'The move paid off'

By Stephanie Burns
Posted: 2008/09/26

BOB and Elsie Hopping were among the thousands who relocated to Harlow in the 1940s.

Mr Hopping found work as a sheet metal worker and soon after moved into a newly built home with kitchen, bathroom and garden.

On moving in day, the couple carried their furniture across muddy fields, passing huntsmen with a pack of hounds.

Mr Hopping, now 81, said: "There wasn't much here when we came and we had to go shopping back in Edmonton once a week, so few were the shops in Harlow.

"There were so many young families in those days that Harlow was known as 'pram town'.

"The Stow shopping centre, the first in England, is only five minutes' walk away.

"We still walk everywhere, even the two miles to Harlow Mill."

By a quirk of fate, their son Glyn is now managing director of Barratt North London, and in charge of one of the major house-building projects for Harlow, Fifth Avenue will be a mixed development of 750 houses.

Glyn said: "Harlow was a great place to grow up. There were lots of kids living nearby. These days it has lost the new town image and has its own identity and a thriving community.

"It is attracting inward investment and its sustained social and economic growth is set to take it forward successfully into the next 60 years."