New Battersea council homes will be named after First World War heroes awarded the Victoria Cross.

Haine Court, Lascelles House and Edward Foster Court are being built on the Patmore and Savona housing estates, providing 57 new council.

Awarded for bravery “in the face of the enemy”, the Victoria Cross is the highest award of the UK honours system.

War heroes who fought with “extraordinary courage”

Corporal Edward Foster, of Tooting, was a council dustman before joining 13th Battalion of The East Surrey Regiment, raised by the mayor of Wandsworth in 1915.

On 24 April, 1917, the 31-year-old was fighting near the French village of Villers-Plouich.

The battalion was held up by a German trench position strengthened with barbed wire and a machine gun.

Cpl Foster stormed the trench but during hand to hand combat lost his gun and used grenades to dislodge the enemy.

He managed to recover his gun shortly afterwards.

Cpl Foster was also awarded the Médaille Militaire, France’s third highest decoration for bravery. He survived the war and lived in Tooting until his death in 1946.

In 1917, Reginald Haine, of Earlsfield, was a second lieutenant serving in the Honourable Artillery Company near Gavrelle in northern France when his position came under fire from a larger German force.

The young officer, who was born in 1896, led six counter-attacks that seized key positions along with 50 prisoners and two machine guns which he defended until the morning when he took the initiative again and recaptured lost ground.

He led his men with for 30 hours of continuous fighting.

Second lieutenant Haine survived the war and attained the rank of Lieutenant Colonel in the Indian Army, receiving a Military Cross for action on the North West Frontier in 1919. He commanded a Home Guard battalion in the Second World War and died years later in 1982.

Born on October 12, 1880, in Nightingale Lane, Balham, Arthur Moore Lascelles was an acting captain in the third Battalion Durham Light Infantry when his position at Masnieres in France came under heavy bombardment on December 3, 1917.

Despite being wounded by shrapnel Captain Lascelles continued to fight alongside his men.

Continued heavy fire eventually prompted him to mount a counter-attack which drove back the enemy.

Captain Lascelles was killed in action less than a year later at Fontaine-au–Bois on November 7, 1918, just days before the Armistice was signed.

The new homes are expected to be completed in phases from mid-2018. 

Since Queen Victoria introduced the prestigious honour in 1856 for acts of courage during the Crimean War, the medal has been awarded 1,358 times to 1,355 people.