Besson Street, London SE14

This was our prefab in Besson Street, New Cross Gate, south east London. We moved in when they were new, in January 1947.

This photo was taken in about 1953 and show my mum and dad gardening, I have the bow in my hair. We had a garden on four sides and an Anderson shelter as a shed. There were a swath of prefabs built on an area from Queens Road to Besson Street which had been bombed in WW2. Inside we had a fitted kitchen with a fridge and a pull-down ironing board on the front of a cupboard, the kitchen was large enough to have a table and four chairs. The living room had a fire with doors and a back boiler, there was lots of light as there were large windows on two sides. We had two bedrooms and separate toilet and bathroom.

In about 1955 we moved out into a three bed flat in a block that had been built opposite the prefabs; my aunt and uncle, who lived in one of the prefabs behind, us moved into our prefab as it had a better outlook. The prefabs were demolished in the 1960s to make way for a horrible block of flats that didn’t last long.