A steamroller on the Craven Vale Estate, Brighton, 1953

The years following the end of the Second World War saw an increased demand for housing. Large areas of the town had been designated for slum clearance, and there was a clear need for new housing to replace this.

During the late 1940s and early 1950s, several new housing estates were built in Brighton. The Borough Engineer and Surveyor's department was responsible for planning, constructing and surveying many of these. The sites were extensively photographed, and individual construction techniques were often recorded in detail. Some of these photographs also had notes added to them by the Borough Engineers themselves, and seem to have been used for demonstration purposes.