By the 1890’s, St Ann's, an area of Nottingham, had ten thousand houses packed into it and two-thirds of them had no hot water and three quarters no bath. They were mostly terraced with no gardens and toilets being outside in a yard. Factories, workshops and other industrial buildings were built alongside the houses so that workers did not have far to travel. By the end of the 19th century the whole area was virtually filled with high-density housing to form a self-contained suburb with churches, chapels, schools, shops, banks, pubs and even a railway station on the Nottingham Suburban line.

In the1950s Nottingham city council began a program of slum clearance and St Ann’s turn came in 1967 with the first clearance order. In previous redevelopments the policy was to demolish unfit houses but leave the more expensive pubs and industrial buildings. However, in St Ann's a much more radical approach was adopted, razing vast areas to the ground. Although the main thoroughfares were retained, many of the old grid-plan streets disappeared.

Critics argued that some of the older houses could have been retained and improved. Many residents, especially those who had lived in St Ann's all their lives, regretted the loss of the neighbourliness which had existed in the closely-packed streets. Others welcomed the move from cramped houses without modern amenities to new ones with central heating, gardens, bathrooms and space for refrigerators and washing machines.

During this clearance, which took place in the late 1960s and early 1970s, many residents had to continue living and working amongst the demolition rubble until new houses were built to replace theirs. These photographs portray those people and how life was towards the end of the demolition and clearance.