Are these the last of the post-war prefabs in our area?

Last week, we showed some lovely Box Brownie pictures taken in the early 1950s which showed the young Geaney family settling into their prefab home in Cabot Road in the east side of Darlington.

Nancy Geaney oversees a Gill, Maureen and Tim balancing on a bicycle outside the prefabs in Cabot Road, Darlington, in the early 1950s

READ MORE: PICTURES OF PRE-FABULOUS DAYS IN DARLINGTON

These were only temporary homes, designed to last 10 to 15 years. In Darlington, the last ones came down in the mid 1960s – except for one.

It seems that the last prefab was in Harris Street, which John Connolly used as workshop. He acquired it in the early 1950s and it had No 15 on the door – although no one knows what street it had once been the 15th house in.

By day, John worked as a car salesman at Woodland Road Garage and by night and at weekend, he made and restored things in the prefab.

“In 1953, he built our first TV in there, buying a part each week as money was in short supply,” says his daughter, Pauline Wade. “As we had the TV in time for the coronation, all the neighbours came to our house to watch it – although I wasn’t there as I arrived some years later.”

But a television was just the small start. In fact, it sounds as if the prefab became the sort of workshop in which Caractacus Potts could have been something as amazing as a flying car.

A vintage car emerges from John's prefab in Harris Street in 1999

John moved onto restoring vintage and classic cars, then several VW campervans were brought back to pristine condition, and then aeroplanes. They’d arrive as an airframe and after much banging and crashing, they would re-emerge as a fully fledged plane, although the wings were separate from the fuselage. You may be able to swing a cat in a prefab but a plane with its wings outstretched is just a little too big.

“Lots of things came out from that prefab, much to the amusement of our neighbours and passers-by, and to us children, it was exciting,” says Pauline. “Light aircraft would often fly over our house and rev their engines. We would run out to wave at one of dad’s high flying friends and they would dip their wings to acknowledge us.”

When John passed away in 1998, he had four vintage cars and a classic – a Sunbeam Alpine sports car – in the prefab.

The cars went to Bonham’s auctionhouse in London and the family home in Harris Street was sold, complete with prefab, which the new owners removed.

“The prefab by that time may not have been pretty but it certainly provided my father with lots of space and shelter for his many projects,” says Pauline.

Another vintage vehicle emerges from John's prefab workshop in 1999

The last prefabs in the North East in Billingham, by David Thompson

THE very last surviving prefabs in our area are, we believe, in Billingham. They were built in 1947 in Kildale and Lunedale roads, and as these pictures from David Thompson show, they have been much modified, but they still provide comfortable homes, especially for retired people.

Lunedale Road in particular is a remarkable sight with about 100 of these low, rectangular bungalows, each in its own green grass garden, stretching as far as the eye can see in a straight line.

Billingham’s prefabs became the last in this area when 36 prefabs at Marske-by-the-Sea were demolished in 2013.

This gives the Billingham buildings a national importance. In Birmingham, 17 prefabs have Grade II listed status as have six in Catford in south London.

There is a prefab in the Eden Camp museum, near Malton.

There aren’t any other prefabs remaining anywhere are there?

Lunedale Road in Billingham is a curious sight as it is lined with low prefabs. Picture by David Thompson

DARLINGTON’S first post-war prefabs were built in 1945 in Green Street, near Bank Top station, with German prisoners-of-war enlisted to prepare the foundations.

John Askwith has found this picture (above) in the North Eastern Railway Association archives taken in early 1964 by Alan Brown who was on the footbridge at the north end of Bank Top station. The footbridge went over the East Coast Main Line, from Adelaide Street to the back of Pensbury Street.

The prefabs can be seen where the Centre for Process Innovation has recently been built on the north side of the Parkgate cut.

On the right hand side behind the locomotives are the remains of Carters Row. It was built at the end of the 19th Century a good distance from the main line, but the line grew so that by the 1920s, tracks were directly outside the houses’ front doors. The doors were bolted and barricaded and the residents had to use the back yard exit out onto Adelaide Street.

Carters Row was demolished in the 1950s and became a car park.

The area behind the locomotives is currently shrouded in scaffolding as it is about to be demolished once again to make way for the revamped Bank Top station.

Prefabs on Green Street, Darlington, in the shadow of the power station's cooling towers

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