This thesis examines tile development of the urban housing. market in Britain during the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. During this period it was transformed from an essentially laissezfaire market based on private landlordism to one in which state housing and owner-occupation came to dominate the provision of new accommodation . The thesis looks in some detail at the form this transformation took and examines how and why it occurred . The pre-1914 structure of housing provision - which was based on private landlordism - was a small scale, localized system involving numerous actors within a fragmented social division of labour. This dominant structure of provision underwent a severe crisis during the Edwardian years - before the introduction of rent controls and state housing . The 1914-18 war saw a transformation in social relations within the housing market that ensured both the collapse of private landlordism and the intervention of the state in housing provisions After the war, two ' new structures of provision emerged involving a rationalized social division of labour and a larger scale of operations, based. on state housing and owner-occupation. ýLt the same time , the second-hand housing market was transformed: from 1915 much of the pre-war stock of dwellings was subject to rent and mortgage interest controls, while many landlords began to sell their dwellings to owner-occupiers. While many of these developments were a reflection of changes within the wider economy and society) the transformation was both accelerated and in part shaped by the effects of the 1914-18 war