Belle Vale Prefab Project

I would like to share some of my memories of my early years of living in Belle Vale.

My name is Carol Griffiths (nee Grier) and I lived in Lee Park Avenue(from the age of about 12 months  until I was age 8/9yrs) in a ground floor flat next to the ‘Police’ houses.  Our neigbours in the flats included the Blackburn family, the Barlow family and our neighbours in the ‘police’ house next door were a family called Rance.

I always remember the play area over the road to our flat which was fondly called ‘the circle’ and also vividly remember the building of the tower blocks named after prime ministers (Churchill House, Atlee House etc).

I attended Belle Vale CP school from 1962 until we moved to a house in Woolton in 1966 – after much hassle from my mum who walked every day to the Council office begging for a house to acommodate our growing family of 3 children and 2 adults. TheCouncil office was inside an old building in Wambo Lane next to the Spam factory where Morrisons now presides. The school was surrounded by the prefabs and myself and school friends used to play in the playground and often reach through to a garden that backed onto the school to get caterpillars off the cabbages and let them crawl on our hands.

I had a friend called Elizabeth Carr who once invited me to tea in her prefab home, I was in awe of it everything was within reach it had everything that was needed. There was a playground within the prefab estate with swings slides and see saws and there was a ‘cocky watchman’ who had his own hut and kept an eye on things.  The local Health Clinic I remember having iron mesh grilles on the windows and we used to go there with my mum to get my younger baby sisters weighed and buy milk and small bottles of orange juice. There are houses built on this area now.

I can always remember walking up Lee Park Avenue and crossing the road to the bridge to get the train to Garston where we used to visit the only big supermarket at the time called ‘Lennons’, then we would walk to Garston market and get the train home again.

Opposite the Bridge Inn pub there was a small little bridge at the side of a small garden nursery we often used to take a bottle of water and jam sandwiches to paddle in the brook.

I remember a lot of the women and children including my mum, myself and siblings being picked up at various stops on Lee Park Avenue by a flat back lorry and we would set off for a day to the countryside ( which I think was Halewood or Cronton) to pick potatoes. This was probably to subsidise their family income at the time.

I hope this triggers memories for other people.