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.
21. Abandoned
Boys clamber over an abandoned car in the 1960s | Getty Images Photo: Steve Lewis
22. Swinging from the post
Children swinging on a lamppost beside a demolished terraced house in the early 60s | Getty Images Photo: English Heritage/Heritage Images
23. Taking aim
A boy hiding amid the shrubbery takes aim with a toy pistol in February 1958 | Getty Images Photo: Bert Hardy Advertising Archive
24. Playing with the dogs
A boy playing with dogs in a road of tenement housing in the Gorbals area of Glasgow. The tenements which had formerly occupied the site were among the worst slums in Britain, and there had been campaigns to redevelop the area for many years before work finally began in the late 50s. | Getty Images Photo: Albert McCabe/Express