Demolished Streets in Beswick, Manchester in Coronation Street titles

[Viktoria]

But Ray, yes the houses were substandard ,but they could have been improved .
What was lost by their demolition was something that meant a great deal ,not reproduced on the new estates until the communities had been there for a good few years. In the meantime loneliness , no shops close by, not your usual Church with the familiar members of the congregation and the social
life there was with many churches .
The old community spirit ,neighbourliness,extended family not too far away in times of illness etc, corner shops and shops for almost all needs very close by.All gone.
Longer distances to travel to work with bus fares to pay.
A way of life that was based on neighbourliness.
 That was never quite the same again.

The price of those changes was loneliness, distance from close family, the poor souls in high rise flats stranded as lifts broke down frequently .
Black  mould on walls not insulated ,nowhere to hang washing so dried inside exacerbating the damp problem .
Children unsupervised where before every woman in the street looked out for
the children playing ,how do you supervise children from seven floors up with a broken lift ?

Carrying a weeks groceries up flights of stairs?
No communal areas, so intense loneliness and that led to psychiatric  illnesses.
It was a social disaster, and a heavy price was paid by the very people it was supposed to help ,trouble was even with all the evidence from Doctors etc
Manchester Council ignored  it all.

Did you live near such a rehousing area? I did, knew people who had been rehoused, my auntie being one but she was in a house with a little garden at Langley ,but no shops or bus service for good while ,my uncle worked at the Co - op on Balloon St Manchester ,centre near Victoria Station.
Imagine his journey to and from work .

People only knew it was “ The Council “ or “ The Corporation “ who effected the demolitions and re - location programme.
They would know nothing of the bodies you quote .
People were the last consideration ,otherwise the new builds that became modern slums would have been better built ,on areas cleared in the old neighbourhoods  ,gradually replacing the old so there was still some community and continuity
still there and the isolation and loneliness with the resulting depressive conditions would not have been anything like the serious problem it did become.
Doctors surgeries were inundated with women begging for a letter to say they
were suffering greatly from the conditions both physical and mental .

It truly was a social disaster .
Viktoria.

[Ray T]

Victoria - I don't want to write an essay on this so I'll try to be brief!

Yes, the houses could have been improved but you also have to recognise the scale of the problem. The movement of the rural population into the towns and explosion of urban housing during the 19C resulted in thousands of, generally sub-standard, terraced housing. It's one thing renovating a one off bijou cottage but a totally different matter when you have street after street of them to contend with.

For starters, many of the houses had inadequate foundations. Most had no damp proof course and they were not built with cavity walls. For those with electricity, it was something of an afterthought and bathrooms and indoor toilets were available for the minority. Add to that the necessary repairs to roofs, doors and window frames, the Authorities, at the time were faced with something of a problem.

The houses were in a multiplicity of ownerships and co-ordinated improvement would have been difficult if not impossible. Meanwhile the condition of the housing was getting worse as was the health of the people forced to live there.

Admittedly there were lessons to be learned with respect to what happened to the population when they were re-housed but we had never been here before so everything was something of an experiment. The cost of renovating an inadequate terraced house is also relatively high compared with demolition and re-development and the life expectancy of a renovated terraced house is also relatively short without further investment. The likelihood was that in say fifty years time, we would be faced with the same problem all over again but then with a higher number of sub-standard properties.

And, yes .... I grew up in a a terraced slum with a shared toilet in the back yard and a once a week tin bath in the kitchen. I have no nostalgic feelings for those days and, fortunately, we were able to get ourselves out before the houses were demolished.

[Viktoria]

I agree with much of what you say but much of the replacement housing stock has been demolished anyway now,especially the tower blocks .
So that was an expensive ruinous cruel exercise!
Not just bricks and mortar ,peoples mental well being!
It was the way it was handled too ,choice one ,then two ,then the last .
All three usually unsuitable re distance to work especially .
My brother in law with two very young children ,lived in Manchester  worked  at Middleton .
They were offered unsuitable choices one and two so it was three or
homeless  .Choice three was Bramhall!
It was high handed and no thought given to the close knit community life  that  was destroyed ,nothing ,just row after row of ,houses ,not even a Church for quite a time.
Yes small gardens , and fresher air ,but the loneliness and no  one from your immediate area to chat with.
People withdrew in to themselves .


I see both sides to some extent ,but the infrastructure took a long time to come in ,a pub ,off licence , a shop or two ,in the meantime women especially were really suffering .
No chat across the street as they swept the front flags ,no corner shop where gossip was exchanged etc .
Very sad.

