Prefabricated homes were seen as the quick answer to the housing shortage caused by German bombing in WW2. Built on top of pre-plumbed ­concrete slabs, these homes could be erected in a day by teams of German and Italian prisoners-of-war who were in no hurry to return home, come the peace. Londoners soon gave them the shortened name, Prefabs.

For more than 150,000 homeless, bombed-out families across Britain, these two-bedroom prefabs were meant to be a merely temporary solution at the end of the war. But they were a godsend, too — detached houses with the then astonishing luxury of a garden, a bathroom, and a separate indoor toilet. They soon became the envy of those still living in pre-war accommodation nearby, and were one of the most desirable options for social housing.

As a child in the 1950s, I remember them near where we lived, and how much everyone was jealous of being able to live in one.

They were designed to last only ten years, just long enough to allow post-war Britain to build all those wonderful new council blocks for homecoming heroes like Hector Murdoch and his family.

As the Sixties unfolded, multi-storey concrete utopias were popping up all over Britain’s ­metropolitan skylines and most of the prefabs came down. But as the years went on, the script went badly wrong. Many people found that they hated living in high-rise blocks, no matter how much the architects and the councils told them how lucky they were. In the end, the tower blocks started coming down again. Yet, the remaining prefabs — and their grateful residents — stayed put.

Even the local church was prefabricated.

Sadly, most have since been demolished by different authorities around Britain. In total, 156,623 prefab bungalows were built between 1945 and 1949. According to the Pre-fab Museum, around 8,000 are left in the UK with around 30 listed for presevation. They are still lived in today.