Queued all night for house (From Lancashire Telegraph)

Queued all night for house

5:48pm Friday 5th June 2009 in

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THE need for new housing was so great in the early 1960s in Burnley, that 20 people queued through the night to stake their claim for a dream home.

In the spring of 1961, would-be purchasers kept an all-night vigil outside the agent’s sales office at a new development in Windermere Avenue, missing their sleep, rather than their chance of a new house.

Available with a £50 deposit were a choice of bungalows and semis priced at £2,000, as well as plots where building had not yet started.

The first man in the queue, which turned its back on the camera when a Lancashire Evening Telegraph photographer arrived on the scene when sales opened, had arrived at 6.30pm the night before.

He set up his place complete with a chair, umbrella and bottle of rum(!) and was joined by one young couple at 1am, with others joining at regular intervals during the night.

As day broke, he commented: “I might be barmy, but no-one is going to get in before me.”

The buyers at the front of the queue had first choice of 80 homes being built on the estate, with purchasers going straight for the prime spots along Windermere Avenue, which offered clear views over the Prairie towards Pendle. The agent, Trevor Scholes, expected to sell half of the properties that first morning, with the first people being able to move in six weeks later.

The builders were also planning a major building programme of 600 homes at a new site at Ightenhill, while considering other sites at the same time.

In the 16 years since the end of the war, Burnley had been starved of new housing, with only 250 being built since 1945.

As new industries moved into town builders, both big and small, had come to realise its housing needs had to be provided for, and began moving in with new estates.