Thank you to 'The Gardens' for resurrecting this thread and adding his input into what it was like living in these environments into the 1980s which still doesn't seem that long ago to me because they are remembered fondly.
It was indeed an environment too, a community and not just a faceless flat. If someone hadn't seen say an elderly neighbour for a couple of days or something they would confide in the next neighbour about their wellbeing and maybe knock, i've known this happen time and again and we all know the old joke about the net twitching but it wasn't being nosey, it was being neighbourly - would it happen now - nobody see's any 'wrongdoings' - fear of recriminations. The older brothers, cousins and mates living in these areas would keep the younger one in check, a clip round the ear if necessary and you wouldn't dare answer back. With the demise of the communities in the likes of the Four Squares in Soho Street, Gerard Gardens and Fontenoy Gardens, dwindling church congregations partly resulting in Pastoral reorganising also meant the closing of the likes of St. Mary of the Angels (The Friary), St. Joseph's and Holy Cross churches, two of these sadly demolished.
div>
I know also that one of my uncles couldn't even manage the garden of the bungalow he was given and two other families he was friendly with were put out in Kirkby and Nossis Green respectively and hardly saw each other again. It was even hard for them getting to know bus routes and times they hadn't previously needed to be concerned about, being on the city centre doorstep which I now realise many took for granted, how much would City centre living in these arty farty 'apartments' - mainly for students, cost you now?
Bookmarks