It is 40 years since the first houses went up at Blackbird Leys, an estate known throughout Britain for all the wrong reasons, writes REG LITTLE. Over the years it has been called the Black Hole, the Ghetto, Botany Bay and the Place for Forgotten People.

But on Sunday, those who live there will be celebrating the estate's past with a fierce pride that will surprise only outsiders.

The curse of mindless joyriding and images of burning cars will always spring to some minds when the name Blackbird Leys is mentioned. As the author Peter Snow once observed with brutal honesty, "In Oxford terms at least, 'the Leys' is the pits".

Yet Blackbird Leys has always divided opinion like no other part of Oxford. When opening Windrush Tower, the estate's first block of flats, the then Mayor of Oxford, Alderman Lionel Harrison, said the new homes represented "modern living at its best". Even for those who blame the media and Oxford snobbery for the estate's reputation, these words must seem laughable today. But as the Rev James Ramsay, who will be leading a special birthday service at the Holy Family Church on Sunday said, it is community spirit that people living there really value. He said: "There is a genuine sense of human contact, of companionship that you do not get in other parts of Oxford. And it is something worth celebrating."

The Anglican priest admitted that he has not been able to establish the exact date of the first buildings, although it appears the first residents moved into Sandy Lane in 1958.

The first families moved in before the roads or shops were completed, with the unfinished houses and piles of sand providing excellent play areas for the first generation of Leys children.

Among the first wave of youngsters was Carole Roberts, now the Lord Mayor of Oxford. She arrived as a 14-year-old from London with her mum and dad, who found work at the car works.

"I thought it was good," she said. "I remember everything in the house being brand new, with big bedrooms and a good kitchen. There was speedway, which most kids were into in those days."

But there was also early signs of prejudice. "There was this big problem of being labelled. People were not able to get credit and hire purchase if they said they came from Blackbird Leys. Even the vicar could not get a phone in without having to pay in advance. "None of us knew why. It was a brand new estate with no past as far as we were concerned. People working at the car works were among the best paid manual workers in Oxford. I think it was the first estate in Oxford with an Afro-Caribbean population. But there have never been any problems on the estate because of that. People have always accepted each other."

"Later on when youngsters started looking for work, if employers found out that they came from Blackbird Leys, they were put right down the list. A lot of kids said that. I know it happened to my eldest children."

Forty years later the Lord Mayor still lives on the estate where she brought up her six children. And still she is battling against prejudice, as is the Employment Minister Andrew Smith, MP for East Oxford, who also lives on the estate.

Mrs Roberts said: "Even today I make a point of saying that I come from Blackbird Leys. Eyebrows are still raised."

She insists that it is a safer place to walk around at night than other parts of Oxford. "I get to visit housing estates all over the country, Manchester, Bradford and so on. Compared with them Blackbird Leys is a paradise." But it certainly did not seem like that in the summer of 1991, when the terrifying exploits of so-called hotters in stolen high performance cars saw the estate being labelled a no-go area.

Police in riot gear had to be called in as teenagers basked in their notoriety, as the estate's name was dragged into the dirt. Scenes of rioting, with police being pelted with petrol bombs, stones and bricks, were beamed into millions of homes on the TV news.

The darkest hour came when Oxford Polytechnic computer technician Melvin Davies was battered with a baseball bat. The picture of him cradling his bleeding fiance, who had been stabbed in her face and chest was flashed around the world.

Part of Sunday's service will be to celebrate the estate's slow but steady recovery since then as well as to mark the future, with the large housing development at Greater Leys.

Mr Ramsay: "A recent survey on what people like about living here showed more than anything it was the friendliness. Of course there are problems with an awful lot of people trying to survive on little money.

"But there are also a lot of people doing amazing things in youth and pre-school work. And they are not given the kind of respect that they ought to have by the rest of Oxford." The number of community projects now in place is almost bewildering. TRAX offers youngsters an introduction to all aspects of cars while the Music Projects gives them the chance to produce their own CDs. Then there is the young parents' group Lemon Juice, the Dovecote and Holiday Play scheme for under-eights and the community development initiative, for developing job skills.

Senior youth worker, Des Oakley, who has worked on the estate for six years, said: "Young people who come from Blackbird Leys feel good about it. The problem really lies with other people from the outside. Maybe it is because Blackbird Leys is still out on a limb. Maybe it is because Blackbird Leys is not on its way to anywhere."

He is talking geographically of course. For 40 years the estate's volatile combination of high unemployment, single parent families and ethnic minorities has often seemed to place it at odds with the rest of Oxford.

For all the stigmas attached to Blackbird Leys, future generations have a great deal more to live up to than live down. But then they don't need an outsider to tell them that. WHAT THEY SAY ABOUT THE LEYS...

"I get to visit housing estates all over the country, including Manchester and Bradford. Compared with them Blackbird Leys is a paradise."

(Lord Mayor of Oxford, Carole Roberts)

"Blackbird Leys is a monument to the kind of bad planning that crams people together like cans in a supermarket."

(Peter Snow, author of Oxford Observed)

"There are a lot of people doing amazing things in youth and pre-school work."

(The Rev James Ramsay, of the Church of the Holy Family)

"The eruption involves the media. With the cameras there, it gives them more opportunity."

(Thames Valley Police Chief Constable Charles Pollard on the so called hotters) "Blackbird Leys is a pleasant place to live and we have great neighbours."

(Andrew Smith, Oxford East MP and Employment Minister who has lived there for 20 years)

"It is a great pity that many people in Oxford have never seen this estate." I hope they will all come out and have a look at it. The building is modern living at its best."

(Former Oxford Mayor Lionel Harrison, opening the Windrush Tower flats in 1962)

STIGMA OF ESTATE

The Leys was planned and built to cater for a massive post-war population overspill as more and more workers were needed for Oxford's factories and the car industry.

But it is now all too clear that the estate carried a stigma from before it was even built.

Many of the first tenants were indeed strangers to the city, as a result of large scale 'immigrant' labour from Scotland, Ireland, Wales and the Caribbean. Families were moved in from the Slade, an area of Nissen huts between Cowley and Headington, and rehoused away from St Ebbes in the centre of Oxford, which was being demolished. Former Oxford University research fellow Dr Frances Reynolds said in her book The Problem Housing Estate: "There was a widespread belief among city residents that people from the inner city slum clearance areas had been placed on the estate.

"The planning decision was to use 250 acres of farmland on the edge of the city for one large properly planned community which would be a final solution to the city housing needs of the late fifties."

In the event, with 3,000 houses and flats created, the development outside the city boundaries was hardly designed to merge with the rest of Oxford.

A number of technical problems had to be overcome before the site could be developed. As part of the land had been used as a sewage farm, the chief public health officer was worried about its suitability for housing on health grounds. Some of the farmland used was also found to be soggy, which led to difficulties with foundations.

Even when the first houses were occupied residents were still not happy about the state of the soil, blaming it for many outbreaks of sickness.

Converted for the new archive on 30 June 2000. Some images and formatting may have been lost in the conversion.