Pre Fabulous ----- Home Fit For Heros.

I am ones again up on my much used proverbial soap box...........

This time to tell yet another sad tale of how we are in the process of losing FOREVER yet another part of our history.......Our Heritage......

This time I am talking Prefabs or as the small but perfect homes were ones called.....

HOMES FIT FOR HEROS

 

This Picture of Hector Murdoch's historic homecoming in 1946 became one of the war's most famous images


The first prefabs were completed June 1945 only weeks after the war had ended.
Factories that had previously been employed to build other products such as Aeroplanes were converted to build sections of the innovative new houses.
It took a minimum of 40 man-hours to assemble the two bedroom houses complete with plumbing and heating.
Sometimes as in the case of those prefabs built in Catford prisoners of war who were still being held in the country were used to help in the construction of the concrete slabs on which the sections of prefabs were erected.

The prefabs could be completed very quickly once the sections were delivered to the site.
Unlike traditional houses they had fully fitted kitchens and bathrooms.
Despite the construction of 156,622 prefabs the country still faced an acute housing shortage and waiting lists soared in urban areas

                              

In Catford South -East London on the Excalibur Estate only six of the remaining 187 compact bungalows, prefabs erected from factory-built panels by German and Italian prisoners of war in 1945 and 1946, will be saved, these six received Grade-II listing last year.
The remainder of the Excalibur estate in Catford, south-east London, will be demolished, along with its tin-roofed prefab church, St Mark's, believed to be one of a kind.....

As a child growing up in Ilford Essex I remember only to well the prefabs that backed on to Barking Park in Loxford Lane, opposite Loxford Park....

Oh how I longed to live in one of them.......

I also remember these homes being demolished and replaced by concrete soulless  maisonettes.......I can remember thinking then..... why ???



These prebas (homes) were expected to last for only 10 years but they proved very popular with some residents, so much so that these 187 are still being lived in and are part of our heritage.

The question has to be asked When will we learn........

Cheerio Ho.