Bungalow Bliss

According to a survey from the Alliance & Leicester, more people in Wales than anywhere else in the UK see the bungalow as their dream home (35%). And whilst images of bungalows inspire thoughts of silver hair, 16-19 year olds were almost as likely as people in their 50s to want to avoid stairs by living in a bungalow (47% and 49% respectively)!

So bungalows are back in fashion it seems, which is just where they started as the earliest bungalows were home to trend-setting bohemians and artists. In 1882 the famous pre-Raphaelite artist Dante Gabriel Rossetti fetched up at Birchington and had the dubious honour of becoming one of the first people in England to die in a bungalow! The name 'bungalow' dates right back to 1659 as an Anglicization of the Hindi Bangala, meaning 'of or belonging to Bengal'. But it wasn't until the 1860s that the first bungalow in Britain was built by a Colonel Bragg, who, returning from India, built a lodge with Indian features in Norwood, London, in the 1860s. He called it 'The Bungalow', which (believe it or not) is now Wales' most popular house name.

So where did it all go wrong? Well, one of the bestsellers of the '70s was a self-build manual called Bungalow Bliss by Frank MacDonald. Following its publication, and similar A-Zs of bungalow designs, a rash of owner-built bungalows began to spread across rural Wales. If you could be had up for 'crimes against architecture' then I think there may be a case for stringing up poor Frank, but at the end of the day all he did was give power to what must have been the social aspirations of a nation. No stairs, big windows, easy to clean, and a couple of concrete gnomes in the garden. Perfect.

But bungalows aren't all about shagpile carpets and bad Formica, and after investigating the history of these single-storey homes for Y Ty Cymreig, I had to eat my share of humble pie. Wales, it turns out, has some fantastic bungalows (yes, you read it correctly, Greg Stevenson using the words 'fantastic'and 'bungalow' in the same sentence), and we show four of the best on this week's programme. BACK