Abstract

English council estates are commonly viewed as problematic and singularly unprepossessing places to live. It might therefore be difficult to imagine someone speaking of the joys of living on a 1960s council estate, but this paper will do exactly that. In May 1964, when I was three years old, my family and I moved into a new house on the just completed Middlefield Lane estate in Gainsborough, Lincolnshire. This is where I spent my formative years during the 60s and 70s, living, playing, hanging around, and growing up. This paper will argue that the ‘form’ of the estate – its situation and layout – ‘functioned’ as a crucial influence on my development, giving me an enduring sense of space, freedom and well being. From there, the paper will consider a more challenging and distinctive line of enquiry – of ‘feeling’, of what the estate felt like for a child at that time. As such, the paper will be unashamedly and enthusiastically autobiographical and lyrical in character, but it will also be underpinned by theories on autobiographical memory and child development in the hope that such approaches can give us a deeper and more nuanced understanding of these estates and their original intentions.