Prefabs

My parents and two sisters lived in a Prefab in Woodlands Avenue in Hutton Essex. My mother told me how she never ever wanted to leave it when they were given a new 3 bedroom house in Hawthorn Avenue, Brentwood. I will ask my parents if they can locate the pictures of the Prefab which the Oak tree still survives they had in the back garden.

I would think the locals would like the Prefabs to still be there as around 5 blocks of flats were built there in the late 60s and its a war zone with all the local crime eminating from said flats. I have had my car damaged by the kids throwing stuff at you as you drive past. (just a bit of local history for you)

Prefabs, bah, you soft southerners!

My mate Dave and his folks had to make do with a Nissen hut, corrugated tin and all, until a proper council house became available.

That would be about 1960-ish when the little Close that he lived on was finally demolished.

Apparently, Sandbach Urban District Council couldn’t afford prefabs!

Fascinating Bri. Thanks for posting that.

Moggy

Prefabs in War

Don’t know if I’m too late for this thread, but you might like to hear from someone the prefabs were built for!

My family, including myself, were moved into a prefab in Clapham, South London, after our house in nearby Tooting was bombed. We saw the prefab being built and moved in when it was finished. My memory of it was that it was extremely cold. The flooring was made from a brown ‘liquid’ that was poured and spread and that was very cold underfoot!

If you are interested, our house ‘copped’ the engine of a buzz-bomb (V1). My parents were sleeping in, or rather under, the indoor Morrison shelter at the time and it saved their lives. Our Mum found the V1 engine at the bottom of the stairs!

Bri 🙂

On the way in to London Victoria, the railway passes over a road with terraced houses down either side. Close to the line, there is a gap in the houses on either side of the road still occupied by a couple of prefabs. It’s not too hard to imagine a stick of bombs being aimed at the railway, and catching the houses as well.

Evidence, like this, of the blitz is still to be seen quite often.

do SECO huts qualify? i used to live in seco 7 at binbrook in early eighties. i beleive they were short term accomodation for temporary use during ww2. after that i spent the remaining time in a portakabin,ok but the showers used to freeze up during winter and you had to take a kettle of hot water to the shower to thaw the drain out first!

Ironically there is a mini estate of prefabs at the back of the Ciba Geigy plant at Duxford, also some two storey in Sawston, wonder if the museum realised all that when they acquired theirs?

At RAF Nicosia in 1961 I had the pleasure to share an 8 man ALTENT with only a companion. The Altent, made from aluminium was supposed to be one step up from a canvas tent but not as quick to erect being 8 sided if my memory serves me right with door and window, roof of 8 pieces with vent on apex and a wooden floor. Cold in the winter and flaming hot in the summer. I shared it with ‘Daisy’ Mays who liked the extra space to develop and print films. The print dryer came in useful for warming the bed after a trip to the NAAFI on a cold Cyprus night.

Still a few here in Edinburgh, when people bought them and wanted to build a new house on the site, the new house has to be built over the prefab.
All very strange as they are not listed are they?.
Great one at Eden Camp just North of York.

There were I think two huge estates of prefabs in Welwyn Garden City when I lived there throughout the sixties. I believe they’re all gone now.

There are still a fair number in Chesterfield that are still lived in.

There is a row of prefabs in Chelmsford…..Beeches Road I think it is.They look to have been modernised a bit,perhaps to remove any nasty materials.

Across the road is Meteor Way,where the ATC keep a (wait for it…)Meteor on their premesis.Don’t know the history behind it,anyone out there know?

I think that the problem with prefabs is the asbestos they were made from. That is why the councils are trying to do away with them. They are excellent accommodation and cheap to make and site but too unhealthy for this modern world.

