Seymour Hill Dunmurry: Community nostalgia as demolition begins on twin tower blocks built in 1960s
There is a strong sense of nostalgia in Dunmurry after demolition began on two 13 storey blocks of flats, a local councillor says.
Demolition began today of the Housing Executive towers at Seymour Hill, named Coolmoyne and Rathmoyne, were built in the 1960s.
"There's a lot of memories there. A lot of people have lived in the past 30, 40 plus years and in those flats," DUP councillor Jonathan Craig told the News Letter.
"There are very good memories from people that reared their children, had good times and enjoyed living there."
One lady said on social media that she got special access to the flats to return and take the numbers from the door of her granny's flat as a special momento of happy times.
Nobody's saying they're glad to see the flats go, he added.
"Something like 97% of all of the residents that were moved out of the tower blocks wanted to stay Seymour Hill and stay locally. And that's because there's a lot of them were very long established families from the estate."
On a tragic note, he also recalled that several members of the security forces were also murdered there during the Troubles.
The reason the flats are being demolished, he said, is because the qualify of the housing is not up to modern standards.
"They were single block concrete slab construction," he said. "But the problem with that is there's no insulation whatsoever.
"Anybody that lived on the north-east side of the flats struggled to heat their properties in the wintertime because the wind was blowing on them. There was no insulation and it was difficult to heat the properties. Mould and condensation was rampant because you were struggling to keep the properties warm."
But in the 1960s these type of buildings were a cheap and quick solution for housing shortages.
With the 2017 Grenfell Tower fire disaster in London, 70 people died when insulation cladding on the flats there caught fire, he notes.
NIHE did price fireproof cladding, he said.
"But it actually worked out cheaper to demolish the entire tower blocks and build new housing as opposed to putting external fireproof cladding on the buildings."
Originally the timescale for the demolition work was a year and a half, but the contractor has been making much faster progress.
One towerblock was already over half demolished on Wednesday, he said.
"They are now thinking they will have the entire site evacuated by contractors by Christmas."
However the real hard work comes after the demolition.
Huge concrete foundations were laid to support the 13 floors. But the flats are being replaced by social housing and it is not possible to lay sewers and water pipes in the old foundations.
As a result the old foundations will have to be completely dug out.
Each tower block had 54 flats, a total of 108. They will now be replaced with 120 houses on the same site, which Mr Craig worked hard to secure, he said.
However the timescale for that is unknown, with planning permission not yet submitted for the work, he added.
The Housing Executive said that in 2019 its board approved the Tower Blocks Action Plan which will see all 33 of its tower blocks across Northern Ireland will demolished.