Felicitie Barnes:
'You lived in a prefab, but it was called temporary accommodation?'

Brenda Hadsley:
'They were called temporary houses. The address was, ours was Number 5 Temporary Houses.'

Felicitie Barnes:
'Not Moreton Road!'

Brenda Hadsley:
'No. What an address! They were aluminium built and… They were beautifully set out, I mean there was no two ways about it, they really were beautifully set out, but so cold! So cold and damp, the wintertime, you know was the worst. The summer then was so hot you know you couldn’t breath. But at the end of the day, it was somewhere for us to start our life together and we were delighted to get it, it was two bedrooms, and a bathroom, and a lounge cum dining room and a kitchen. Which was all fitted. And lots of fitted cupboards everywhere. We didn’t have much to put in it. Because needles to say, we’d only just got married so… But we loved it. We loved living there and to be perfectly honest, if it had been brick built we would have stayed there.' (…)

'When these houses on the estate were going to be… were being built, or, going to be built, they came round and said to us ‘anybody with one child or two children’ – some of them got two children by then – we could go and have a look at the plans in the housing office, which was a little hut in Ongar, where the opticians is now? That was like a little hut and used to be the Ongar and District Council office. And we could go and look at the plans and choose the house that we would like. So we did. And we chose where we are living now (…) And when it was finished we were duly rewarded with the keys and moved over.' (…)

Felicitie Barnes:
'What made you choose this house?'

Brenda Hadsley:
'I don’t really know! I think it was… We wanted an end house, you know because they’re a block of four, terrace sort of four. So we wanted an end house. We liked the position, because from the plans we could see there was going to be all this big green at the front and a nice long garden, which of course Bert wanted a nice garden. So that was, that was one of the reasons. And then our friend from over the prefabs, they chose that one you see (…) So, you know, there was quite a bit of discussion going in to it you know.'