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From Leicester Mercury 19^th May 2010

Good life in Garden City

Reader Christine Luckcuck's request for information about the Garden City in Humberstone has brought a response from Mr Maurice Whailing, of Thurlaston.

Margaret Upchurch, of Knighton, has already provided Mr Leicester with the background to the garden city.

Here, Mr Whailing provides some personal memories.

He writes: "I lived in an old cottage just inside Seine Lane, opposite Humberstone School.

"I was a pupil at that school in 1935-36, in Miss Freeman's class.

My uncle and aunt, Ted and Gertie Sharp, lived at three addresses in Garden City between about 1930 and their deaths.

"They were known to everybody in Garden City, as was everybody else.

"It was a private estate and the people who lived there were tenants. It was surrounded by fields in those days and remained so, until the council started to build.

It now adjoins council property in places.

"My aunt and uncle lived at 75 Keyham Lane in the early 1930s, then moved to 123 Keyham Lane in the late 1930s, where they lived until the 1950s.

Then they moved to 110 Laburnum Road.

"My uncle Ted worked at Chilproof, in East Park Road, all of his working life. He was in the dye house.

"Garden City was a very nice place to live. There are parts of Garden City still remaining – Lilac Avenue, Laburnum Road, Keyham Lane, Fern Rise, Chestnut Avenue and the old Co-op Hall, in the centre, where they held dances in the big room, over the shop, in the 1930s.

"Ted and Gertie are buried together in St Mary's churchyard, Humberstone village."

Mr Whailing says he spent some very happy times in Garden City, when he was a young boy in the 1930s.

He is 84 and lives in a small village, which, he says, is not unlike Humberstone was in the 1930s.

He says: "I lost my darling wife Margaret in 2007, after 58 years of marriage. I now have my memories. Garden City has many happy ones for me."