The slums were cleared only to be replaced by a doomed 1960s housing experiment and flawed new homes. Hulme’s infamous Crescents survived for 30 years before they too were ripped down.
Next came red-bricked houses with gardens and low rise flats. And through it all lived the real fabric of the community - the residents.
Now their story is to be told in a new film, which has been almost two years in the making.
“HULME - The Documentary” had its premier at Whitworth Art Gallery this weekend with a private viewing, and will be screened publicly next month.
The film is accompanied by Hulme To Me, created with the help of Manchester poet, Tony Walsh, in which residents recite their own verses of what the area means to them, set to a backdrop of rare photos.
'We moved into a brand new three bedroom property. It was fabulous until reality set in'
Sally Casey arrived in Hulme in the summer of 1969. The Rolling Stones released Honky Tonk Women in the July and The Beatles charted with The Ballad of John and Yoko.
For her, life was matching the brilliance of the year’s music.
“We moved into a brand new three bedroom property, I thought I’d reached heaven.”
The Dublin-born young mum had arrived with her husband and three children from Chorlton-on-Medlock.
They had left a two-up two-down terraced house on a cobbled street in Belmont Terrace.
“The previous house had no bathroom and no inside toilet, you walked off the street right into the front room. It was really bad.
“We moved into 14 Rakehead Walk and it was lovely. It was amazing, it had an inside toilet and bathroom and underfloor central heating. A lot of families had moved to Hulme from Chorlton-on-Medlock, Cheetham Hill, and Ardwick where there had been slum clearance.
“It was fabulous until reality set in.”
Within a few years the dream home began to sour.
“It was electric underfloor heating and you had to feed it 50p coins into a meter. It was like feeding a ravenous baby, it was a constant battle.
“If by chance you went away for the weekend when you came home the meter would be empty, you would have to feed it and feed it before you got any heat. It was really bad.
“In those days you couldn’t take on the council. They owned the homes and we were just the tenants. But the bedrooms were becoming damp. The heat was supposed to rise through the ceilings but that never happened, and people would open their wardrobes to find their clothes were mouldy.
“Then around 1980 we began to kick back and take the council to task, which they did not like one bit.
“We got help and formed a tenants association, and the council realised we were not going away.”
Sally and seven other women were the driving force behind getting change on the Aquarius Estate in Hulme.
“We had 109 people at our first meeting. There were loads of officials there. We put forward our demands and they realised we were not going away.
“They started to decant people from the houses to temporary accommodation and once empty replaced the the heating with gas central heating.
“This happened in about 200 homes. It was so wonderful to get change for people. We were very successful. We were never abusive we would try and coerce them. Some of our local councillors were very active and would walk with you on the estate.
“We knew what we wanted. People were nervous of the council, but I’ve never cared what they thought of me.”
Sally and her neighbours also turned their sights on the grim maisonettes on the estate.
“They were walk-up maisonettes with urine-sodden lifts. They were supposed to be fantastic two or three-bedroom apartments, but they were jerry-built to the lowest standards. They were brutal places to live in. Infestation was another problem - mice, cockroaches.
“They were so badly built, they were not even put together properly. There was rattling windows and the wind whistling through them.
“People were expected to accept what they had. They became very transient places. When people moved out students moved in and would sell on the keys when they left.
“Five people could live in one at a time. They would have weekend parties and everyone’s life would be disrupted. They had no commitment to the area. There was a lot of social problems - drug dealing, all night parties. We were trying to raise our children in a calm, nice area, and were being deprived of that opportunity.
“We decided the people in the maisonettes deserved a better deal. The council decided they would demolish them. We said ‘no, you will demolish them and build houses in their place - which they did in the late 80s and 90s.”
The Guiness Trust housing association worked with tenants and built the houses. Sally said: “We had a great rapport with them. While negotiations were ongoing we said ‘can you build us a few shops’. They said ‘no we don’t do that’. We said ‘go on’, so they did - and a community centre.”
Sally, 73, still lives in Hulme in Studforth Walk, the house she was moved to in 1982 when refurbishment of homes was taking place.
“Hulme is dong a lot better. I chose to live here. I raised four children here - I had a fourth after moving here. I am proud of Hulme and of its people.”
Sally’s contribution to the poem is:
“Watching places all around you, closing, boarded, burning
Feeling trapped and slapped and crapped on, which way am I turning?
Feeling voiceless, choiceless, hopeless, helpless, hard up, lonely
Sirens, headlines, judgement, shame, frustration and if only.”
'Everyone looked out for each other. Your neighbours' parents would be like a second set of parents to you'
Mark Burnett spent his childhood on Hulme’s Crescents. Manchester’s housing chief would later condemn them as “an absolute disaster - it shouldn’t have been planned, it shouldn’t have been built.”
From the age of three he lived at 352 Robert Adam Crescent - one of the four long curved “terraces” all named after the architects that designed Georgian Bath and London.
The deck-access six-storey blocks, while still a model and plan, had been touted by the then chair of the housing committee in 1965, Eric Mellor, as “one of the finest schemes in Europe”. They went up in 1969 and were bulldozed in 1994. Their legacy was an example of an architecural disaster.
Erected too quickly, with bolts and ties missing, condensation problems, they had poor insulation and ventilation and vermin spread through the estate’s ducting.
But Mark, 48, recalls it differently. “It was an absolutely fantastic place, and I’m not looking back with rose-tinted spectacles.
“It was a great place to live. When you are young the problems didn’t chime with you, you don’t notice the damp walls and electricity going, and cockroaches.
“You just notice your mates. Each of the Crescents had its own football team and we used to play against each other. Playing knock on the door was fun - we just moved from one Crescent to another.
“We set up dens in the garages and made our own bikes. It was a great time to live and grow up.
“We would get together and go to the cash and carry and buy stuff in bulk and share it.
“Living on the Crescents everyone looked out for each other. Your next door neighbours’ parents would be like a second set of parents to you - in fact you had a whole bloody Crescent of parents - who would tell your own what you had been up to.
“As families we would get a coach and go on day trips to Blackpool and Morecambe. Parents would load up with crisps and sandwiches, and we would go on the funfairs.
“In the late 1980s it was all vandalised and families were moving out, The council tried to turn it round and realised it was a lost cause.
“We moved to Fallowfield. I thought, as a lad brought up in concrete and glass, I thought I was in the countryside - there were hedges, and a milk float.
“But Hulme made me the man I am. I am now a director with a major housing provider.
“Having grown up on those streets it has instilled in me a desire to help make sure people have good housing.”
Mark captured vivid memories of his childhood in a poem written as part of the project.
“Hulme to me is……
352 Robert Adam Crescent, Manchester 15, 5DG.
Concrete, steel &glass monolithic slabs, full of,
Urban Gladiators, Afros & Rastas, Skins and Punks, Bible Bashers and Drunks,
An evolved “Social Media”,
“Our kid, it’s on a need to know basis, so I’ll find ya and speak to ya!”
Funded by a Heritage Lottery grant, local community arts worker, Tracie Daly, worked with housing provider One Manchester, community media company, REELmcr, and filmaker, Paul Sapin to make the documentary.
Tracie Daly, project founder said: “This project has been a chance for Hulme people to revisit a time when they had little control over the future of the community they loved and their decaying homes, their way of life, their very foundations ripped up due to a systematic social housing disaster. Finally we get our say!”
Jacqui Carroll, creative director of REELmcr said:“This project has been a proper journey, we could have carried on for another twenty years and still not finished. Each interview led to another three and we just couldn’t say ‘No’ because every story is important.”
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