Bungalow bin sheds
At one time I lived in a bungalow on the estate. The bungalows had one specific design feature particular to them:A concrete curve 'bin shed' in the communal square, so that meant 4 of them per square. They are still there to this day, and here is a photo of one. This one is still much like ours was, but as I walked around the estate looking at them many have been made most beautiful with plants/ivy etc. I remember one other use for them: anyone guess what it was?...
Ah, yes, I remember them. They were good for snowball wars as well if you had friends who lived in the quadrangle. (You got chased if you didn't!)
ReplyDeleteI now realise that the Clerk of Works office was in one of these, the first Quadrangle nearest to the lower Pyry square (probably the one on the corner, or first right as you entered near the little playground.
For a few months, the builders had some large huts on the far side of Hazeldene Avenue near the Surgery. The bad lads used to break in and steal cartridges for Hilti nail guns then hit them with a hammer, they were mini-cartridges filled with explosive, colour coded for bang-ness.
If nothing else shades, this blog has blown away some cobwebs of memory(and utterly unkown info) for you and me and the master!...I think you mean the quadrangle at the top of reestones place?...
ReplyDeleteI would also like to thank you for many many unknown facts that you have now shared for all and sundry who may follow in our footsteps...most interesting thank thou!
They were a good place to take a piss.
ReplyDeletetell me Spiderman - how the fxxk you jumped from the concrete bin shed to the roof - you got legs for springs?
ReplyDeleteyou could get a 2 step run up from the end of the curved bit along the straight bit and just reach the roof with your clawing rookers(hands). Then, dangling, you could haul yourself up and onto the roof...
ReplyDeleteYou see this little slit window that gave light to the 'lounge' bit of the front room?...
ReplyDeleteI remember one dim dark distant winter when we used to have proper snow and I lived in the bungalows as a kid some hooligans(probably from the bottom) must have entered the quadrangle and threw a snowball at our slit window...now in them days there was no double glazing, so the window just smashed...KASHTOOOMPH!!!!... my old man to my amazement leapt up in his stocking feet and ran out the house...he returned several minutes later, panting, having chased these 2 hooligans right up and over the fence surrounding Kenton Bar School, right up the big Kenton school field through the 6" deep snow wearing only his socks and up the plateau where these swines jumped over the fence and escaped down the back garden alley running down Ryal Walk...I was amazed at this as he was an old man...about the same age as me now ha ha ha!
I've just picked up on something I hadn't noticed before- the shoebox linked 2 floor/1 floor terraces like Ryal Walk are also shown as having concrete curve bin sheds as well.
ReplyDeleteIf you look at photo 4 of 8th wonder of the world, you can see them sticking out and angled as the Ryal Walk lower houses start to be staggered.
In the book version of the photos it is very obvious they are there in the houses to the right of the mini-skirted woman.
I think that most of them have been removed, but I can see a couple of residual ones on Ryal Walk satellite view. HERE
Bingo- found a surviving streetview one on Hazeldene Avenue.
ReplyDeleteI now remember a couple of reprobates who used that method to get onto the kitchen roof, then a rope ladder slung over the flue pipe to get onto the top roof. (That took loads of chucking the rope to make it hook over the pipe, or maybe the first one gave the second one a bunk up).
Yes, I realised later I was wrong when I said the bungalows were the only ones to have the curved binshed ...as you say, the Ryal Walk/Thirston Way shoeboxes had them...I wonder why they have removed them?...any suggestions?...
ReplyDeleteIncidently, Shades, these reprobates who used the rope ladder to get up onto the top roof:Why did they want to do that?...I remember at one point there was a CB craze and everyone was desperate to get up to attach their CB arial to the top roof for better reception...
I have the answer to why they are removing them! It's pretty obvious really:the curved binshed was designed for 1 metal bin...(incidently did the bin itself have have a special design?...) now the residents have at least 2 wheely bins, 1 'rubbish' bin and 1 recycling bin...these cuboid like wheely bins either do not fit behind the curved concrete bin shed designed to house only 1 bin, or cannot fit/be wheeled behind the gap between the binshed and the house for the houses on Ryal Walk...I would appreciate it if anyone can clarify if both or only one of these reasons is correct...apparently the council are sledgehammering the redundant binsheds down :(
ReplyDeleteI thought it might have been that. I'll bet they aren't demolishing the privately owned house ones though.
ReplyDeleteI think the bins might have been the wire basket type with a lid where you fitted a black bin bag over the top and then a ring secured it. You then lifted the ring and opened the front to get the bag out. (You couldn't lift the bin bag out of the top as the bin was slightly cone shaped.
I can't remember if the lids were metal or rubber as I have seen similar bins elsewhere over the years. I remember that when we moved up to the Leech estate it was a conventional ash bin style.
I think you are right shades in that you recall them as being a metal like cage, like a gibbet, but with a black plastic bag in not a pirate/highwayman corpse...must try to get one/photgraph one before they go the way of the dinosaur...
ReplyDeletePS: the lids were definatly metal...
I used to regularly take a piss behind the one outside Darren Appleby's house in Studdon Walk for some reason even though it was only yards from my home. His Dad was none too pleased I can tell you...............
ReplyDeletebeast of the field...
ReplyDelete