Chris Lloyd meets some survivors of a once-large community of families who moved into prefabs in Shildon after the war

FIFTY-FIVE years ago, hundreds of North-East families were enjoying their first Christmases together in their first homes together as the dark clouds of war began to lift.

But these were not ordinary homes - these were prefabricated homes that were hurriedly bolted together in late 1946 so that soldiers, many of whom had been fighting for five years, would have somewhere they could call home.

In Elm Drive, Shildon, 42 families moved into the prefabs in December 1946, but of that large community there are now only believed to be eight women and three men still alive. Of the survivors, four were well enough to attend an impromptu reunion at Redworth Hall a couple of weeks before Christmas 2001.

Dorothy Appleby, now 82, was there. She and her husband Melvyn were handed the keys to 1 Elm Drive by Hugh Dalton, the Bishop Auckland MP who was then Chancellor of the Exchequer.

Dorothy was chosen to receive the first keys because Melvyn had received a brain injury in Normandy and was paralysed down one side. "Mr Dalton said 'I hope you will be very happy here', and we were, but in a way we were sad because he had come back the way he had."

The prefab, the first home together with their two young boys after their marriage in 1939, was "lovely" - a sentiment echoed by the other survivors.

"Gorgeous," says Eleanor Parkin who now lives in Sunnydale but with her husband Jonty had moved into 31 Elm Drive.

"So modern - we had never seen fridges," says Dorothy.

"And the size of the kitchen was something else," says Eleanor. "Beautiful bathrooms with heated towel rails, a shute for your dirty linen and those toilets must have been the first with a flush handle. Fabulous. And a lovely big hall. It's a pity they don't make them now. People couldn't believe the space. They said you'd need a tin-opener to get in there but once you got inside they were marvellous. More room than I have now. I loved them. There was nothing wooden. When you pulled your draws out what a rattle! It was all metal. But the walls must have been asbestos or something. The surface was peculiar."

"And we had Anderson shelters for coalhouses," chips in Marion Humble, who'd moved into No 6 with her husband Jack, who was fresh back from India and Burma. "They were too big for the amount of coal you used to get."

"You could get that in a shoebox," replies Eleanor. "There was a lady who lived at the bottom of the prefabs and she'd had her legs blown off in the munitions factory. She had a beautiful garden. You would see her up the street with her artificial legs on, a lovely softly-spoken person."

Because food was still rationed, that first Christmas was a little limited. "Everything on the table was home-made," says Dorothy. "We had an allotment so we had a little pig for dinner and an old man killed three chickens for us. We had decorated the living rooms with paper chains made out of tissue. We did the best we could with what was available."

"You used to pay into the Christmas Club to get your presents and the one thing you bought was a dolls' pram," recalls Mary Kipling who'd just moved into 23 Elm Drive, with her husband Fred. A painter in the Shildon Shops, he'd served in Dunkirk, Italy and North Africa; she'd been an Aycliffe Angel - "I'll own up, I was terrified every day," she says.

"You couldn't get an onion for love nor money," says Eleanor. "And no bananas," says Dorothy. "You had to queue for them and it was only pregnant women that got them," corrects Mary.

The families only stayed in the prefabs for five or six years. They'd been told that the homes were temporary and so immediately applied for other accommodation.

"We moved into a brand new brick house," says Eleanor. "You had to scrape the cement off the floors and windows." "There was a sitting room," says Mary, approvingly. "But we weren't used to a sitting room," says Eleanor. "It was far too big for us." "And," says Dorothy, "there was never the camaraderie there was in the prefabs. Everyone was friendly."

They fall back to reminiscing about the prefabs which, in Shildon, weren't demolished until the mid-1960s. "We were lucky to get them," says Marion. "It was all utility furniture and you couldn't get floor coverings," says Eleanor. "We had a three-piece suite on order for nine months and all we had to sit on was two basket chairs," says Mary. "People gave you things to help you out."

"People used to tie sheets up for curtains," says Eleanor. "We had plastic for curtains in the kitchen and bathroom," says Marion.

"Eeeh, how did we do?" asks Eleanor. "Now if we want anything we just go out and get it."

l Any other Elm Drive veterans should contact Dorothy Appleby on (01388) 774417