The Crane Composite Houses, Wollaton Park Estate, Nottingham
Following the First World War, the prime minister David Lloyd George promised that he would strive to make Britain "a place fit for heroes to live in", recognising that much needed to be done to improve the condition of working class housing. The Minister of Health, Dr Christopher Addison, introduced a Housing Act (1919) which charged local authorities with helping to secure improvement in the standard of working class housing. Nottingham City Council embraced this responsibility and suitable sites were identified across the city for development. By the end of 1924, twenty housing developments had been financed and more than 1,500 new homes were completed. Progress was hampered by the fact that materials and skilled labour were in short supply. To get round these problems a number of companies offered houses built in an entirely new fashion.
Steel Houses - sheet metal was fixed to the outside of a timber-framed structure while various materials were 
offered for use as internal walling. Designs include the Atholl Steel House, the Telford Steel House and the Weir Steel House.
Concrete Houses - walls were formed by pouring concrete into shuttering made of wood or metal. Designs included the Kent System of Concrete House Construction.
Such houses could be constructed much more quickly, were as cheap if not cheaper than a conventional brick property, and used relatively unskilled labour of which there was no shortage.
The Ministry of Health showed considerable 
interest in these new building techniques and local authorities agreed to erect a steel house in its own locality, which once constructed could be inspected by the general public. Nottingham’s Housing Committee had been to Glasgow and Blackpool in order to inspect various different types of housing. On their return, the chairman of the committee, William Crane (1874-1960), who also happened to be the head of a building firm, was inspired to come up with his own design for a "house of special construction".
He envisaged houses where the main framework of the walls and roofing 
trusses were made of steel. Once erected the framework walls were filled in with precast concrete slabs. The houses would be known as "Crane" Composite Houses and the Wollaton Park Estate was thus conceived as a bold experiment using this new building technique.
The Ministry of Health agreed that a Crane house be built alongside the proposed steel house. These were located (and remain) at the St. Ann’s end of the Wells Road near the Morley Schools.
The Housing Committee, 
requested tenders for the erection of between 500 and 1,000 Crane houses, initially envisaging that the houses would be built on several sites. By mid 1924, a portion of the parkland near Wollaton Hall, about 93 acres in size, was earmarked for housing. This was an ideal site for all 1,000 Crane houses. The site was purchased by the Nottingham Corporation from the 11th Baron Middleton on 15 May 1925.
Messrs John Booth & Sons, constructional engineers of Hulton Steelworks, 
Bolton, who had built the show home on the Wells Road, were awarded the contract for the estate. Work commenced in March 1926 on 940 houses in pairs and 60 individual houses at an estimated cost of £464,472. In July 1926, halfway through the project, the City Council had a change of heart. John Booth & Sons were paid off and new tenders sought for the construction of 313 houses using traditional building techniques. These took some three years to complete and were built by Messrs Bosworth & Lowe of Nottingham.
Constructional techniques apart, the estate was unusual in that the City Council had commissioned its construction with the intention of selling the houses to the general public. A semi-detached Crane house costing about £490 was offered on easy terms of payment. After a deposit of £40 had been paid buyers could pay 14s 6d per week for twenty years, the house then became the property of the buyer. A detached Crane house would cost £515. The brick-built houses proved to be a little more expensive, with prices ranging between £530 and £675.
By 1928, the number of new houses built by the City Council had escalated to 4,750 thanks to the experimentation with new building techniques and materials. However, the council rejected the Crane house as an answer to the city’s housing needs and returned to more traditional designs and techniques for housing development.
