Commissions were sparse in the immediate pre-war period but they reunited after the war, working mostly on war-damage restoration and house alteration projects and the business progressed.

Their house designs usually had mono-pitch roofs with large, clerestory high level windows and open-plan interiors.

[3] Commercially, Lyons and Townsend targeted the young professional first-time property-buyer market and deliberately kept costs low, working to lower profit margins than established contemporaries.

[6] Bargood Estates went on to build 12 Townhouses at Chapel Street and North Walls Chichester embodying many of the Span features of openness, light and community,1963.

[9] As the project progressed, Townsend and Cushman were joined by another former Regent Street Polytechnic student, Leslie Bilsby (who had previously worked with Ernő Goldfinger and Denys Lasdun), to form Priory Hall Ltd.[10] Towards the end of the project, in 1955, landscape architect, Ivor Cunningham joined Lyons practice.

[11][12] A final addition to the landscaping at Parkleys was the commission of a statue, Pastorale, by artist, Keith Godwin, unveiled in 1956 by Sir Hugh Casson and filmed by Pathé.

[12][15] Constructed between 1954 and 1956, the development comprised 61 flats of type A, B and C and, like Parkleys, care was taken to retain the estate's mature trees.

It was controversial when built, but is explicitly included in the Taplow Village Conservation Area "because of the high quality of its design and the way it blends in with the landscape".

The ambitious New Ash Green project, an entire village conceived by Span, dating from 1966, hit substantial financial difficulties, causing Lyons to withdraw and Bilsby and Townsend to resign.

Bilsby and Townsend reunited in the late 1970s and formed SPAN Environments Ltd, working once more with Lyons and Cunningham as consultant architects, with Gostling, the builder from New Ash Green, doing the construction.