The Post War Boom

The new roads were constructed by a firm named Wilson Lovatt and the BSFI type houses commonly known as the steel houses were built by Burgess, both these contracts were supervised for the Council by Clerk of Works, Harry Bright, a former builder from Headless Cross. These steel houses were already under construction and a lorry load of German prisoners of war were brought daily from the The Sillins, near Elcock’s Brook to work on the footings and ground work.  I have often wondered if the government was breaking the Geneva Convention by keeping them back so long after the war had finished.

The Redditch Urban District Council allocated an equal number of contracts to most of the local Established builders and they were Ernest L Lewis, Dolton Brothers, Shrimptons,  Harrision Brothers, and Harrison Porritt.  Shrimptons also built the shop on the corner of the Mayfields and Sycamore Avenue, recently extended and converted to a house. The cost of building each semi-detached house was eleven hundred pounds, and I remember the foreman commenting that that we were living in inflated times which wouldn’t last because they had been working on better houses in the Meadway before the war that only cost three hundred and seventy five pounds.

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