was auctioned in 1916. The farm and its facilities were described in the auction catalogue as comprising "a picturesque farmhouse, two cottages and homestead of agricultural buildings, together with of arable land, of well-timbered and shaded pastures and cool meadows, [and] two pieces of woodland". None of this survives, apart from in the name of Woolborough Road: postwar housing now covers the land. The fields of the Crabbet Park estate were interspersed with allotments, and after the estate was broken up some housing was built, mostly directly off the London Road: Tushmore Lane, Cobbles Crescent and Woolborough Road had interwar ribbon development, there was some opposite The Sun Inn at the south end of London Road before it became Crawley High Street, and some "typical 1930s housing" on Green Lane. Altogether, 229 houses existed in the designated area at the start of World War II. A group of almshouses were built in 1939–40 on Northgate Road for the Worshipful Company of Dyers, a London livery company, which had moved from an older building in Islington. Crawley was designated as a New Town in January 1947 after the New Towns Act 1946 identified it as a suitable site for one. Crawley Development Corporation was formed, led by the architect Thomas Bennett, and planner Anthony Minoprio provided a master plan for the town's development. He proposed a double ring of nine neighbourhoods surrounding an extended town centre. Northgate was to form the northern part of the inner ring, between the town centre and the northern section of the planned Crawley ring road. Crawley Development Corporation's second annual report (1949) stated that Northgate was the second planned neighbourhood of nine, after West Green. Although 13 neighbourhoods were built in the end, the order of construction of the early neighbourhoods remained unchanged. Work got underway in 1950, when 162 houses were built. A higher proportion of flats was provided than elsewhere in Crawley: one-quarter of the residential units built in the early years were flats, and flats eventually made up 13% of Northgate's housing stock overall. Crawley Development Corporation also built 142 concrete houses, unique in the town, in 1955. Each New Town neighbourhood was to have a "neighbourhood centre" with shops, one or more churches, a pub, a primary school and a community centre. Work started on Northgate's in 1952 and the 13 shops were completed in 1953. Northgate suffered from the same