No homes for soldiers in ‘land fit for heroes’
IT is 100 years since the final year of WW1 and politicians were already planning to demob four million servicemen and get them back into civilian work.
This wasn’t going to be easy and their generals feared a ‘Soviet Government’ might be set up in places like Liverpool if riots occurred!
‘A land fit for heroes’ was officially declared to offset this, with a building programme of affordable council and private houses.
Many came home to nothing so grand and young families made do with caravans or old tram bodies converted into chalets. Soldiers had got used to sleeping in earthen dugouts or in the open trenches with a mackintosh cape if they were lucky.
An email from reader Paul Oldfield about his grandad’s experience illustrates this, with a photo of their ‘land fit for heroes’ caravan in Great Moor, Stockport.
He said: “The photo is as far as we know on Cherry Tree Lane in the 1920s. From left to right, is Grandma (Pickford) Grandad Clarke - mum on Grandad’s knee and then Auntie May (a friend) and Marjorie (daughter) sat on her knee.
“After WW1 Grandad returned home and, being as a lot of folks were homeless post WW1, he made this caravan on a Brewer’s Dray at a smallholding that we think was on or near Cherry Tree Lane.
“Mum told me about going to the blacksmiths with one of the wheels and seeing the metal bands being shrunk on.
“Grandad later moved out to Ash Cottage, Skellorn Green, Adlington, opposite Harold Sigleys farm.”
Other people remember the shanties at Middlewood, High Lane, later used as weekend bungalows and reader Margaret Wilson recalled summer holidays as a girl in a gypsy caravan laboriously pulled by horses up to Stringfields Farm on Ludworth Moor above Marple Bridge: “The fields were leased to other caravans and small wooden bugalows. It was quite a community.
“The first chore was to fill the white enamelled buckets with spring water from the well in the corner of the field.
“We had a view of Kinder Scout one way and Mellor Church on its hill on another.
“One thing that stood out in my memory were the lovely creamy rice puddings in big enamel bowls that old Mrs Stringfield used to make in her big fire oven - she charged us 1/6d or 2s if it was a big bowl.
“We would then pick winberries, which went down a treat with the rice pud!”
Sutton Housing Association built quite a few ‘garden homes’ around Stockport and South Manchester for servicemen and their families, but the housing programme fell short of targets and some troops were still awaiting demob in 1920, when Canadian soldiers who mutinied at a camp near Rhyl were machine gunned and are buried in the churchyard at Bodelwyddan. »»Stockport Heritage magazines in mint condition, as good as if they were just off the press, are still available to read and buy at Stockport Heritage Centre, St. Mary’s Church, and by post if you order online at www.stockportheritagemagazine.co.uk where you can browse the covers and content