Jessie Axford - when the roofs blew off!

Storm damage to the new town houses in Hatfield

contributed by Welwyn Hatfield Museum Service

Bishops Rise, Southern end near Garden Avenue Junction, May 1956
Ken Wright ; Welwyn Hatfield Museum Service

robins way hatfield

Transcript:

In 1957 severe storms blew the roofs off some new town properties in Robins Way in the town. The public enquiry which followed blamed the architects, builders and the clerk of works for the shoddy building work.

Jessie Axford speaks about what happened that night:

“We advise you to go downstairs because you know the roofs. Well we couldn’t really believe this kind of thing so we stayed put….and in the morning we had that end of the roofs on our garden and three of us had our roofs still intact, but they just lifted up and folded over because there hadn’t been any instructions for screwing the roofs to the beams and they were only done with three inch nails.”

This page was added on 19/02/2015.

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