Page 29 - Colin Wheeler's Memories

My Palace Theatre and other Memories Redditch Heritage

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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