Trevor Joseph and Slade Camp

Trevor Joseph was three when he moved with his mother to Fourth Avenue, Slade Park, Headington. 64 years later and we are trying to find the location where his house once stood. But this is difficult. Because although we know the address, the area around here does not look anything like he remembers. There are tall trees, fallen branches and swathes of stinging nettles where there were once open fields. In truth the place that between 1948 and 1970 was home to hundreds of families like Trevor’s, has been reclaimed by nature.

But Trevor is undeterred. He knows these woods at the foot of Shotover Hill well. Besides he has a black and white photo showing a series of single storey wooden huts. One of them has Trevor’s dad’s Austin Cambridge outside, and his old childhood dog Major. And although all long gone, what he hopes will help him find the location is the landmark road that leads past.

During the Second World War when the site, then largely treeless, was used for military training, the army had laid out roads with huts built alongside. It was these that were used after the war, to help with the chronic housing shortage. Streetlights were put in, and the large single rooms with a stove in the middle were upgraded into family homes with bathrooms and bedrooms. But by the time Trevor’s family moved in, after the Eastern bypass was built in 1959, the site’s days were numbered. The new road had split the camp down the middle, the 65 huts on the east side were left stranded, away from the amenities enjoyed by those on the west side in Wood Farm. By 1970 the last resident had been moved on, relocated to the new housing estates being built around the city. The huts were demolished. Trees were planted. And the site was rewilded.

However, some of the roads do still survive. And one of them is Fourth Avenue. There’s been much interest in the place recently and it’s got a newly painted road sign. And as we head down the gentle incline, Trevor begins to get excited. That’s where Adrian Kidd and the Divines lived, he remembers waving his arm in the direction of a dense thicket.  Brian and Glenwys lived there. There was a family there called the Waltons. Trevor is laughing now. There’s a little stream down there and a couple of trees that got struck by lightning. Then checking his photograph once more, he looks up and then right.  “And my house was here,” he says launching himself off the path and into the trees. “It’s in here.”

Trevor is now a sought-after personal trainer and has no trouble jumping the fallen tree trunks and ducking under overhanging vines. He’s bought a spade, and I watch as he sets to, exclaiming as he uncovers tiny bits of brick and concrete. And as he does, Trevor fills me on what he remembers about his time spent here at Slade Park.

“My mum had come over to England in 1953 from the Caribbean. She was part of the Windrush generation. This was the mother country. They had pictures of the Queen and the Duke of Edinburgh on their exercise books. Britain wanted people to come, and she wanted a better life. Some couldn’t hack it and went straight home. They couldn’t stand the weather. But she stayed. I was born at the Radcliffe Infirmary. She helped the nurses at The Churchill, she did a bit of everything.

I came to live at Slade Park when I was about three. It was just me and my mum at first because my dad was in the army. The Green Jackets. He wasn’t around much.  After a couple of years my older brother and sister, who’d been left back in St Kitts with my mother’s family joined us. My younger brother and sister were born while we lived here, and I have another brother who was born when we were moved over to Blackbird Leys. I think we ended up here because we were poor.

Our house was made of wood. It had a path leading up to it and stone steps going up to the front door. It was nice inside. Heated with paraffin stoves. It had a kitchen, a sitting room, a bathroom and three bedrooms.

It was all countryside then. Just us and nature. I knew the woods around like the back of my hand. My best friends were Billy D’Aubeny, David Ross and Brian Witchell. We made swings in the trees, bows and arrows out of sticks and go karts out of old pram wheels. We’d have go kart races down the hill. It doesn’t look so steep now, but my memories are different. We’d spend hours playing at an old air raid shelter. We’d climb up on to the top and then jump on to the mattress underneath. No two days were ever the same.

I fly birds of prey now. I’m sure it’s because of the time I spent here. Among the wildlife. So many different animals. I remember seeing red squirrels. My elder brother Baz had a tame squirrel. He’d walk up the road with it on his shoulder. He’d send me up to Shotover to collect hazelnuts for it.

