The development company Span built 30 housing estates between 1948 and 1984. In his book The Spirit of Span Housing, James Strike says: “Span housing was the inspiration of two young men, who, during the 1930s, met as architectural students at the Regent Street Polytechnic. Eric Lyons and Geoffrey Townsend both had a keen interest in modern architecture… They believed that there was a market for well-designed houses in carefully designed landscapes for the sort of people who recognised good design when they saw it – and they were right.” Lyons was an architect with a strong Modernist pedigree having previously working with Maxwell Fry and Walter Gropius, who spent a brief spell in the UK having fled Nazi Germany. Lyons worked on Gropius’s Impington Village College in the late 1930s, a building that is now Grade I listed.

Span housing was the subject of an exhibition at the RIBA in 2006, and the accompanying book, entitled Eric Lyons & Span (ed Barbara Simms), gives a comprehensive survey of its history. “The work of the architect Eric Lyons,” it states, “is as well-loved now as it was vibrantly successful when first constructed. Built almost entirely for Span Developments, its mission was to provide an affordable environment ‘that gave people a lift’.”

Cedar Chase is one of the most celebrated of the Eric Lyons / Span collaborations. Using a strong black and white palette and with planting by Preben Jakobsen, it won a ‘Good Design for Housing’ award from the Ministry of Housing. The judges described Cedar Chase as “an outstanding example of how to use the minimum amount of materials to greatest effect, producing simple but very effective domestic architecture”.

Martin Knight, an architect and resident of Cedar Chase, calls it “a unique and brilliantly-conceived estate of family homes that has become an exemplar for modern, low-density housing… as an architect, the opportunity to buy into the Span legacy has provided a first-hand demonstration of the value of excellent design”.

Knight has also commented that “vital to the longevity and success of the development is the overall planning of the estate, and in particular its sympathetic positioning within a large, existing garden. The retained trees and shrubs were complemented by a new landscape and planting design that is now beautifully mature and well-maintained, and which continues to provide year-round variety and interest as well as a great place for families to play”.