Born between 1945 and 1955?

[Dapper Dave 10]

Were you born between 1945 and 1955 (ish)? Could you spend a few minutes telling me about your first house/flat when you left your parents' home? It's research for a book I'm writing about how accommodation is changing for young people/students/first time buyers etc.

 

I am particularly focussing on the rising phenomenon of the houseshare and how this differs from the experiences of the baby boomer generation. Did you share accommodation with friends or strangers in the 60's 70's, either as a student or working person? Or was it home, rent with partner, marry and mortgage?

 

Would massively appreciate any help I can get.

[smary 14]

Born 1948 - married 1967 and left home to move into our own house albeit mortgaged. Came from a family that had always lived close to each other and visited granny every week. But we moved 30 miles away which was quite a step in those days!! We seemed to buck the trend as my aunts thought it very unusual that we were buying a house!

[buddyboy1 10]

Were you born between 1945 and 1955 (ish)? Could you spend a few minutes telling me about your first house/flat when you left your parents' home? It's research for a book I'm writing about how accommodation is changing for young people/students/first time buyers etc.

 

I am particularly focussing on the rising phenomenon of the houseshare and how this differs from the experiences of the baby boomer generation. Did you share accommodation with friends or strangers in the 60's 70's, either as a student or working person? Or was it home, rent with partner, marry and mortgage?

 

Would massively appreciate any help I can get.

 

Our family of 2 adults and three children had to live with our grandparents in a 3 bedroomed house on the Shirecliffe estate in the 60s and I remember after a family upset we moved to a house owned by an elderly gent - but his rules were so strict my parents only stayed a few months before we were back with their parents, eventually being allocate a masonette on the new Foxhill estate

[denlin 12]

Still in my parents house, rented from SCC. We moved here in 1955 when I was 4 and now live here with OH. House was part modernised in 1976 when they moved the outside toilet into bathroom, knocked down pantry and coalhouse to make kitchen bigger and fitted gas fire and central heating. Then house was fully modernised in 1987, bathroom moved upstairs, kitchen opened out and is now quite large but is 2 bedroomed house now instead of 3

[Jim Hardie 527]

Born 1949, left home at eighteen (the summer of love ). Shared a room with a fine arts student in college approved digs in Manchester (Withington), £5 a week for bed, breakfast and evening meal and the landlady gave you ten bob back if you went home for the weekend.

It was a great time in my life. There was a lot of coming and going in that house and I met a lot of real characters, many of them travelling salesmen. The landlady's husband was in the secondhand car business and had many rum friends.

After the first year you were free to make your own arrangements. I shared flats in Salford, Moss Side, Whalley Range, Chorlton and West Didsbury.

Edited February 12, 2012 by Jim Hardie

[coffindodger 10]

Born 1947, was still at home until 1971 when I bought a brand new 2 bed flat on Park Grange Croft. It cost £6,500, I put £1,000 down, fitted carpets were something like £120, infact I furnished the whole thing (including 19" Hitachi colour tv, cost was £220) for circa £500. I bought a nearly new oven for under £20, a brand new fridge for £30, a cracking Swedish made suite for £50 and some of that Winchmore white wood furniture from Coles, that I painted white. I remember buying a drop leaf table and 4 chairs for next to nothing and I had 2 beds and all the pots and pans, crockery and cutlery given me.

 

I sold it three years later for £9,000.

[Ms Macbeth 75]

Born 1946, got married in 1967 and our first home was a flat in a tenement in Scotland, we bought it for £250 because we couldn't find anywhere to rent. It had two rooms, the front one had a sink and cooker, the back one was the bedroom. The front door led straight off the street into a vestibule with an inside loo. Most of them still had shared outside toilets but we were lucky! We had no bathroom, all ablutions had to be done at the kitchen sink, ie strip washes. Went to my mums regularly for baths! We only lived there til 1969 when the 'corporation' offered us a flat in a multi (high rise). It was heaven, bathroom, proper kitchen, and central heating!

 

Most of my peer group only left home when they got married. But I would say we were the last generation to do so. Our children (born 1970ish) lived in shared accommodation until they wanted to get a place of their own, in their 30s.

[rbbt 10]

Born 1955 , got engaged 1972 and married 1975.

Paid for our own wedding except the reception which parents shared the cost of.

 

We got married but our arranged flat rental fell through at the last minute. So lived with my parents and 2 sisters in a 2 bed semi. Sisters sharing bedroom with parents. It took us a year and a lot of overtime to save a deposit of £1000 for our first house.

 

It was 7K, £700 deposit and rest solictors with a bit left over for a cooker.

 

We had a new bed that I'd saved for with Wigfalls (saving "on back of the book as it was called").

