Maureen Hunt recalls how her mother was forced to move house after Chatsworth Street was demolished

Resource Type: Audio | Posted on 12th September 2011 by Liam Physick

Maureen Hunt remembers that her mother was one of the last people remaining in Chatsworth Street when it was demolished in 1968 (Maureen herself had already married and moved out by then), because she was so stubborn! Her house was demolished around her while she still lived there, and so she had to go to the Packington Street pub in order to use the toilet. What was more, instead of the bungalow she was promised, despite being in poor health she was allocated the eighth floor of a block of flats in Shiel Park, a place where people were frequently found dead

Interviewee: Maureen Hunt

Interviewee Gender: Female

Interview Transcript

Maureen: But I can’t remember what date the houses come down in Chatsworth Street . . .

Jenny: So, so did you stay there until the . . .

Maureen: I was married, I got married from there . . .

Pat: 1968, it was, Maureen.

Maureen: Was it?

Pat: Yeah . . .

Maureen: And . . .

Pat: . . . my auntie was one of the last homes.

Maureen: . . . that’s when me mam, me mam was the last one to be left there, cos she was stubborn – don’t know where I get it from! (Jenny laughs) – and she had no lavatory, they knocked the lavatory down on her (Jenny sounds disbelieving), took the tiles off the roof, and she used to have to go the Packie pub . . .

Jenny: To go the toilet?

Maureen: . . . for a wee, or use a bucket, and take it down the yard.

Jenny: So, they were, they were literally demolishing the houses . . .

Pat: Oh, yeah.

Jenny: . . . around the people . . .

Maureen: Yeah.

Jenny: . . . that were still there?

Pat: Yeah.

Maureen: Yeah, you either went in tenements, or they’d pull your house round you. Well, she wasn’t going in a tenement . . .

Pat: And we lived in tenements.

Maureen: Yeah, but she was on her own, she wasn’t going in a tenement . . .

Jenny: No.

Maureen: . . . and they’d promised her, cos she was in bad health . . .

Jenny: Yeah.

Maureen: . . . they had promised her a bungalow, but she ended up, didn’t she, in Shiel Park, on the eighth floor, which was from the worst placing she could have been, on your own, cos people were found dead there. But me mam, when . . . me mam and dad got married, they got married from Packington Street, which was next door, to Chalmers, but it was an upgrade, when you, when you went into Chalmers Street . . .

Jenny: To the next street!

Maureen: . . . because it was just a house in, in Packie, a lot of them were Scotch houses, one of the top of the other.

Tagged under: demolition, regeneration plans, chatsworth street, relocation, packington street, chalmers street, packington street pub, tenements, shiel park, scotch houses

Categorised under: Change & Communities

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