I know how bad were the houses that were demolished ,but the new were also damp through condensation , cold and no open fire especially in the tower blocks so air circulation and ventilation were compromised causing respiratory disease especially in children ,from the mould growth  that
 ensued.
We each have our points ,and something needed to be done ,but it should have been more compassionate ,done more slowly and as far as possible in the areas to be demolished , new housing replacing the old in the same area.
Communities kept together as far as possible .
Thanks for the interesting facts,you know I am fascinated by Manchester ,especially near the inner city ,and the rapid growth that made slums even as they were  being built .
Concilio et Labore!
Cheerio .Viktoria.

[Ray T]

Thereby hangs the other problem; experienced by your brother-in-law, insofar as replacing the unsatisfactory housing required sufficient space to decant existing residente. Space was not readily available in a number of the larger local authority areas. The solution? Either build upwards or, in your brother-in-law’s case build elsewhere; i.e. “overspill”.

Liverpool moved a fair bit of the population to Skelmersdale (... have you seen Will Russell’s “Blood Brothers”?) and Manchester moved people to places such as Hattersley, Handforth and Bramhall. At least the overspill in Bramhall had (and still has) a row of shops, ready access to public transport and the town centre of Stockport is a short bus ride away. In fact the North Park Road area is quite a desirable place to live even today on the edge of the “footballer belt”!

[heywood]

There was a programme (Granada) I think a while ago which looked at St Mary’s Ward, Oldham in the 1960s.
I recall a friend, discussing it, saying ‘they said we were living in slums and it wasn’t true.’
Many houses were well maintained but looking back now you can see how poor most were.
To replace the ‘slums’, flats were built using a new system.
The programme looked at the vision and then years later the reality.
The flats  are now demolished.
At the time our house still had cold water and an outside tippler toilet. We weren’t part of that clearance - that was later.

[Viktoria]

I have described the very basic house my parents had in Manchester and then the cottage to where I was evacuated even more basic ,however,everything in those houses was scrubbed polished,blackleaded, bleached etc.
The outside steps  back and front in M/c too, most of that work was daily .
Most houses I knew were also clean and neat.
The morning I had my first baby,at home ,was the day for the weekly scour of the back street steps ,my husband was putting the bin out and a woman from across the street complained that I had not cleaned our steps, “ No ,and she won’t be doing ,our new baby is twenty minutes old .”
She did them for me ,can’t  let things slip,especially as it was Whit week!

I used to wonder why building did not start on the bomb sites ,then a street mostly could be rehoused quite near their home that was to be demolished .
Communities kept together.
Not impossible , and much kinder.

All in the past now ,North Park Road was where my b in l ‘s new home was.
Right next to the posh private houses! That did not go down well .
But they were good tenants and bought the house later.

It is a small world isn’t it!
Viktoria.

[PhilCash]

Viktoria

I doubt many children have ever heard of a 'granite sett' let alone be able to identify them and that includes me.

Whilst not wishing to contradict you, my memory is quite clear as to whati saw. Even at that junior school age, I knew what cobbles were and what I saw (exposed in many places where the road surface had been removed / damaged / eroded etc), were cobbles as they were neither rectangular nor grey.

[Viktoria]

Phil you said all that was visible were the original roads, given the context of that in your earlier post I assumed you meant all  that  was left of the streets where the demolished buildings had been.
You gave no idea what you saw must have been exposed parts of the the earlier cobbled roads which will have been resurfaced with setts when later housing that replaced much earlier ,perhaps even Georgian houses ,was built.
It is Alan Turing Way, you had a “ typo”.
Viktoria.
PS, as most streets were granite setts until many were asphalted over in probably the late 1950’s ,,children of that time would certainly know what setts were .
Our street not a million miles away ,off Hulme Hall Lane was setts ,we left in 1965. and it was never asphalted ,Demolished in the 70’s.
We played with the tar - that softened in the sunshine - which had been poured in all the gaps to make the roads a bit smoother and also prevented weeds growing .
It stained our clothes ,Eucalyptus oil helped to remove the stains.
V

[Ray T]

Granite setts are often confused with cobbles and the main difference is their size, shape and origin.

Setts are rectangular - the size of a small loaf of bread - and manufactured. Not all setts in the north of England were granite - some were made of sandstone.

Cobbles, on the other hand, are round and natural; quarried from old river beds along with sand and gravel.