Born between 1945 and 1955?

[hillsbro]

Hi Dapper Dave - born in 1948, I don't really fit the profile of the sort of person you are looking for (I bought a house for my parents and myself) but if you're interested in social history and post-war housing generally you might like to have a read anyway. I'm the little one in the 1951 photo..

 

My brother left home when he got married in 1971 and for 18 months he and his wife lived in a tiny flat over a shop. Then the council offered them a 2-bedroom flat at Jordanthorpe. In 1978 they and their two little girls moved to a new council house at Totley, which they eventually bought. They sold it in 1999 and bought a semi at High Storrs which they've just finished paying for. So they went from private rental to a council flat, then a council house and (thanks to Mrs Thatcher's "right to buy") got their foot on the property ladder..

[Ms Macbeth]

In those days a much smaller proportion of youngsters left home to follow higher education - university/college courses.

The majority left school at 15, found employment and stayed in the family home until they married.

After marrying in the early '70s our first house was a mid terrace rented from my employer the NCB for thirty shillings a week, which was cheap and allowed us to save a deposit to buy a property later. It was a dead ringer of those on the original opening credits of Coronation Street. Having said it was cheap, it was also unmodernised and very basic. Draughty single glazed sash windows, a bath you couldn't use because of the rust, no fitted cupboards in the kitchen, a pot sink and an open fire to heat the place. We supplemented that with a paraffin heater; remember them?

With the exception of a fridge, a washing machine and a table and chairs set which were wedding presents everything else was second hand or hand me downs. The style of our first three piece suite made from black vinyl was very 1950s. Ikea currently have very similar designs, which proves that if you keep something long enough it'll comes back into fashion!

All this was before affluenza took hold of people and materialism became the nation's religion.

Forty years on, thankfully conditions have improved for us, but you have to start somewhere and the struggle for advancement is rewarding in its own right. I can honestly say that way back then,for all our lack worldly goods, we were content and happy, much as our own parents were with even less.

 

My parents started with much more than we did! Their big mistake was in never buying a house. They were older than we were when they got married and my father had a good job. But like many people in the 40s & 50s they viewed a mortgage as a millstone! Although I was brought up in a private rented flat, it was in a nice area and, unlike many of my classmates' homes, had a bathroom. We even had a phone when I was a child, but not a TV. My first few homes after marriage were not an improvement on my childhood home.

 

We still have a couple of decent pieces of furniture that my parents bought in the early 30s when they married, along with the receipts which make interesting reading. None of the stuff we bought in the 60s (as others have said, mainly second hand or freebies) lasted anywhere near as long. We missed out on the black vinyl suite though.