A detail that has disappeared, this was the smallest house in Keighley, photographed at Damside in 1924.

It was simply a basement and a flight of half-a-dozen well-worn steps up to a single tiny room heated by a fire with a tall chimney-stack, squashed between normal buildings. In the basement, a dyer had once worked two vats.

Homes like this demonstrated the need for change. At Keighley in 1927, some 79,144 square yards at Guard House were allocated for Corporation housing, to be followed by more at Broomhill, Highfield and Woodhouse.

Corporation houses stood 12 to the acre, each with a garden. In some town centre areas demolished between the wars, they had been crammed as many as 66 to the acre. Out of one block of 107 old dwellings, 93 had been back-to-back and 22 were infested with bugs.