Pre-fab homes

 I have a memory of our early days in Kingsbury of walking through a small group of pre-fab houses on Kingsbury road at the edge of Roe Green. (That was the open green space that had existed since Norman times.) My grandmother and I walked home from Kingsbury Tube station to 16 Princes that went passed these homes.

Mostly, we went to Burnt Oak station and Watling Avenue when we went into town, and returned home from the opposite direction.  So this is a rare memory. I was about 12, (1956). 

By the time I traveled around Kingsbury regularly with my friends, it was 1959 and those homes had gone.
I do not recall ever discussing them in the intervening years.

However, Recent TV shows on housing in Britain over the centuries had an item on these structures. Suddenly, my memory of them returned. I had to find out more about them and what they were doing there.
They were a result of the extreme shortage in housing after the Second World War and were short term relief. Only meant to last 10 years or so. They were factory built and supposedly could be put up quicker than the usual brick built homes found in the UK.  They also required the Local Council to have available open space to place them in. Hence Wembley Borough offered Roe Green. (Wembley is now a part of the bigger Borough of Brent.)

Interesting enough, I found that Rolling Stones drummer, Charlie Watts lived in one of the homes and their replacement council houses. That was how he ended up in the same school as me for a year, (I transferred out,) and in his newer home he was also a neighbour to my school friends.