What was the demographic of your childhood street?

[NewLion]

Families with young children

Council estate. My grandparents moved there in the early 60’s and it was a new built estate then.

We lived in a 2 bed flat sort of opposite. DM was a single mother and got the flat when she found my biological male parent had cheated on her throughout their 4 year marriage.

Nice estate as I recall back in the 1970’s. Hardly anyone had a car, everyone (adults) knew/looked out for each other. I can remember walking our dog at 6 years old, going down the local shop for my mum, playing ball games against the walls of the block of garages. There were some bungalows for the ‘old folk’.

One Indian family lived round the corner off the estate. The grandmother didn’t speak English. We were friends with the grandson who was of a similar age. The grandmother used to shout at us and hit us with a kitchen utensil when we dared go into her kitchen for a home made chapati. 🤣 They were quite a novelty at the time and I was nothing but curious about where they’d come from not to mention the culture and the cooking.

There were a few ‘unsavoury’ house dwellers with children that we were under strict instruction not to interact with or get the wrath of my mum if we did!

We moved to another ‘estate’ of sorts when I was 10, but my grandparents stayed in their ‘new build’ until they passed away, over 50 years later.

It was horrible for me to see the estate become a shadow of itself over the years given the happy years I’d had, and how house proud people had been of their homes. It’s unrecognisable now sadly.

Mostly older families in generational social housing. Only a couple kids my age.
Probably 70-30 SH/private.

Inter-war detached and semis plus our six 1970s detached. Families with older children/teenagers, and pensioners. On the fringe of an industrial city. All white, all middle class. I couldn't wait to escape!

Small block of flats, mainly people in their 20s/30s no kids. Fairly high turnover except for us and one other woman.
Neighbours in houses around, 4 living alone old ladies, 2 old couples, one family with 3 children at home. 1 old man living alone - he was very kind and gave us sweets. 1 middle aged couple.
So many of these people have since died.

I lived in a few different places but the terraced street was a real mix. Mostly families but our NDN were fairly elderly and there was Mr Mortimer a couple of doors down who was very, very old and mostly blind. Council estates were mostly families and druggies.

Inner London in the 1980s and 90s - all Victorian villas converted into flats and owned by the council except for a single house that was owned by an eccentric old lady.

Real mix of people - a lot of Irish and Jamaicans, some white British, Indian, Pakistani. Working class and professionals. Families with kids in the bigger flats, old couples or singles in the smaller flats.

Brilliant community spirit.

Completely changed now. Most people bought their flats off the council and sold and moved out. No council flats left. A one-bed flat is 500k minimum. Lots of wealthy couples with small children and professionals flat sharing. Community vibe has gone.

All old people apart from us. One side was a big sheltered housing development.

We had to be driven if we wanted to play with friends.

1970's
We were the youngest kids on the road.
Big houses, minimum of 4 beds with indoor toilets, driveways, big gardens and everyone had at least one car parked on it. Owned by wealthy people.
My widowed mum still lives in it
She's the oldest person living there now.

We lived in a 1960's estate. Mixture of elderly people and families. We had elderly couples either side of us and my sister's friend a few doors down. We didn't really know anyone else on the road because it was the main road running through the estate so it wasn't somewhere children could play out the front or in the street. I was jealous of my friend who lived next to the park.

Families, mature couples and the elderly. A lot of stay at home mums and professional dads.

white middle class cul de sac mix of Jamie's young couples and older couples played out in the street completely safe for hours at a time

Middle class leafy suburb, big detached houses with mainly families with children, but some older people who gradually moved elsewhere. Lots of actors and other media people for some reason. It was idyllic, I was very fortunate

Another middle class leafy suburb with big detached houses.
A mixture of familes and older people.

I was very privileged to grow up where I did.

Mostly families and a few elderly people. All us children played out in the street all day and were in and out of each other's houses! This was the 80s, children were far less supervised than they are today!

Council estate mix of maisonettes and terraced houses,mostly families with various ages children and middle aged couples who i thought were ancient but probably in their 40s it was the 70s and early 80s.

'Naice' seventies-built estate in a pretty northern English market town. Our street was all detatched houses or bungalows, nearly all occupied by families with preteens or older teens, mainly girls for some reason. No ethnic mix at all; everyone was white.

Some families but mainly older single ladies or widows. This was the 70s

Most of the men worked for the same employer so there was a strong sense of community. Mostly young families, big tribe of children playing in the road and in and out of each other’s houses, and the parents had wild parties 😃

Families with kids, dad's mainly worked at the steelworks, few mums worked, new build social housing estate, all the kids went to the same primary, up to my year they all went to the same high school, then some of us went to the new one. Not many older people as they weren't allocated the three and four bed houses. Big mix of nationalities from all over Europe.(Australia in the 60s/70s)

1930s semi close to centre of Manchester. Mainly owner occupied, very small handful private rented of homes that had been inherited, council estate at the bottom end of the street. All went to same primary school. Mainly families with kids. A few retirees. A few single parents. Most parents born overseas - mainly Ireland (mine), Caribbean, India, Pakistan, Ghana, Italy, Spain I can remember from my friends. Lots of homes had 3 or more kids. We had 5. Everyone shared rooms with siblings.

Most families had two parents working - dads mainly construction, security. Mums mainly working as cleaners, retail, care staff, admin jobs. A couple of hairdressers. Plenty of us were latchkey kids technically but in reality everyone looked after each others kids when mums were working as lots of shift work meant someone's mum was always home.

They were happy days.

Area has been massively gentrified now. My parents still live there. Their new next door neighbours are both Drs. So different.

Middle of a rural area so no street to speak of. Nearest neighbours were 1/2 a mile up the lane. Made hanging round on street corners and getting up to mischief difficult.

Flats. They were about fifty percent low income families like us, and fifty percent crims and winos.

Eventually one of the winos burned the whole building down.

Majority 25-50+ year old couples or singles who mostly had children and a substantial minority were elderly people.

Mainly white, mainly working class - a handful of POC families.

Most owned their (council) houses and were quite “house proud” and owned a car or two per household. Majority had at least one adult working full-time in a couple , the men tended to do manual jobs like plumbing and roofing and the women were often cleaners.

It was an odd neighbourhood, not much of a community spirit despite it being working class. I’ve since heard that other much rougher areas of my town had/have a much better community.

Late 1950's to mid 1970's. 'Tween war suburban semis with back gardens - about 34 houses in the street if I remember,including a detached one at each end .The one at the top of the road with a large side garden still had an Anderson shelter.There were eight families with children,including ours and most of them were girls! Many elderly couples and three sets of elderly sisters living together .All the mothers were in during the day. The houses are now all privately owned.When first built,they were owned and rented out by a landlord but in the early 60's he became bankrupt and the tenant residents either had the option of buying their property or moving out. There was very little mobility in the street,people didn't move out and families who moved in following the deaths of some of the elderly occupants soon integrated into the street community.

In the 1970s for me, southern city, council estate on the outskirts. Mix of older and newer families. Some had moved in when the houses were built in the 50s and their children were grown up. We were sort of the next generation. Generally working families but lower incomes. Few cars, car parks were our playgrounds. Schools within walking distances, became 3 tier, so my primary became a middle then comprehensive was on opposite side of estate.