The next time you see this pile of sand (except that you won’t really see it), It will be part of the screed that goes over the bituminous damp-proofing and levels the floor of the building.

And this is a piece of history making a fleeting appearance to remind us of the first residents of Dean Court:

I suspect these could be the footings of the very first Dean Court Social Club: a wooden building* constructed and run by those first residents in the 1950s.  It was a fantastic achievement and it must have been with very mixed feelings that they saw it demolished a decade or so later in favour of the new council-funded building.  Along with the old social club, perhaps something of the heart of that first can-do community died.

I hope those of them still here will embrace the new Community Centre and take it to their hearts.  Without wishing to sound either sentimental or philosophical, it seems that we are all just a tiny part of that great tapestry of human life that happened to land us here in Dean Court in this very moment.

If you remember the first social club, please get in touch and tell us about it. We are all part of the here and now and if we throw out all of our history we will all be very much the poorer.

*My neighbour Arthur tells me that the very first Social Club building was a Nissen hut.  If you want to know a bit about Nissen huts, there is an excellent brief history here:

http://www.rafupwood.co.uk/nissenhuts.html