Marlborough Gardens is a post war housing estate built in the late 1940’s and early 50’s. Together with Folly View Road at the top end, which was built later in the 60’s, it now forms a new link road that connects Park Road to Fernham Road.
Also see our house by house tour of Marlborough Gardens in the Year 2000.
See Faringdon Streets for an indexed list of all streets in Faringdon.
The new houses became available in 1948 and were rented out by the local council. Every 6th house on the whole estate was allocated to a farm worker. Most of the farm cottages that they had lived in before had toilets down a path which was shared with the neighbours; so moving into a house with its own inside toilet was unbelievable for them. They each received a brand new blanket that was from a trust left for the people of Faringdon. (The original trust was started by Sir Henry Unton and dates back to 1591.) For working class families so soon after the war and rationing, coats were the norm for keeping warm in bed.1
The development included a number of cul-de-sacs and over 170 dwellings, a mixture of terrace and semi-detached, were built. The first cul-de-sac was built by Levertons. Then another company took over to build the others. The large green in the middle was donated by one of these building companies for a children’s playground and must never be used for any other purpose. The garages in the first cul-de-sac were originally gardens belonging to numbers 79 and 81 which were commandeered from the council. Originally these houses were number 30 and 31 when they were first built. It was a few years later that they were evenly numbered one side and odd the other.1
References:
- Article on Facebook by Debbie Sherwood.
Researched by Ian Lee, April 2023.