The origins of prefabs have been traced back to the flimsy contraptions that shepherds carried around on their backs to kip in at night. The solid palaces we live in today were a nineteenth century invention. In 1830 prefab evolution took a quantum leap forward when H.John Manning, a London carpenter, pre-cut pieces of timber for his son who was emigrating to Australia. These were stored on board ship, and then assembled together in the "lucky country" to make the 'Manning Portable Colonial Cottage.'
Sixty years later with the "I can if Yukon!" gold rush another moment of what evolutionists call "punctuated equibrium" took place. Mail order companies started sending prospectors self-assembly prefab packs. These were so effective that prefabs are still all the rage in the Klondike today. In 1908 Sears Roebuck & Co. got in on the 'prefabs by mail order' act, and it continued to be big business for the next thirty-two years.
Dai 'Tolstoy' Lectic believes there is some kind of "elective affinity"(how he loves Goethe's well-trodden phrase!) between the American Frontier and the British Prefab Estate. In both places new forms of collective existence were forged,and the similarities do not end there. Doubles of Roy Rodgers, Wyatt Earp, the Lone Ranger, Hopalong Cassidy and other stars of the Saturday morning matinee circuit can be seen drifting around our estate on the look out for indigenous native peoples to annihilate. recently they have been joined by teddy boys who refuse to step outside their front doors without carefully adjusting their bootlace ties.
If there is any truth in the claim that architecture is frozen music, then de-frosting a prefab would unleash the pulsating beat of Frankie Lane's Rawhide! Yet prefabs look remarkably like wig-wams, and if you look at our class location then we would be on the same side as the Red Indians!