Poverty and disease were rife in alleys
TOURISTS from far and wide travel to Tewkesbury to enjoy its picturesque half timbered buildings and quaint alleys.
A century and a half ago there were 146 alleys running from Tewkesbury’s main streets.
By 1900 the number was reduced to about 50.
Then more disappeared in the 1950s and 60s until today just a dozen open ended alleys and 30-odd courts (an alley closed at one end) remain.
The origin of Tewkesbury’s maze of alleys dates from mediaeval and Tudor times when a network of pathways separated parcels of land called burgages held on a yearly rent by burgesses.
As the town expanded these burgages were built on.
Because room for development was constrained by the river on one side and the flood plain on the other, as many dwellings as possible were crammed onto the available dry land. Slums were the result.
Well-off people lived in the main streets.
Alleys were for the poor and few of them enjoyed such niceties as mains water, sewerage, or drainage.
Hand pumps were few and far between in Tewkesbury, though there’s one in Smith’s Court, off Church Street
that can be seen to this day.
Most alley folk collected water for drinking, cooking and washing in a bucket from the river, which unfortunately also served as the town sewer.
In a 19th century report on the frequent visitations of cholera to the town, alley dwellers described their living conditions.
Mary Hawkins, a resident of Smith’s Lane, was quoted. “I keep a lodging house, but we are a heavy family ourselves - nine in all. We have got four rooms, the kitchen and three above. Sometimes I have six or seven lodgers, at others more. I have only two beds. My eldest boy is 18, my eldest daughter 16, the next 14.
“All the little ones sleep together in one room, and the eldest girl along with me in our bed. We sometimes have four in the bed.
“I get water for washing from the river and very often find lumps of nastiness in the pail. I went down once to get some water to boil some peas, and found a lump of this stuff as I was putting it into the pot.”
The first plans to tackle this overcrowding were drawn up in 1913 when the borough council announced its intention to build 30, two and three bedroom houses faced with brick to the first storey, then roughcast render above on land between the cemetery and Gloucester Road.
The new development was called Prior’s Park.
These new homes were earmarked for families living in alley homes that had been declared unfit for human habitation by the local medical officer. They cost £177 each.
After the First World War 120 more houses were built on the estate, again to replace slums in the town centre.
All these homes had three bedrooms, some had a living room and scullery, others an additional parlour.
The building firm was Collins and Godfrey and the first residents moved to their new homes in 1921.
They paid five shillings and sixpence (28p) a week rent to the council.
Many alley dwellers would have loved to move to Prior’s Park, but simply couldn’t afford to.
A survey of the time revealed that the average unskilled worker living in a Tewkesbury alley earned £1 a week.
Prior’s Park grew by degree as more homes were built in the 1930s and after the Second World War.
But it was not until the 1960s that Tewkesbury’s slum clearance programme was officially completed.