The evolution of prefabs took a great leap forward in 1830. A London carpenter - H. John Manning - made some pre-cut (pre-fabricated) pieces of timber. These were then stored on board the ship his son took to Australia and assembled into the 'Manning Portable Colonial Cottage' on arrival. Another New World boost to prefab evolution came sixty years later when self-assembly prefab packs were posted off to 'I can if Yukon!" prospectors in the Klondike.
These were the inspiration for the Sears Roebuck & Co. 'prefabs by mail order' business that was set up in 1908 and survived for another thirty-two years.
The 1950s was the hey-day of the Saturday morning film matinee. Young doubles of Roy Rodgers, the Lone Ranger, and Hopalong Cassidy would be seen waiting in ambush for Copper Jones. (Only to flee and hurl their silver six-guns away should this awesome figure ever
appear out of the blue and start cycling towards them.) The Rebel Without A Cause who lived at prefab number twenty-six would never dream of stepping out of his front door without first putting on his stylish Wyatt Earp-style bootlace tie. As a young boy he would set up his train-set in the front garden, play quietly away for hours, and avoid any rough games on the greens. Then he caught sight of a teddy boy walking by, decided to become one himself, had a big row with his
parents, and the day after his sixteenth birthday was never seen on the estate again.
German Enlightenment thinkers described architecture as frozen music. If you could de-frost a 1950s prefab it would unleash the pulsating beat of Frankie Lane's Rawhide! If you tried
de-frosting one of the prefabs on our estate in the months before they were demolished a melancholy heart-wrenching Mahler symphony would overwhelm you.