Rushden Research Group: Wymington Estate

Wymington Estate

The Rushden Echo, 26th November 1965, transcribed by Jim Hollis

No Road for Mother and Her Baby

It takes Mrs. Denise Clark three-quarters of an hour to wheel her pram and five-week-old baby a few hundred yards from her new house, 8 Abbotts Way, on the Wymington Estate, to the top of St. Margarets Avenue, Rushden, she says. There’s no road or pavement, you see.

Every week, on Wednesday, Mrs. Clark should visit the Health Clinic in Rectory Road, but she said “I get so far with the pram, get stuck in the pot-holes and cannot get any further.”

Already the baby has received a bruise on the head through the battering it has taken in the pram when Mrs. Clark has manipulated it along the unmade roads.

‘Desert Island’

“I feel as though I am on a desert island up here,” she told the “Echo”, as she gazed out of her window on to a sand and brick wilderness. Often she has only been prevented from packing up and going by the low cost of the house and the thought of the trouble it would be to get another.

Husband James has his troubles, too, as have all the other inhabitants of the road, who are just beginning to trickle in.

He has come home at night and had to abandon his car because of the impossible conditions. In the morning site workers have had to push his car out for him.

Mrs. Clark has become so exasperated that she has written to the Rushden Urban Council to find out who is responsible for making up the roads.

Mr. G. D. Evelyn, the council’s surveyor, said the responsibility lay entirely in the hands of the builders.

Right Time

The developers did not have to do anything about making up the roads until the end of an agreement with the council came into sight.

Mr. Evelyn said he understood that work on St. Margaret’s Avenue and Whitefriars was in hand.

There was something to be said for leaving the making up of the roads until all the mains systems had been laid he observed.

The Rushden Echo, 24th June 1966, transcribed by Jim Hollis

Harry Howarth promises action on unmade roads

Abbotts Way

A small but determined pressure group of residents from the new Wymington Estate had a roadside interview with the Wellingborough MP, Mr. Harry Howarth, on Saturday, and was promised immediate action would be taken on the state of the unmade roads.

The promise came after Mr. Howarth had visited the estate at the top of St. Margaret’s Avenue, and talked to residents of Abbots Road, which has the worst conditions in the vicinity.

The residents of Abbots Road, many of whom have been in the houses for more than nine months, gave a petition to Mr. Howarth a month ago which stated that “the appalling conditions over the last six months were no longer tolerable.”

Petition

One of the residents of the road, Mrs. Denise Clark, had an interview with Mr. Howarth after he had been given the petition and he said that he would look into the matter and find out who was at fault.

Residents survey the road

Talking to the tenants, Mr. Howarth said that the reason the builders were now giving for the delay in making up the roads was that the East Midlands Electricity Board were still working to put up the lighting.

“The houses were completed six months ago in good order and as soon as you were in them you had to start paying. Now that you are paying it seems that the builders are content to let the roads stay in this condition,” said Mr. Howarth.

The housewives in Abbots Road sent a letter to the builders last November and they said that it brought the reply that the builders thought the council were at fault in not making up the road.

A similar letter to the council brought the reply that the responsibility now lay with the sub-contractors who had been given the work by the builders.

The mothers are, understandably, concerned over the roads, which they say are ruining their prams, their husbands’ cars, and may bring the risk of infection to their children.

It seems now that the responsibility for the work of making up the roads rests solely on the shoulders of a firm of contractors who have been given the work by the builders.

Builder’s View

Do not, however, be too quick to condemn the contractors, for there are many factors which go to completing a road on a new housing estate, not just flattening out the surface and putting on the tarmac.

The electricity, gas and water boards all have a responsibility to the residents and have to work in unison with the road workers if the job is to be done satisfactorily and without argument.

Next week in the “Echo” the point of view of the builders and the contractors will be put on the matter, and the problems and difficulties they face in work such as this are certainly not as clear-cut as they would seem.

Rushden Echo, 11th November 1966

Abbotts Way - newly surfaced road