The Victorian suburbs that are such familiar elements of the British townscape were once building sites where armies of anonymous workmen converged to cover open land with streets of modest but comfortable houses. Despite their large scale and uniform appearance, most developments were built a few houses at a time by small firms operating on the narrowest of profit margins. Everyone on the building site had his place in the hierarchy of trades and the sequence of work, and each craftsman guarded his own tools and trade secrets, his only means of surviving in work that was dirty, strenuous and...