The photo looking down Matthews Street is typical of the housing around here.

These are late Victorian terraces that were probably thrown up to appease the bourgeois ambitions of the more skilled workers at the brush factory.

Ultimately people such as these would not have been appeased enough. Better jobs and better homes in more modern towns will have lured them away.

Some of the houses appear to have front gardens, but for the most part there is simply the road at the front and a narrow alley at the back. One assumes that most people used the park as their garden.