They were common in the industrial towns of Yorkshire, Lancashire and the Midlands. They provided the greatest amount of floor area at the lowest cost.

With only one outside wall, they were cheaper to build, cheaper to rent and they were flexible, allowing for a variety of rooms and sites. They could be sited close to the mills and the factories in which the occupants worked.

They provided neighbours for help and support in time of need: mothers and children visited each other's houses and in the alleys, courts and backyards children played while their parents gossiped.

Yet the strong sense of community had disadvantages: back-to-back houses were condemned as the centres of overcrowding, lacking ventilation and suitable sanitary provision.

The more 'respectable' of the working class began to abandon them for newer and more comfortable, if more expensive, houses, and their old homes degenerated into multi-occupancy and squalor.

In the 1920s and 1930s progress was slowed by the opposition to change of local politicians, property owners and ratepayers. The Vicar of Batley Carr himself objected to the demolition of insanitary property in his parish – a notorious focus of slums and overcrowding. The council continued to drag its feet on housing policy – very few new houses were built in these years, and the demolition of the slums was impossible because of the absence of suitable alternative accommodation.

As late as 1957 the Medical Officer of Health, Dr Caithness, stated that Batley had 'almost the biggest slum clearance problem in Britain, and Batley had the highest ratio of overcrowding of any town in the West Riding.'

By the mid-1950s there were still 831 overcrowded houses with 3,319 people living in them, but there had been a sustained drive to clear the slums – 3,770 houses had been demolished, 2,200 families comprising 6,000 persons had been re-housed and 2,538 new council houses had been built on new estates on the outer margins away from the urban centre.

The 1960s saw a housing revolution in Batley. State subsidy and council action achieved success in massive building programmes – more than 240 new houses were provided every year. By 1971 only 181 slum houses remained for eventual demolition.

A process begun by the voluntary movements of the upper and middle classes over the past 200 years had been completed for the working class by compulsion.

* Pictures courtesy of Malcolm Haigh's Historical Snapshots of Batley and Birstall. For details of Malcolm's available books contact him at 64 Solway Road, Batley WF17 6HH, call 01924 479824 or email malcolmhhaigh@hotmail.com.