 

We had a second hand white plastic settee and chair and a small BW portable, donated by mother in law.We'd no carpets, no fridge and no washer.

 

Barclays wouldn't lend us £500 for central heating despite us both having good jobs.

We varnished the floor boards and bought a rug for infront of the fire. Sold the house for £18,000 in 1984..When we'd made it a home.

Still together and going strong....hard times..bring em on!

[SILLY 10]

Born 1945 engaged 1964 got married 1966. Saved up to buy our own house but had our name down on the council housing list from when we got engaged. The housing list was a good thing because my OH got made redundant 6 months before we were due to get married so we decided to rent instead of being tied to a mortgage. Things were not to bad though he found another job within 2 weeks. We moved into a flat on the Norfolk Park and saved up and bought our first house at Aston in 1971. As Ms Macbeth says most of our peer group only left home to get married living together was not an option then we would have been disowned by our parents. Also you had to be married to get a council property otherwise I suppose lots of us would not have got married:hihi:

[echo beach 587]

In those days a much smaller proportion of youngsters left home to follow higher education - university/college courses.

The majority left school at 15, found employment and stayed in the family home until they married.

After marrying in the early '70s our first house was a mid terrace rented from my employer the NCB for thirty shillings a week, which was cheap and allowed us to save a deposit to buy a property later. It was a dead ringer of those on the original opening credits of Coronation Street. Having said it was cheap, it was also unmodernised and very basic. Draughty single glazed sash windows, a bath you couldn't use because of the rust, no fitted cupboards in the kitchen, a pot sink and an open fire to heat the place. We supplemented that with a paraffin heater; remember them?

With the exception of a fridge, a washing machine and a table and chairs set which were wedding presents everything else was second hand or hand me downs. The style of our first three piece suite made from black vinyl was very 1950s. Ikea currently have very similar designs, which proves that if you keep something long enough it'll comes back into fashion!

All this was before affluenza took hold of people and materialism became the nation's religion.

Forty years on, thankfully conditions have improved for us, but you have to start somewhere and the struggle for advancement is rewarding in its own right. I can honestly say that way back then,for all our lack worldly goods, we were content and happy, much as our own parents were with even less.

[hillsbro 32]

Hi Dapper Dave - born in 1948, I don't really fit the profile of the sort of person you are looking for (I bought a house for my parents and myself) but if you're interested in social history and post-war housing generally you might like to have a read anyway. I'm the little one in the 1951 photo..

 

My brother left home when he got married in 1971 and for 18 months he and his wife lived in a tiny flat over a shop. Then the council offered them a 2-bedroom flat at Jordanthorpe. In 1978 they and their two little girls moved to a new council house at Totley, which they eventually bought. They sold it in 1999 and bought a semi at High Storrs which they've just finished paying for. So they went from private rental to a council flat, then a council house and (thanks to Mrs Thatcher's "right to buy") got their foot on the property ladder..

[Ms Macbeth 75]

In those days a much smaller proportion of youngsters left home to follow higher education - university/college courses.

The majority left school at 15, found employment and stayed in the family home until they married.

After marrying in the early '70s our first house was a mid terrace rented from my employer the NCB for thirty shillings a week, which was cheap and allowed us to save a deposit to buy a property later. It was a dead ringer of those on the original opening credits of Coronation Street. Having said it was cheap, it was also unmodernised and very basic. Draughty single glazed sash windows, a bath you couldn't use because of the rust, no fitted cupboards in the kitchen, a pot sink and an open fire to heat the place. We supplemented that with a paraffin heater; remember them?

With the exception of a fridge, a washing machine and a table and chairs set which were wedding presents everything else was second hand or hand me downs. The style of our first three piece suite made from black vinyl was very 1950s. Ikea currently have very similar designs, which proves that if you keep something long enough it'll comes back into fashion!

All this was before affluenza took hold of people and materialism became the nation's religion.

Forty years on, thankfully conditions have improved for us, but you have to start somewhere and the struggle for advancement is rewarding in its own right. I can honestly say that way back then,for all our lack worldly goods, we were content and happy, much as our own parents were with even less.

 

My parents started with much more than we did! Their big mistake was in never buying a house. They were older than we were when they got married and my father had a good job. But like many people in the 40s & 50s they viewed a mortgage as a millstone! Although I was brought up in a private rented flat, it was in a nice area and, unlike many of my classmates' homes, had a bathroom. We even had a phone when I was a child, but not a TV. My first few homes after marriage were not an improvement on my childhood home.

 

We still have a couple of decent pieces of furniture that my parents bought in the early 30s when they married, along with the receipts which make interesting reading. None of the stuff we bought in the 60s (as others have said, mainly second hand or freebies) lasted anywhere near as long. We missed out on the black vinyl suite though.