At the top of the hill were the big houses. There were meadows with horses. And a riding school. (The road is called The Ridings). We’d go up there scrumping for apples and pears and carol singing at Christmas. And when I was in the Cubs we’d do ‘bob-a-job’ clearing the leaves and cleaning the windows.

I can only remember the place with the ring road. I didn’t know it before. There weren’t so many cars then. And no zebra crossing. I’d jump over the fence and walk straight over. My dad used to send me to the off licence at The Corner House on the other side. But accidents did happen. Our dog Major was run over on that road.

In term time there was a school bus that picked me up from the camp and took me to Sandhills. There was a special turning area for it. I remember us being the only black family on the camp. Someone told me there was the Williams family too. They had lived here in Fourth Avenue before the bypass cut it down the middle and left them on the other side in Wood Farm. But I never knew them.  I think every black guy will have experienced racism at some stage in their lives. But I don’t remember that from when I was at Slade Park. I only noticed there were other black families around when I moved to Blackbird Leys.”

By the time Trevor has told his story he has cleared a large rectangular slab of concrete from beneath the undergrowth. Perhaps the base to his childhood home. A couple of culverts where water and sewage once ran. And unearthed a few beer cans from more recent visitors. We have found no sign of the hole in which he and his siblings used to post little notes and the odd sixpence. But what we have discovered is an old round metal cover. Rusty and a bit mangled but still recognisable as from one of those top loading washing machines. “My mum had one,” says Trevor enthusiastically. “Servis, yes that was the make. Do you remember those?” And we look again at his photograph of the hut. And I notice there is a long line of washing hung out to dry.

“I loved living here,” says Trevor as we head off. “And this is where I want to end up when I go. I’ve told my son. I want my ashes scattered on this spot.” And he laughs. “In the washing machine.”

Many thanks to Wendy Austen and The Friends of Slade Camp, who organised the open day at which I met Trevor. You can find out more about the area and what they are doing by visiting:

http://www.shotoverpreservation.uk

Trevor with his best friend Brian outside the house he once lived in at Slade Park. Brian is holding one of the many animals they befriended.

61, Fourth Avenue. Trevor’s house is the one with his dad’s Austin Cambridge parked outside. You can just make out his childhood dog Major there too. (Oxfordshire History Centre POX0140168)

Here it is circled on this OS map from the days before the bypass in 1956.

Trevor standing on what Fourth Avenue looks like today.

New signage showing the sites of some of the old roads. Fourth Avenue and First Avenue were split in two by the bypass in 1959.

Trevor uncovering part of the old concrete base to his house

Possibly the cover to his mother’s old toploader Servis washing machine

The spot where the school bus came in off the bypass to pick up the children from Slade Camp. The road must have been much wider then.

94, Fourth Avenue as it is now. Friends of Slade Camp have excavated the concrete path leading up to it and found some of its foundations.

The old pill box from when the area was used by the army during WW2. The Oxford Bucks and Light Infantry in the Hollow Way Barracks in Headington build Slade Camp for training purposes. Some 1500 soldiers and women from the Auxiliary Territorial Service (they ran the kitchens and offices) were housed here between 1940 and 1942, followed by the Home Guard and the Royal Army Medical Corps. Many of the soldiers that came back from Dunkirk were stationed here.

A map of Slade Camp, as it was laid out by the army. After the war the huts were converted and made into family homes. You can see the dotted line where in 1959 the bypass cut the community in half.

The old shower block and urinals.

One of the many bits and pieces Wendy has unearthed while out walking in the woods.

Up until 1660 Shotover was part of the Royal Forest, and used for hunting, timber and fuel. After that the area between The Ridings and The Slade was owned by Brasenose and Magdalen Colleges. You could say that now nature has claimed back what was once hers.

The area as it is today. The Eastern bypass runs through the middle of Magdalen Wood. The Ridings takes you from Old Road down to the old camp along its east side.

Trevor’s house taken from a different angle – you can just see his dad’s car behind the tree on the curve in the road. This is the picture he used to pinpoint the place on the road where his house once stood.

A well worn picture of Trevor as a little boy at Slade Park with his mother Enid and his older brother Baz.