Crooks Place - Early residential development beyond the City walls

Although sharing some basic charactersitics with the old courts and yards, namely the properties were tenanted and occupied by the ‘working classes’, they were not built in a court formation, and they lay outside the city walls. When first built they offered better accommodation, together with plenty of light and most had small gardens. However, over time, they became dilapidated and became part of the inter-war slum clearance programme. Significantly, the Crook's Place clearance had many interesting features, in particular it straddled WWII causing immense hardship for those who lived there, whilst its fate was eventually tied up with the development of the hospital and the birth of the NHS.