By the end of the Second World War 12,391 homes had been destroyed by aerial bombing in Birmingham and there was to be no house building in the city for six years so the programme of slum clearance had been halted. By the 1950s there were terrific demand for homes. Large estates were built within the city boundaries such as Druid's Heath, Castle Vale and at Bromford on the site of the city’s former racecourse, but by 1963 there was no further land available within the city boundaries.