I was born and lived the first five years of my life in my Great Grandparents home.
When my mother and father married in 1944 there was a chronic housing shortage in town due to the German bombing raids of 1941. They were targeting the shipbuilding and armaments works,the steel,iron and wire works and of course the railway station. Over 10,000 houses were damaged or destroyed during the Blitz, about 25 percent of the town's housing stock. Old Multiply friends may remember the photo of the bullet holes they left in the memorial to the dead of the railways in the Great War kept inside now as a monument and to preserve it from the weather.
With so many families needing rehousing newly weds were well down the list so when I came along in 1946 I was born into a gas lit coal heated two up two down my parents shared with my great grandparents.We had no hot water no bathroom and an outside lavatory and lucky to have a home I guess. Many people brought up families living in old mission halls or even the nearby woods,that must have been very hard.
We were poor for most of my childhood but I never realised that of course only fun filled carefree days with lots of love and laughter.
The streets were filled with horses and carts,the milkman,coal man,the rag and bone man and the knife sharpener who also repaired pans to name a few.
Happy days indeed in hard times.