Over one-thousand prefabricated homes were erected on land around the hamlet, named "Belle Vale Estate Gateacre" on the plans, between 1945-1947, to provide affordable rented accommodation for people whose homes were destroyed in bombing raids on the city during World War II, making it one of the largest Prefab communities in the country. Its most famous former resident is Sir Terry Leahy, previously chief executive of Tesco, the UK's biggest supermarket chain. Leahy is also President of the Belle Vale Prefab Project. From the mid-1960s the Prefab estate was cleared. It was replaced by new housing and a shopping centre by the mid-1970s. "Our Lady's" Roman Catholic church, initially built on the Prefab estate in 1949, relocated from across the road from the current location of Gateacre School playing field to Hedgefield Road in 1965.