Pendower Estate

Newcastle Corporation purchased the 60 acre estate in 1919 for £37,500 with the intention to use 45 acres for housing. The remainder was intended for schooling with Pendower House and its immediate grounds to be used as a Special School, and the land immediately behind Benwell Tower to be used as the site of an elementary school. This first phase was built under the Housing, Town Planning etc Act 1919 (the Addison Act) and Pendower was the first land purchase by the Corporation under this scheme
The first parts of the estate to be built were Pendower Way (initially intended to be called Pendower Lane), Fox & Hounds Lane and West Road. The Pendower Estate houses were constructed to the Tudor Walters standards and laid out in the Garden Suburb model at a density of about 12-14 houses to the acre in comparison with 20 houses or more per acre in other parts of Benwell. About 150 houses were built in all, the first tenants moved into their houses at the end of 1922.
The later part of the estate was built under the 1924 Housing (Financial Provisions) Act (the Wheatley Act), which introduced a financial subsidy for the building of council houses at a controlled rent. The early tenants were drawn from the better off working class renting privately elsewhere in the west end of the city: Benwell, Elswick & Arthurs Hill. The initial rents were set at the range of 9/3d to 12/3d net, which was well beyond poorer inhabitants of the city. By the completion of the estate in 1931, a total of 589 council houses had been constructe with the majority between 1925 and 1928.