Stoke homes to be partially demolished by hand
Demolition contractors will work both with machinery and with their bare hands to take down 48 Victorian homes in Stoke-on-Trent, to make way for new, modern housing.
The empty homes in Travers Street, Harper Street and Morton Street in Middleport are to be taken down in the next few months, after demolition plans were submitted to Stoke-on-Trent City Council this week.
The demolition is part of plans by regeneration group, Renew North Staffordshire, to replace the region's dilapidated old housing with contemporary homes. The demolition will have to be carried out partially by hand because some of the houses lie in a conservation area, with some of the neighbouring properties considered historically significant.
It is hoped that plans will be made to rebuild homes on the site at the beginning of 2013. One resident of the houses that will remain on Morton Street, 48-year-old Susan Quinn, said that she hoped that something will be done quickly, out of consideration for the people still living there, who have already had to put up with the gradual decay of the slowly emptying homes.
"If the houses are being knocked down then I hope they'll be building there rather than leaving it empty and derelict like the Slater Street clearance area," she said. "The four houses in Morton Street have all had their windows smashed and they've had to put steel doors and cages in recently.
