In 1974, the Maunsel Housing Society commissioned the Farrell Grimshaw Partnership to build a series of small infill housing schemes at various locations around London's perimeter including Luton, Romford and Croydon, and were designed to a common approach.

Dwellings were developed as a combination of boxes all constructed from repetitive panels. Wherever possible the scheme was for houses rather than flats. Where density prevented this family maisonettes were placed over one-storey lower ground floor flats, providing each dwelling with its own front door accessible from the street and an amount of private open space in the form of a terrace, patio or garden. Shared internal spaces such as stairs and corridors were eliminated from initial plans with the aim of giving greater tenant identification with, and control over, their own home. Houses and upper maisonettes were built with a lightweight timber construction whilst flats on the lower ground floor were constructed from masonary which gave a higher standard of sound and fire separation from the maisonette above.

One single timber frame contractor was used, but contractors local to each site were used for the building phase, so that the cost benefits of local contracting were combined with the best use of factory mass produced methods.