THE existence of the Cutteslowe Walls in Oxford may have provoked anger outside, but families in the area learned to live with them.

Who says? One of the residents, Daphne Robbins.

According to her, most people just got on with life.

She writes: “There never was any great social divide between people on the two estates in the 21 years I lived there.”

As we recalled (Memory Lane, March 9), the walls were built in 1934 across two roads to divide privately-built houses from the council estate.

They stood for 25 years before they were finally demolished.

Mrs Robbins, of Headley Way, Headington, whose maiden name was Harris, says there was much interaction between families across the physical divide.

She writes: “My parents were the first family to move on to Cutteslowe Estate on June 13, 1932.

“They moved from rooms in Harpes Road to a house in Aldrich Road.

“They had waited nine years for that house.

“The houses on the private side were not all sold – some were rented out at 12 shillings a week.

“Rent on the council estate was nine shillings a week – rates were paid separately.

“We had relations living on the private side, and so did others.

“Many of the children on the private side went to Summertown School – so did the children from the council estate.

“The girls from the private side came round to Guides in Cutteslowe Mission Hall.

“When the evacuees came to Oxford, those living on the private side would come round to us to play on the roundabout and swings on the top ‘rec’.”

Some critics of the walls claimed that children from the council homes picked flowers from private gardens, but Mrs Robbins said they didn’t need to do so.

“For a few years before the Second World War, the council held a competition for the best-kept garden, so we had our own flowers to pick.

“Front gardens were always tidy.

“We could also pick wild flowers a five-minute walk away.

“I worked at the Co-op, in South Parade, for seven years. Many families on the private side did their weekly shopping there – no snobbery there.

“Some of the men from the private side had allotments on the Sunnymeade ground, where nearly every man from the council side had a plot.

“The majority of people on both sides got on with living their lives, not worrying about the walls.”