HERE is Walcot’s Frobisher Drive as not many readers will remember it.

The image, printed in the Adver on Thursday, February 2, 1956, was captured hours after Britain’s coldest night in nine years.

For the pioneering residents so far relocated to the new estate, the freezing of the sea of mud where the road had yet to be laid at least meant less risk of ending up knee-deep in the stuff.

That wasn’t much of a silver lining for the workers tasked with clearing and levelling, as they were forced to hack at it with picks and shovels.

We wrote: “The suggestion was made yesterday that the trouble on the Walcot estate in Swindon, where 200 families are mud-bound, arose from the fact that the Town Council was trying to do too much in such a short time.

“Mr E Eckersley, the Borough Treasurer, who made the comment, was asked why the estate was still in a rough condition. He said the reason was primarily an economic one.

“The estimated cost of the expansion programme for next year was £2,500,000, and £10m was the estimated cost of the scheme as a whole.”

This, the official explained, meant the council needed to collect as much rent as possible as soon as possible.

A few days later we reported on a fact-finding visit made by four Labour councillors, during which residents complained not just of mud but problems with the quality of their new homes.

Among them was a Burghley Close resident, Mr Sims, who told of poor woodwork and patches of walls with no distemper – a form of protective whitewash.

We added: “A knock on the door of a house in Raleigh Avenue was answered by the tenant, Mr P Jackson. He suggested that a leaflet giving new tenants information on the bus services and so on should be handed to them with their key.

“Mrs Jackson told the councillors that one of her doors ‘was hanging off’ and that a plaster patch on the walls of one of her bedrooms had not been distempered.

“In Gresham Close the councillors met Mrs Marjorie Macdonald. She said that pools of water gathered in the corners of her living room, that clothes and shoes in a bedroom cupboard had become mildewed.

“Water was leaking between the joints of the roof gutter of the house next door. Ice was encrusted on the front wall.”

One of the councillors, Ivor Homer, said: “I don’t think there is anything unusual about the complaints we have had.

“These will be taken up at the first opportunity.”