BILL Canning of Gourock has given me interesting information about how the Midton housing area of the town came into being.

His family were the first residents of Midton.

Around 1944 former farmland above Gourock was used to erect 11 houses on an extended Tower Drive.

These were pre-fabricated buildings which were built in a factory to be assembled on a plot. The nature of their build coined the term pre-fabs.

Bill told me the tenants of the new homes from 53 to 73 Tower Drive were McGlynn (53), Weir (55), Brady (57), Brooks (59), Bott (61), Canning (63), McLeod (65), Beattie (67), McKenzie (69), Baxter (71) and Morwood (73).

He said the properties were made of asbestos and looked like large caravans.

The pre-fabs were well appointed with a lounge, two bedrooms, bathroom, separate toilet, and a fitted kitchen with hot water and refrigerator.

Each property was detached and had a back and front garden complete with an Anderson air raid shelter just in case the Second World War was to continue beyond 1945.

Bill said: “If you had lived ‘up a close’ with an outside shared toilet, no bath, no hot water, then a pre-fab was sheer luxury.

“Disadvantages for the early residents were that roads were under construction, there was no street lighting, no buses and no shops.

“All shopping had to be hand carried from Gourock town centre, a round trip of over a mile.

“However, advantages far outweighed disadvantages, and all this for a rent of around 50p per week.” Developed in advance of the anticipated post-war housing shortage, the pre-fabs were designed to last 10 years but survived for more than 20 years and were demolished in the 1960s. An additional 25 pre-fabs were built in the 1950s.

Bill supplied the accompanying picture, which was taken in Tower Drive in 1951 when the Midton estate was still under construction. The pre-fabs can be seen in the background.

Bill is keen to learn the identity of the boy in the front row who would have been around seven years of age at that time.