The book chronicled the point
when the everyday experiences of Glasgow’s children were changed
forever and are humorously accounted for in The Jeely Piece Song.
Yet, given the passage of time, many of the high-rise flats that
Pearl wrote about in this book have subsequently been demolished,
making way for yet further changes to the housing stock and ways
of living. Homes in High Flats also documents the very short-lived
experiment with brutalist architecture.
Homes in High Flats is a book that speaks to a specific point in
time. However, we can still learn from it as it is methodologically
rich and explores challenging housing experiences, the lessons of
which are still relevant today.
John Goodwin
University of Leicester
October 2022
