ROBERT Brechin and his family were the first residents to move into the Slade Camp at Headington, Oxford.

But first impressions were not good – “conditions were terrible,” he recalls.

As we reported (Memory Lane, January 31), the former Army camp off Horspath Driftway and The Slade provided much-needed housing for dozens of families after the war.

But when the Brechins arrived in November 1948, the Army was still on site trying to make the huts habitable.

Mr Brechin, now 89, writes: “Our hut at what became 104 Fourth Avenue was a single room with no water, one light and a fire stove against the end wall.

“The toilets were in a separate area and water was collected from a standpipe at the corner of the road. We had a key to our own toilet cubicle.

“The hut was about 80ft long, so you can imagine that this small stove did not heat the room very well.

“The council delivered coke and distributed it in piles at various places around the camp.

“We were told by the council to take what we needed from other huts which were not suitable for living in – wood panels and timber etc – and use it to improve our hut.”

According to Mr Brechin, conditions were so bad that the Government forced the city council to bring in local builders to carry out improvements.

After a meeting with Lady Townsend, a senior city councillor, work began to create two or three bedrooms in each hut while the families were still there.

“They had to move to one end of the hut while the builders worked at the other end,” he said.

Mr Brechin, who worked as a Co-op milkman and delivered to the camp, recalls that when the family first moved in, the Army and Auxiliary Territorial Service were still on site and there were regular police patrols to keep out squatters.

“After the war, homes were in short supply. The Attlee Government was doing a great job creating the National Health Service and building cheap homes for servicemen coming out of the forces.

“Slade Camp was a transition while the homes were being constructed.”

Among the families he recalls are the Burnhopes, who lived next door, Mr and Mrs Johnny Bell and Mr and Mrs Thompson.

Although conditions gradually improved, the Brechins – Robert, wife Jean and children Robert, Kathleen and Stuart – never really settled during their three years at the camp and always yearned for a real home.

That finally came in November 1951 when they moved to a new home on the Northway estate at Headington, where Mr Brechin still lives.

Any more memories of Slade Camp to share with readers? Write and let me know.