The Forgotten Council Estate Games of the Late 20th Century

Did you ever get lost in a maze of council houses?

The urban concrete jungles around the United Kingdom offer the growing population a place of start. They host a tight communal residence for many types of amazing people across the country. The hard working class citizens, benefit seekers, single parents, extremely large family’s, ethnic minorities, asylum seekers and gypsies are a few strong examples. Every row or green* of houses has a different crazy story to tell. Everyone knows many of the families in the street. “That’s just the council estate way”.

*(Row of terraced houses facing each other with a small patch of grass for the children to play on.)

The aspiring youth of the late 20th century had to make do with imaginative games. Some got out of hand while others took great skill and concentration. If you wanted to fit in and be part of a ten or twenty strong crew, you definitely would have been asked to participate in some of the following dark activities.

Cherry Knocking aka Knock Down Ginger

Did you ever go to the front door after a loud knock only to find nobody was there? Then it’s possible you could have fallen victim to a cherry knocker. This classic game of knock and run produced massive amounts of adrenaline in any young kid. The more knocks a person achieved on a row of houses the higher the reputation grew among the clang of knockers.

The boring winter nights resorted to the extreme cherries. Fear was not in some knockers dictionary. Balls of twine (strong string) would be used to tie up door handles inter-linking and connecting rows or greens of houses. When the final door was tied everyone knocking would get a door. After a few seconds of compulsive laughter all the doors tied would get banged or knocked.

A quick escape would have kids diving into bushes, jumping over walls, hiding in dustbin cupboards or just running for shear life. The pain of laughter would come when adults would try and open their front doors; only to find they had a serious problem on their hands. The grown ups would have to walk through the back gardens with a pair of scissors to cut away the twine.

You would always hear “Them fu@*ing kids are at it again”

Many forms of these devious methods were thought up for shear cheap frills. The fishing wire tied to one door and slowly unravelled to the nearest bush also worked a treat. The poor person who kept answering the door to a knock from the kids hiding in the nearest bush didn’t have a clue what was going on.