Social Housing in Sheffield

[Orwin]

I'm looking for memories of someone's first council/housing association home: the difference it made to their lives. I'm especially interested in people who may remember living in terraced streets and then moving on to a new estate with gardens front and back.

[hillsbro]

Hi Orwin - I never actually lived in a council house, but I well remember living in a terraced house on Low Road, Woodland View in the early 1950s. No modern plumbing, outside loo (shared with next door) that froze in winter etc. etc. The houses were demolished in 1964 under the slum clearance scheme, and our former neighbours moved up the hill to the newly-built Roscoe Bank estate. Nobody really wanted to move, but when they found themselves in lovely new houses, maisonettes or flats with bathrooms, modern heating and no traipsing to the outside loo they were delighted. My aunt, uncle and two cousins had a very nice council house on Roscoe Mount with gardens front and back and lovely views over Rivelin. You may like to read this article that resulted from a journalist seeing my posts on an earlier Forum thread about back-to-back houses etc. I'm the little one in the 1950 photo!

[Orwin]

Thanks, Hillsbro. Can I come back to you at a later date for details of who your neighbours and relatives were? This is so I can interview them for a study I may be doing into the history of Social Housing in the city.

[hillsbro]

Hi Orwin - I'm happy to help in any way I can, though most of the people who moved up the hill in 1964 are no longer around...

[flyer]

Orwin don't take no notice of Hillsbro I will be pleased to attend an interview all you have to do is pay my fare from Canada and put me up in a class hotel including meal of course,but that go's without saying

[chimay]

I'm looking for memories of someone's first council/housing association home: the difference it made to their lives. I'm especially interested in people who may remember living in terraced streets and then moving on to a new estate with gardens front and back.

 

I remember living in a terraced house down Attercliffe with an outside loo and a tin bath in front of the fire. Moving up to Batemoor with central heating, my own bedroom, a bathroom, hot and cold running water, gardens, a playing field, my mum getting her first washing machine and her first fridge, our own telephone (it was a shared line to begin with). The move made so many differences; a warm house in winter, privacy, baths when I wanted them, growing my own flowers, running riot on the playing field, mum spending every Sunday morning doing the washing in her own twin tub instead of going to the wash house, frozen fish fingers and frozen peas for tea and finally phoning my mates to see if they were going out to play instead of going round to their house and knocking for them.