The History of Ruddington Depot
HomeThe StoryInterviewsPhotographsResources
Wartime Operations
Two residential areas
The site engineer lived in a bungalow near the entrance gate from The Green in Ruddington in one of the residential areas of the Ruddington Ordinance and Supply Depot. Other key staff who had to be on call 24 hours a day lived in the small number of bungalows a few metres along the drive, which is now Leys Road on the Barleylands Estate. There was also a hostel just opposite where Leys Court now stands.
Tim Bloodworth spent the earliest weeks of his life in his parents’ living quarters in this area:
“My Mum and Dad lived in Box 10 during the war. Box 10 was just an area, like all the others. They all had a different Box number, and that made it easy to refer to them. I don’t know when we actually moved, but I must have been about 6 months old when we went to live on The Avenue. My earliest memory is of going down The Avenue when I was about 3 years old with my mother pushing me in the pushchair.”
A
bungalow in The AvenueThe Avenue was the other residential area at
the opposite end of the site, near the south-east corner.
“Box 10 was only 5 minutes walk from the centre of the village, whereas The Avenue was a good 20 minutes walk. In Box 10 there were only half a dozen flats and a few bungalows, whereas on The Avenue there were 17 bungalows and 12 flats. The bungalows were all three bedroomed and all but No. 1 The Avenue were semi-detached. No. 1 was detached. They were all the same material and the interiors were three bedrooms with a living room at the front, kitchen, dining room at the back and a bathroom near to the back door. The smallest of the bedrooms was at the front and that was the air raid shelter which had very thick walls and very small windows with blast shutters over them. The Avenue was self contained, but everything that we had, like all electricity, water and telephones, at one time came from the Depot central supply. It was quite isolated really, very nice in summer but very, very cold in winter because we hadn’t got any central heating.
The bungalows were brick but the flats were made of breeze blocks, but I’m not sure because the flats were coated with artex; it was a poor construction. Both the flats and the bungalows complained of damp walls. In the bungalows the casement windows were made of wood, with very small panes, and in the winter it was so cold that when you woke up in the morning there was frost on the inside of the panes. But in the summer, it was a really beautiful place to live.”
The Story > Chapter 4 > Section 4.01