Ultra tough Baltic pine to be precise. Nothing surprising in that these days.

Timber framed houses go up in steadily increasing numbers and wooden  ‘Eco’ houses  are trendy for their warmth and ‘green’ credentials.

But my Swedish House is much older, from 1947. When built it caused a sensation.

Fireplaces in every room, fitted wardrobes in every bedroom.

Luxuries unheard of in Spartan post war Britain, with it’s general housing shortage.

Not quite a stately home, but in rural East Yorkshire in 1947, almost as good as!

My unusual house was the first here to be occupied.  I’m told local folk queued up to visit for a look round. Which must have been an amazing experience for the village Post-lady,  Edna King, who lived here for most of her life. These houses are rare but not unique. They pop up in small pockets around the UK, many erected in Scotland for forestry workers. Several East Riding villages.

Technically, it’s not a house I live in, but a villa. A Swedish Villa, and this little group, tucked away so carefully few villagers even know they are here, are the only ones in the country I have been able to find that go by that name.

They seem very typical of the Forties.

Good design almost seventy years ago made these houses the model for trendy‘Eco Houses’ pioneering a design facing the main windows to the back and to the south for privacy, and to make the most of the briefest sunshine, which floods the house with as much natural light and warmth as possible.

Today this is called ‘solar architecture’ and much praised.

Inspired by traditional cosy wooden houses built in Sweden northwards for hundred of years, houses like mine came to the UK, flat packed and on cargo ships, from  Scandinavia, at the end of the war at the same time as the ubiquitous pre-fabs.

But pre-fabs they are not.

Wooden prefabricated homes made in sections, factory homes, as they were called,

were a response to desperate housing shortages between the wars as well as after. Many folk also built chalets as holiday retreats. These were gradually extended and turned into proper homes as shortages bit.

Shanty towns thrown up as temporary homes for builders and road and railway workers stayed past their sell-by date and became permanent.

In mainly rural areas like Yorkshire wooden homes are a cosy and characterful part of the landscape. There are coastal homes  to see - a complete wooden estate a Flamborough, sea road cottages at Aldbrough, more wooden houses at Withersea, Hornsea, Filey, much loved old chalets at Bridlington.

Wooden houses at Hollym in Holderness were said to have inspired Winifred Holtby when writing South Riding.

Some even featured on cinema’s Pathe News!

But when most people think of prefabricated homes they are the little detached bungalows of wood or aluminium built between 1944 and 1948 under Churchill’s Temporary Housing Programme.  

He promised 500,000 little bungalows; 156,623 got built - they were too expensive at £1,324 each. American prefabs were too fragile to last in British weather, but many UK ones (some famously of recycled aeroplanes and Mulberry harbour - mulberry harbours built just down the road in Goole!) still stand, or disappeared only after a useful cherished life four to five times longer than planned.

Timber houses like mine are different. They are permanent - with a minimum life of over 150 years. And why not? Similar houses in Nordic countries, even America, have already stood for over 200 years. Their very design was part of the war effort.

As early as 1942 Churchill worried about not having enough homes fit for returning heroes - a scandalous deficit after the previous war.

A mystery began. An English architect was dispatched to Sweden to study the  Swedish prefabricated housing industry.

How did he get there, stay there, and return undetected in the midst of war? It seems MI6 and the Air Ministry were involved. Another mission the following year ordered houses for  the UK.

How were these daring trips planned and executed? No-one seems to know. Records are few.

For so many reasons these Swedish villas are special. They were always meant to be permanent, larger and better than prefabs. Only 2,444 were built, mainly between 1946 and 1951, of the 10,000 intended. . High cost quality materials, and care in construction were to blame.

Nowadays perhaps half that number still stand (having a large footprint, they have often been demolished to make way for more and smaller homes in the same plot) but it is hard to gather numbers.

Erected in small clusters around the country, to meet specific local, mainly rural, need, each was built for specific individuals with vital local skills or trades as the incentive of a smart new house to stop them heading for a town instead.

Most were erected by prisoners of war skilled in building wooden houses back home, billeted locally, and often knowing those they were building each specific house for and so refusing to scrimp on standards.

Sturdy, warm, lovely homes, these Swedish Villas have steeply pitched slate roofs to throw off rain and weather, deep concrete and brick foundations holding them above damp and flood, just like mediaeval cruck cottages or Elizabethan houses. Solid sections of vertical match boarding give the Swedish houses their unique character - most jobs can be reached with a short ladder, solved with hammer and nails!

The insulation making these houses so snug it is buttercup yellow natural felt, made from sheep’s wool. An energy efficiency assessor came the other week and was delighted at the performance of a sixty year old house. Swedish design for combating cold weather takes some beating!

The days when these houses were thought second rate have long gone. English Heritage is trying to list four in Norton, South Yorkshire because of the unique place they have in twentieth century social, architectural and housing history.

Even  pretty tourist areas like Bath and Dorset are striving to retain their special Swedish houses, reflecting growing interest in post-war architecture, Forties style and a design that was the practical forerunner of modern ecological housing.

People who live in them know this! Many residents stayed by choice all their lives (we are only the second people to live in our house in 62 years) The sense of light and spaciousness, warmth and sturdiness of these houses need to be experienced to be appreciated.

As forgotten gems these are affordable, snug, and important houses. Only family responsibilities are making us sell up and move to the other side of Yorkshire now we have restored our Swedish villa and brought it back to life. We will regret leaving it, but will always feel privileged to have owned and lived in our special Swedish Villa. If only there was one available where we are moving to!

  updated March 2011