CS

I think this is the pic (from the thread Question from an 8 year Old If you were an Aircraft) which triggered this thread. This prefab at Gallowhill, Paisley was erected in 1947. My parents lodged with my dad’s elderly mother. There was some sort of family fall out in 1957 and we had to leave her house and move into the prefab as a homeless family in temporary accommodation. In the event we stayed there until 1966. From the bedroom window there was a brilliant view of aircraft revving up at the 08 threshold of the old Renfrew Airport, where my dad worked for BEA, and as a young lad I soon recognised Yorks, Bristol 170’s, Vikings, Viscounts, Dakotas etc. As can be seen an Anderson shelter was provided for storing coal and garden tools. Later my dad retrained on jet engines and worked for Rolls Royce Aero Engines at Hillington and I joined 2175 squadron ATC (Rolls Royce Glasgow Squadron). All the prefabs at Gallowhill had gone by about 1970, but on the other side of town there was another, smaller group of prefabs which were classed as permanent and had extra features such as garden walls. These prefabs were reclad in the 1970’s and most were sold off by the Council and are now highly sought after as small bungalows. There are about twenty or thirty of them in the group, adjacent to the A726 road next to Dykebar Garden Centre.

I remember them well here in the Midlands. There is a whole row of them still in use and beautifully maintained in a road in the South of Birmingham named Wake Green Road (not far from Sarehole Mill of Tolkien fame) – they are the only ones now remaining in this city. Here are two links to recent colour illustrations. I think they are now protected through listing:
http://www.virtualbrum.co.uk/images/moseley/prefabs3.jpg
http://www.virtualbrum.co.uk/images/moseley/prefabs4.jpg

In addition to the preserved one at Duxford there is an “Arcon V prefab” preserved at the Avoncroft buildings museum near Bromsgrove in Worcestershire:
http://www.avoncroft.org.uk/

All rather a tenuous link to aircraft but still interesting.

Never lived in one, but the estate that backed on to South Liberty Lane at Ashton in Bristol, close to where I worked at the time, was all prefabs. When the councils started selling off their housing many of these were snapped up for very reasonable prices. Some were refurbished others were demolished and rebuilt as modern homes with quite good sized gardens.

Live local link of the area.

http://local.live.com/default.aspx?v=2&cp=51.430379~-2.628004&style=a&lvl=18&tilt=-90&dir=0&alt=-1000&scene=4249967&rtp=null~null

I’m sure there are still some lived in in Grantham.

I lived in one when i was a teenager for a couple of years, must have been about 1976ish, quite liked it myself, always come over a bit misty eyed and nostalgic when i see the one at Duxford.

Yes, this is an aviation subject as they were built to replace housing destroyed by German bombing.

Hi Pete, This is even better, due to a huge aluminium stock, the British government decided to built 50.000 aluminium houses, the last one to be deliver in August 1947. Because the aluminium was store next to Aircraft companies and because they had the labour and the skill to work with aluminium those companies built those houses.

Among them :
Bristol (weston Super Mare)
Hawksley (Hucclecote)
Vickers Armstrong (Chester & Blackpool)
Blackburn (Dumbarton)

Cheers,

Olivier

After aircraft orders dried, prefab aluminium shells were built by Bristol (at Banwell, I thought), General at Hanworth, Short at Sydenham, Vickers at Chester and Blackpool. Metal was, sort of, free, from aero stocks, and labour was a means of holding on to some aero capacity. I saw the Chinese doing the same thing at Harbin in 1985 – they also used up H-5 Beagle stocks on hi-rise buildings window frames and public phone kiosks.

As Anderson Shelters are mentioned….

AIR RAID SHELTERS
During the war, a total of 2,250,000 Anderson air raid shelters were erected in Britain. Named after its designer, Dr David A. Anderson, they cost seven pounds for those earning over 250 Pounds Sterling per year, free for those earning less. The Ministry of Home Security ordered that these shelters must be up by June 11, 1940, and that they be covered by earth to a depth of 15 inches on top and 30 inches on sides and back. In the spring of 1941, the Morison shelter was introduced, a low steel cage for use indoors. Cost was the same as for the Anderson shelter. When the sides were folded down the steel top could be used as a table. A total of 38 million gas-masks were also distributed. By 1941, public air raid shelters in London were fitted with 462,000 bunks for adults and 11,000 for children. Bunks were also provided in 46 of London’s Tube Stations. Stacked in warehouses were millions of cardboard coffins in expectations of many dead from air raids.