Although I was born in Bury, Lancashire, my father, Alfred Sosbe, followed his elder brother, Tom, to the National Fire Service in Leicester, at Lancaster Place.

It was 1940, and I was 18 months old.

We were allocated a house on the Lancaster Place estate on the “Banjo” – the cul-de-sac at the upper end of the estate.

My dad was employed in the maintenance section, which was housed in the rear of the Granby Halls.

I believe he was then promoted as we moved to the house on the corner of Lancaster Road and the entrance to the rear of the station.

The house, number 31, survives. The officer’s houses were all alongside Lancaster Road, with a lawned front garden and a flower border.

The Chief Fire Officer’s house was at the top end of the estate next to a fenced-in bowling green at the corner of University Road.

Now this site is the university Richard Attenborough Centre, where I have been attending art classes since it opened.

The Chief Fire Officer’s house was quite a grand residence compared with any of the other houses. His privacy was maintained by a high fence, but if you peeped through a knot hole in the wood you could see a grand terrace with French windows opening on to it and a well-tended garden.

The Banjo was next to that, then the Square and its main building housing the engines, offices, restrooms, muster rooms and dance floor.

The rear of the houses all faced inwards, leaving an open area for individual gardens. In the middle of each square was an air raid shelter.

Everything was uniform, even to the curtains being standard beige twill and blackout boards.

An alleyway ran from the top end to the rear of the station in between the houses which was quite a slope, and where the firemen trained to unroll and roll the huge coils of hoses.

The station forecourt was a favourite place for roller skating or sliding on the ice in the winter.

We soon got chased off as there could have been a call out at any time.

In those days the vehicles were open-topped, with a bench seat at the front and benches down both sides.

My dad once took me on it to stay with my grandparents, in Shelford, Nottinghamshire. It was a great experience, although I was rather scared of slipping off the seat.

When I was about nine years old, my dad left the fire service and went into an engineering business in Great Holme Street, backing on to the canal.

This was not successful and he set up his own business as a specialist welder, becoming very successful because of his ability to repair aluminium castings, such as racing car engines where the connecting rods had broken and gone through the side of the crankcase.

When dad left the fire service, we had to leave Lancaster Place, but I have happy memories of growing up in a rather unique environment.

It is a great pity one section of the development was allowed to be demolished to make way for another university project and the designation of each remaining building as grade II-listed obviously has done little to preserve the ambience of the site that existed during my happy time as a young resident. This is especially true now the city council has approved conversion of one of the two-bedroom houses into a four separate student bedsits, following its metamorphosis via a four-student shared flat from the original family house.

While the demand for student accommodation may be real, I cannot but think a more useful use of these grade II-listed units ought to be considered, one that preserves the peaceful tranquillity of the original concept, without the additional social, economic, cultural and environmental issues that so often accompany the change of use of family dwellings into multi-occupational units.

Kay Lyne, Leicester.