Decorative Concrete Block #2: Fences

When I have recently looked at our old family photos - the ones that look like the world is seen through that yellow film the local gents outfitters used to have behind the glass, and where the world seems to fade to a blinding white at its edges - I noticed the flimsiness of the dividing fences, from one garden to the next.  Often these were no more than one silvery wire, loose, like a broken guitar string, or a shin high strip of sagged or ripped chicken wire strung between low posts.
Beginning I think in earnest in the 60s, and certainly accelerated in the 1970s, these flimsy fences began to be replaced, and, in the front gardens in particular, this often took the form of the decorative concrete block wall.  In this example the house has been walled in by two of these walls made out of different styles of block, making for a dizzying effect to this day.

(could it be that the flimsy fences of the old photos were the original builders fences, and were they not replaced for so long because no-one thought to replace them, or because no-one wanted to be the first?)