Who remembers these…?
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Oh yes, there’s still some in Bristol. It’s very hard to get people to move out of them!
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Why is that Maree? I’m not playing devils advocate but I’m intrigued.
I lived in a prefab for a short while in Plumstead when I was about eighteen. A long story 
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I had an Aunt who lived alone in her Prefab in Bristol for 30-40 years. I often visited her and I found it so cosy and warm, especially in winter time. She loved her little home and would never change it for anything else. I found it quite spacious for living in and she had a decent sized garden attached.
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maybe it was a case of what you were given be satisified with and it’s sufficient and cheap for me to run so who needs a bloody mansion to show off to everyone?
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People had lived there all their lives, 60 years or more and made them their homes, raised their children, part of a community. They were comfortable, cosy and warm detached houses given to people when there wasn’t a lot of accommodation to be had. When you think about it, not much different to the trend for shipping container homes nowadays
I just looked it up and all but two in Bristol have gone now, and those two are scheduled for demolition, the end of an era 
This article tells people’s stories about why they wanted to stay and protested the demolition
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There used to be a lot near me when I lived in Brixton - I forget which suburb but they seemed fine and well tended, far better than the hideous 1950s tower blocks of the slum clearance days.
They build whole mining towns of the modern equivalent which came in handy during the pandemic.
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Would prefabs have had insulation because surely they must have been cold ?
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Modular housing sounds a neat solution to the affordable housing crisis.
Wouldn’t know if they are mortgageable though.
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I grew up in a type of pre-cast concrete house clad with pre-cast pebble-dash concrete panels. I think they were called Airey Houses - they were classed as temporary housing, built in the post-war era and only meant to last a couple of decades but they weren’t demolished until the 1990s.
I remember them being very cold houses, with no insulation and metal window frames which let in lots of draughts.
There was an estate of small pre-fab bungalows not far from us, which looked like those in the Opening Post - a friend of mine lived in one - they were warmer and cosier to live in - clad with insulating sheets of asbestos.
They were condemned by the council before our type of houses were and demolished in the 1980s.
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Thanks for the link Maree. I suppose it was inevitable that they’d be demolished at some point, times move on.
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Born in London there were plenty of prefabs, bomb sites were still around in the 60s , as a child I remember them
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I wonder if there were any health issues with the residents because of the asbestos ? I can immagine the cold would be the same as living in a caravan in the winter . Maybe they were tougher than we are today .
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Yes, they weren’t designed to last as long as they did
But the people living in them were mostly elderly and council/housing associations tenants
So they lost their nice, cosy, private little home with a garden in an area where they knew everyone to be moved into a flat in mixed aged communities and no gardens.
Council housing estates in Bristol have their problems with drugs and anti social behaviour so it must have been scary for these old people to lose their home of 40 plus years and be moved into the unknown
And I suspect one of them had a point when she said that the land these prefabs were built on is very valuable real estate and maybe the council/ housing association had their eye on that more than the welfare of the tenants
I don’t think it was done with much sensitivity or concern for the needs of some very elderly tenants
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Agreed, it would have been kinder if the dwellings had been phased out so to speak.
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