About the Bungalow

Bungalow Industries is based in a Fahrenheit 451 bungalow on the award-winning Renway development: Edgcumbe Park, Crowthorne, Berkshire – the futuristic estate Truffaut brought to the big screen in his 1966 classic film starring Julie Christie & Oskar Werner.

A Renway Type 60A bungalow like ours, and that in Fahrenheit 451

Fahrenheit 451 - the temperature at which book paper catches fire - is “A novel of a strange and weird future.” Author Ray Bradbury depicts a dystopic futuristic society where books are prohibited - and if found, incinerated. In the film, the story’s rebel fireman, Montag, resided in a Renway Type 60 bungalow. Watch the trailer

Fahrenheit 451 book jacket
Julie Christie and Francois Truffaut after filming Fahrenheit 451 in Edgcumbe Park, Crowthorne, Berkshire
Julie Christie and Director, Francois Truffaut celebrate the end of a day's filming on location in Edgcumbe Park for Truffaut's 1966 classic: Fahrenheit 451.

The estate of the future that time forgot

Edgcumbe Park, the award-winning vision of Athelstan Whaley, director of the Renway Construction Company, was a landmark development of Scandinavian and American open-plan influence, built between 1958 - 1970.

Roads and paths meander through the wooded landscape, once part of Windsor Great Park. Indeed, the estate was built around the existing pine, mountain ash, oak and silver birch rather than bulldoze the site - a quite unique approach.

The houses were of radical and luxurious design for their time, featuring generous American-style family 'rumpus' rooms, double glazing and warm-air heating. These aspirational homes commanded a premium then, as they do today.

Manners are a requirement for Edgcumbe Park residents!
Daily Mail ca. 1965

Curiously, Edgcumbe Park has slipped under the radar of mid-century modern appreciation, despite its cinematographic credit. A great number of the properties remain in their original condition and are timepieces of past modernity. With growing appreciation of mid-century modern architecture - and with talk of a preservation order on the estate - Edgcumbe Park, we hope, may once again reach a wider audience and receive the attention its unspoilt individuality deserves.

Renway adverts for Edgcumbe Park, Crowthorne, Berkshire, UK
A selection of the original sales and marketing advertisements that appeared in The Times, The Observer, the Daily and the Sunday Telegraph - as well as the B.O.A.C. and B.E.A. Gazettes - the estate's proximity to Heathrow making it a favoured location of flightcrew of the era's burgeoning airlines.

Many thanks to The Edgcumbe Park Preservation Association (EPPA) whose archive of documents, photographs, records and architects' plans of the Estate we have drawn from here. Learn more about Edgcumbe Park and our passion for midcentury modernism here on our Journal.