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After the second world war and the return of hundreds of thousands of servicemen to Britain, Scunthorpe like other towns and cities found its self in dire need of accomodation. The Ministry of Health had instructed that property should be requisitioned to provide homes for those in need. The drive to find empty property in Scunthorpe had spread from the more prominent larger house to the back streets and terraces, the town was combed street by street for unoccupied houses and on each of them a requisition notice was posted. Backs of shops appeared to produce a substantial amount of unused accomodation. Although it seemed the corporation had been somewhat hasty in its activities which had resulted in notices being posted on houses that simply had their curtains down or people who were away on holiday. Representations agianst requisitions had been made by a number of owners and the corporation had been criticised for not using descretion when posting the requisition notices. In one case an ex-seviceman who had been on honeymoon had been served with a notice in respect of a house he was to return to. The Housing Committee were determined that there should be no discrimination and that notices should be posted on all empty properties without selection.
Owners of properties which had requisition notices placed on them had a prescibed 14 days to state whether they or their families were to occuppy the house, if so no further action would be taken.
It was reported on Friday 12th July 1957 that six houses had been broken into in the early morning on the Lincoln Gardens Estate. This had brought the total since the previous December to 27, the police believed it to be the work of one man.
The report said 'as detectives investigated the current spate of break-ins today, the police made an appeal to house holders to help them in their search for the man. All the break-ins have taken place in the southern part of the town, mostly on the council housing estates. The intruder avoids detection by stealthily prowling through back gardens and clambering over fences in his search for open ground floor windows. Once inside he cofines his attention to the ground floor rooms. Money has been taken from cupboards, tins,ornaments and coats while the families sleep upstairs. In each case the intruder enters the house by slipping his hand through the small transom windows, left open by the householder, then opening the bigger window beneath. His hauls have usually been small amounts of £1 or £2. But recently he got away with £49 10s from a house on Riddings. Police patrols have been doubled in an effort to catch him, but the intruder has always been one step ahead and struck in different areas. Windows have been left open to attract him - with policemen keeping watch a short distance away. A police spokesman said "with this last lot of break-ins, we can take no chances, its a question of preventing crime and we need the householders to help do it".
This advert for the new housing in the Priory Lane area appeared in the Scunthorpe Hospital programme in July 1935. An extract in the Scunthorpe and Frodingham Star 18th August 1934 notes that whilst excavating a road on the new Priory Road estate workmen unearthed a human skeleton of a fully grown adult buried about two feet under the surface. The bones were brittle and easily snapped by the workmen before they discovered the nature of the remains.
Older residents could give no explanation for its existance, that is in the nature of some undiscovered tragedy, although one of the areas oldest inhabitants does remember as a boy being warned by his parents not to visit those parts which were supposed to be visited by the ghost of a murdered man. It was understood that the remains were interred at Bottesford Churchyard.
Houses were constructed with a 20ft Frontage, EXCLUDING the frontage necessary for a garage.
