My Mum's wish come true

Brand new house

Our family moved to Stephens Road in 1953 to a brand new three bedroom house. My mother used to hold my hand and point to the estate when we visited my aunt near Five Ways, and say that she wished that we could get a house there. At the time we were living in a small basement flat with my grandmother which was pretty crowded.

My own room

When we moved into Stephens Road, I remember the joy of having a bedroom for myself after sharing with my parents. My father was overjoyed with the garden and planted it with potatoes completely ‘to break up the soil’ Not that there was much soil, he wheel barrowed hundreds of loads of chalk away from the garden. The following year we had a lawn and flowers on one third of the garden and vegetables on the other; the plots were divided by a trellis.

A 1950s parking system

Everyone who moved in was very proud of their homes, and kept the grass verges cut neatly and swept the pavements. After the war with the shortage of homes, it was like a palace and I remember very happy times playing with friends out in the street and on the ‘field’. I have taken my children back to see where we lived, but it looks small now and the roads narrow with all the cars parked. There were only a few cars in the 1950s, and I remember as more people acquired cars, the parking was on one side of the road on even days and the other on odd days. It worked well.