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.
25. In the shadow
Children play a the bottom of Gerald Street, Wallsend-on-Tyne, in the shadow of the hulking tanker, 'Narica', being built in the dockyard beyond the street wall, in 1967 | Getty Images Photo: Keystone
26. Street gymnastics
A boy swings from a lamppost in a 'play street', barred to through traffic to make it safe for children to play, in 1955 | Getty Images Photo: John Drysdale/Keystone Features
27. Pogo quads
The Taylor quads from Edmonton in London bounce down the street on their pogo sticks in 1958 | Getty Images Photo: George W. Hales/Fox Photos/Hulton Archive
28. That's how we roll
Boys playing at their new playground on a cleared bomb site in 1959 | Getty Images Photo: Reg Speller/Keystone