Memoirs Of Living In 46, Durham Buildings

A Memory of Battersea.

A two bedroom flat on the third floor, 46, Durham Buildings, became home to me, my two siblings and parents for about 9 months from 1961 to 1962. The flat had no bathroom but a small outside balcony which housed the toilet that had no window and no electricity for lighting. We'd venture out there day and night, rain, snow or shine with a torch light and my siblings and I always visited that toilet together. I understand that Durham Buildings - built around 1902-1904 with paper thin walls between units, was originally intended as temporary housing. However, my parents met people who'd lived there for generations with easy access to work at The Battersea Power Plant with its four gigantic smoke stacks which blackened our nostrils and curtains daily with foul smelling exhaust belched into the air accompanied by toxic soot. My vivid memory of York Street, Battersea - even after we'd moved and would pass in the bus - was that dead awful smell!!!

It is at 46, Durham Buildings at age 5, that I learned how cruel people can be. How one's skin colour can set one up as a target for bullying and violent attacks. We were children - ages 2, 5 and 7 and were under racial attacks at school (can't remember the name now) and at home in the Durham Buildings court yard where children played and where the mum's hung out the washing to dry. If there's anybody out there who remembers that June 14th summer night of 1962 when two teenage boys 16 and 19 (positioned in the air raid shelter opposite the back of Durham Buildings' flats) shot and blinded a black 5 year old girl who was standing on her balcony just off from the toilet - then I am glad that I am not the only one! The shooting (not accident) became an Old Bailey Central Criminal Court case. "Most of the other Durham Building residents with whom our reporters spoke were reticent about discussing the black family. One man said that they had it coming to them. If they didn't like it, they should get back to where they came from. Another mother commented that the way those children are treated is disgraceful. The parents should know better than to let their children treat the coloured people so badly and she didn't want her name mentioned" - paraphrased from a newspaper clipping dated 1962 - publication unknown but other clippings have headlines like: "Coloured Youngsters Tormented & Terrorised: Little girl shot in eye had earlier been strung up...

I am hoping that the newly gentrified Battersea is a more all embracing environment to live (with newly repurposed smoke stacks) than my memoirs of the 1960s shine light on.