Youngsters growing up back then often had free rein to roam the neighbourhood in which they lived, provided they were back home in time for supper.
There’s barely a car in sight in these nostalgic photos, except for the ruined vehicles being used as climbing frames by curious children.
Traffic was growing, however, and one sign, urging drivers not to use a residential street as a rat-run, reminds motorists that ‘children play here’.
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The roads and pavements are seen here turned into makeshift football and cricket pitches, or battlefields for rampaging knights and cowboys.
Fearless children are pictured swinging from the lampposts, playing with old tyres and pogoing down the middle of the street.
Nowhere was off-limits in this era before health and safety really took hold, including the many bomb sites dotted around the post-war landscape.
Children can be seen clambering over the rubble and making dens among the concrete and twisted metal.
In a time before social media, streaming and video games, youngsters knew how to make their own fun.
From building and racing go-karts to playing roller hockey with tea cosies for helmets and newspaper stuffed into their socks in place of shin pads, they were a resourceful bunch.
Do these photos bring back memories for you of happy days spent playing outdoors, and do you think it’s time we reclaimed the streets for today’s children?
For more nostalgia, check out this list of things you probably miss about the 60s if you grew up then.
5. Ring-a-ring-a-roses?
Children playing on the street in around 1950 with not a car in sight | Getty Images Photo: General Photographic Agency/Hulton Archive
6. Getting a tow
Boys playing with a go-kart in the 1960s | Getty Images Photo: Steve Lewis
7. Give it a twirl
A girl twirling her dress in the street as two younger children look on, in February 1958 | Getty Images Photo: Bert Hardy Advertising Archive
8. Air time
Twelve-year-old footballer Margaret Wilde bounces and catches a football while skipping, as part of her training regime, in a street near her home in Denton, near Manchester, in April 1960. Holding one end of the skipping rope is her friend Brenda Brook (12). Wilde was the youngest member of Nomad Ladies Football Club, second eleven of the Manchester Corinthians L.F.C., who were preparing for an international tour. | Getty Images Photo: John Pratt/Keystone Features/Hulton Archive