Post War Housing

1945 - 1950

Dad was demobilised from the RAF on 10th October 1945. He went back to live in Portchester with his Mum and Uncle Peter, Audrey and Janice. By now they were at 78 The Crossway which had more room than the bungalow, being a two storey house. He met our Mum and they married on 7th June 1947 at St Marys Portchester. Arthur Dossett was one of the witnesses - quite probably the best man. They had four children (us!), Valerie in 1948, Martin in 1950, Richard in 1957, and Bob in 1958.

When they married in 1947 they lived for a while at an address in West Street Portchester, when Valerie was born in 1948. By 1950 they had moved to 2 Montague Road, North End which was probably bigger than where they were before. That's where they were living when Martin was born. The story of 2 Montague Road is here.

The Camp 1951 - 1955

In about 1951 we moved out of Portsmouth to Leigh Park. In the post war period there was an acute shortage of housing over the whole country, and Portsmouth was typical. Over the six years of war there had been no house building, and at the same time thousands of houses had been destroyed by bombing. Now with servicemen returning there was a huge demand for housing. Portsmouth City Council had started building a new housing estate at Leigh Park in 1947, but progress wasn't fast enough to keep up with demand. So in addition to the new houses the council used redundant Royal Navy shore establishments in the Havant and Bedhampton areas for temporary housing for families. The rent for a new house, I have been told, ranged from £1 12s. to £1 15s. (£1.60p to £1.75p) a week, according to the amount of bedrooms. The rent for a hut varied depending on whether it was a Nissen hut or brick built from 8s. 6d. to 15s. (42½p to 75p). With the average wage at the time about five pounds a week, that was a big difference and made about another pound a week available for living on.

The first house we had in Leigh Park was in Otterbourne Crescent. Many people found it difficult to afford the rent for a new house and opted to transfer to a hut in one of the camps. Which is exactly what we did.

There were five camps - their locations are shown on this 1948 map. We lived in the camp on the right at West Leigh.

The West Leigh camp was called Leigh Close, which later was renamed Martin Close. As you can see it's the only one of the camps which isn't actually drawn on the OS map. But we do have a map from 1953 at the time we lived there.

My earliest memories are of the time we lived at the camp. And from what I remember I am very certain that the hut we lived in is the one coloured yellow. I remember playing in the open grassed area in front of the huts, and playing in and around the hall on the other side of the road. At the time I was aged 3 or 4, and Val was 2 years older. The hall had a tower and Val remembers climbing a fixed ladder inside the tower.

So what were the huts like? Robert Hind has written a history of these camps which you can find here. My thanks to him for allowing us to use his research. It's clear that there were different kinds of huts across the camps, but the West Leigh huts are described as being made of concrete slabs and more modern than Nissen huts. I've done some more research into this and the West Leigh huts were actually called Tarran huts. These were the invention of a company called Tarran Industries of Hull. They spent many years perfecting a process which combined sawdust, chemicals and portland cement to produce a material which could be moulded like concrete. They called it Lignocrete. It was non combustible and insulating which made it ideal as a building material. It was easy to cut with a saw and would take nails and screws. And it didn't rely on imported materials which was fundamentally important. Here's a photo of a Tarran hut being built as a demonstration for the Government in 1941.

The second photo is of a Tarran hut from one of the other camps. This shows that the roofs were painted white. If you go back to the map of West Leigh camp all the huts have an extension which I think is a bathroom/toilet block that has been built on to the hut, like the one in the photo. I can't remember the kitchen and bathroom in our hut.

My own memory of the huts is that they were black and definitely not corrugated metal like a Nissen hut. I don't remember the white roofs.

From Robert Hind's research there seem to have been mixed feelings about living in the camps. Many people were very happy being away from the dirty, crowded city and in the fresh air and space. But many others reported trouble with leaking roofs, flooding and difficulty keeping warm in winter. My own research uncovered several items in the Portsmouth Evening News about these problems. But maybe we were lucky - I don't remember any such problems, and perhaps the underlying reason for that is the report on the right from the Evening News from 9th July 1952.

It was probably in early 1955 that we moved to 36 St John's Road. The huts at the West Leigh Camp were demolished later in 1955. The cutting below is from the Evening News 29th July 1954.

St John's Road 1955

The St John's Road estate was built between 1951 and 1955. This cutting from the Evening News 28th May 1952 identifies Pitassi & Son as the builder. They must have had a yard in Jessie Road while the work was underway. There are several job adverts like this over the next few years, the last one is for labourers with experience of laying footpaths in Feb 1955. So the estate must have been finished about that time.

The houses on the estate are different from any others in Leigh Park. The estate must have been built under a different contract to others in Leigh Park. And if you look at this article from the Evening News in 1951 you can see the dates that various parts of Leigh Park were intended to be built - but ours has no date - which to me suggests that it was indeed a separate development. The article refers to eight undated areas due to be developed, which would link Leigh Park to the existing Havant communities. Perhaps we were one of those.

This OS map is from about the time that we moved in - Purbrook Way stops where the roundabout now is, and behind us there are open fields. Exactly as I remember it.

Barncroft Infants school opened in January 1955.

And later in in 1955:

And for now we'll leave the story there.

Next: Post War Employment

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