Memories of Patten Street, Blackburn

This is where My family, Dad, Mum, my mother’s father and myself (female) and brother, lived. It was situated almost opposite St Jude’s Church amongst many other prefabricated bungalows. Each prefab had a front and back garden, and was a detached residence.

It was 1954 and the family with the exception of my granddad, had been staying with my mother’s aunts because we were homeless due to change of towns from Preston to Blackburn, where both my mother and I were born.

So, after registering in the town hall as homeless, we were told that there was a home for us at 27 Patten Street. Consequently all our goods and chattels were carried there from my great aunt’s terraced house to the prefab, in a two handled zinc bath which was used as a bath for all of us, one per day, in the aunt’s living room before we moved to the prefab.

When the final bath had been filled with our meagre belongings, my brother and I were taken to see the prefab, our new home. Of course, it wasn’t newly built, but it was new to us. I remember the moment I walked up the path between the spacious front garden, where our ‘palace’ stood much higher than the road. In fact it was a corner position with a large garden at the back, linking to the front, apart from the path up to the door. There was no letterbox to this door but, apart from my mum and dad (granddad hadn’t arrived yet) we were so excited to be going to our new home, where me and my brother could look forward to playing in the garden.

Dad put the key in the door and although he hadn’t seen a prefab before, he thought it would be awful and a ‘comedown’. However, we didn’t notice anything but amazement as we quickly ran through the door aforementioned, which led to the kitchen, to see what the living room was like. It was spacious, particularly as our settee and one chair plus dad’s ashtray on a stand, hadn’t arrived yet. Neither had the beds. However, in the living room. On the left was a fitted chest of drawers, about four or five, stretching from the entrance for about three feet , where they touched the wall. Immediately my brother and I chose one each to house our meagre supply of books, toys and games. The back wall had windows, the front wall housed a fireplace with a stove in which there was fitted, two doors and what I later found to be small mica windows, which showed a welcoming glow when eventually lit My brother and I, with much glee, ran out of the lounge into a short narrow hallway leading from the letterboxed doorway to, on the right, a bathroom. Yes, a bathroom! What’s more, an inside toilet. This really was luxury, fit for a king, we thought.

Straight forward from the door with the letterbox, which I shall now call the front door, was a double bedroom which was really spacious, and eventually fitted a double bed for me and my brother and a single one for my granddad. On the full wall, to the right of the door was a bank of fitted wardrobes and another chest of drawers over which another small wardrobe was fitted. It is at this time, although I didn’t think anything adversely against it, every fitted drawer and cupboard in the prefab was made of metal and painted a beige to match the walls. There was another double bedroom in which my mum and dad slept but neither, I , nor my brother, ever went in, as it was an unwritten rule.
Now, I must try to describe the first room we entered, the kitchen. Mum was agog at all the modern fitted units along the wall that was opposite the door. Going from left to right there was a gas boiler to wash clothes in, a sink with cupboards under, a gas fridge, more cupboards and drawers, if I remember correctly, and on the right side of the entrance door, a larder with a ventilated square at the back which let air in from outside, but had a small enough mesh to prevent flies from entering. There were two kitchen windows, one between the end of the larder and the end bank of kitchen units, and a little one at the side of kitchen-to-living room door. I didn’t really know why this was there, but it became, not just useful, but great entertainment when, dad had put down a mousetrap, loaded with cheese in front of the larder and my brother, mother and me, watched the enfolding scenario with baited breath as the cheese led several mice to their doom, during the years we spent in what became a cosy home, eventually with a radio, and television and a garden with beds of roses where dad used to sunbathe and mum peg out her washing, and my brother and I played games with friends aplenty.

Later on in life I found that the textured outside walls were made of an asbestos amalgam, and it was found to be detrimental to the health of the lungs. So far, now I am aged 78, I have had no adverse effects from the asbestos, surprisingly enough, because all my friends and myself included, played ‘two balls’ against the prefab walls for many, many times. I would love to live in a prefab once again. Such happy memories of times spent therein.