LIVING memories of a vanished part of Oxford jump off the page in a new book for the whole city to share.

Urbansuburban is bursting with colour photographs and real stories of the neighbourhood of St Ebbes, torn down in the 1960s to make way for the Westgate Shopping Centre.

Dozens of former residents who contributed pictures and memories to the book joined a launch party at Oxford Town Hall on Thursday.

Reporter Pete Hughes met a few of them.

GROWING up in St Ebbes, Lois East did not have a bathroom.

She recalls going to the public baths in Paradise Square just to wash.

The young Lois Shirley, as she was then, lived with her mother, father, two brothers and two sisters at number 8 Luther Street.

Part of their house overhung a passageway to the junior school next door which dozens of schoolchildren passed beneath every day.

Mrs East, 85, recalled: "We certainly weren't well-off – we were poor, but my memories are of safety, comradeship, neighbourliness and helpfulness.

"People worried about how their curtains looked and keeping the doorstep swept.

"It was hard to keep clean, especially as we didn't have a bathroom, but we went to Paradise Square and paid to have a bath.

"You would sit in the tub and shout 'more hot!' and 'more cold!' to the people outside."

Mrs East also recalled Dr Jackson from Balliol College, who ventured into the district sometimes called the 'slums of Oxford' to run the Balliol Boys Club like a Dickensian philanthropist.

This label, 'slum', still infuriates former residents of St Ebbes today, half a century after it was torn down.

Janice Stewart, who grew up in Bridport Street with her sister Diane, said: "It wasn't a slum until they moved everyone out – it wasn't even rundown.

"Slums to me are filthy, but St Ebbes people looked after each other.

"They were all council houses but my dad was always painting and decorating."

Rachel Barbaresi, who created and led Urbansuburban, believes the slum image may have been perpetuated to justify demolishing St Ebbes.

Speaking at the launch on Thursday she said: "I think it still raises a lot of emotions for people around how it was perceived at the time.

"It is true there were historic problems with sanitation but those had been remedied by the 1900s.

"What really came out from talking to people was a) how hard everyone in St Ebbes worked, and b) the pride they took in their homes."

That pride is still very much alive in former residents.

Ms Barbaresi said when she embarked on her mission it was about "finding St Ebbes in the suburbs" – i.e. the beating heart of the district still alive in former residents who are now scattered across the estates like Blackbird Leys and Rose Hill – hence the title "Urbansuburban".

One person who proves that living link more than anyone is Gill Williams, who to this day still brushes her front doorstep every morning, and told Ms Barbaresi: "You can always tell the people who lived in St Ebbes because they've still got those habits".

As the book itself states: "In the 21st century we don't know what it is like to be as embedded in a community as the people of St Ebbes seemed to be."

Janice Stewart would definitely concur.

She said: "I loved where I lived, I loved the people, and you can't go back and recreate that.

"I think Rachel's project is brilliant, she was so committed to it and so caring about it, she wasn't just doing it for herself."

The Urbansurburban book will now live at the town hall's Museum of Oxford and visitors can browse through its pages at their leisure.