Mancunian Reunion

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We’ve lived here forty-three years and I love it, I wouldn’t move if I won the lottery.

It really had a bad start and I’m very proud to think the way it has developed, it’s developed marvellously.

We were only in a two up two down in Ardwick you know we’ve got three bedrooms in this one, it was like a mansion to my kids.

And the rent man used to come round on a Wednesday but nobody got paid until the Thursday the day after.

I used to take my grandkids to visit their other grandma who still lived in Manchester and she used to comment every time she saw them how healthy they looked.

The sixties in Manchester weren’t just memorable for the music and the football, the decade in many British cities was a time of major social change when thousands of back to back houses were demolished and people moved to housing estates out in the suburbs, heading for a new life in Hattersley when they had the chance to leave behind inner city conditions.

We lived in Ardwick Green at the time, just a two up and two down and in them days me mam had ten kids, so it meant that one of the bedrooms, it was one big double king sized bed but there was six of us in it. Oh and as I say in the winter my dad used to work on the railways and in the winter it was his overcoats that went on the bed, not blankets or sheets, you know, to just to keep us warm because there was no central heating, we had one fire downstairs and that heated the whole house.

We lived opposite the actual Beyer Peacock and the great big buzzer used to go and then you’d see just hundreds of men just coming up the road. It was marvellous to see.
They had four gates then to let people out of work.

Yeah, yeah, there was hundreds of people just coming out of work. When they used to bring the engines out when they were built, they used to let the whole school out to stand and watch the steam trains come out and go off to wherever they needed to go. It was an absolutely wonderful experience watching those.

You couldn’t possibly go from Belle Vue to Manchester Piccadilly and have a drink in every pub and stand up at the end of it, there was that many pubs along the way, you know.

In our days it was all dancing wasn’t it, we went to the Ritz and you went the Astoria, you went to various dance halls. There was no such thing as us going out drinking, may be the men did but the girls didn’t.

We went to church Sunday morning, he was in the queue six foot two, he used to be stood on the door and he knew and he was there from the first mass and he knew Monday morning who hadn’t been to mass, the lads and he used to ask the lads, get them all out in stages before Monday morning and they’d all get the cane for not going to Church.

And there was a corner shop on nearly every street, sort of thing, you know or markets, Grey Mare Lane Market. The neighbours all got on well together and they use to have street parties for celebration days you know.

So it was goodbye to Ardwick, Ancoats, Beswick, Collyhurst and Openshaw as hundreds of families headed out of town to places like Wythenshawe, Haughton Green and Langley. They also arrived in Hattersley, twelve miles to the East of the City Centre in the borough of Tameside. As many as twelve thousand people re-settled there to enjoy a whole new way of life.

So I’ve a bathroom and an inside toilet, was absolutely like being in a Palace, it was marvellous.

And all the open spaces, you know we went for walks every single night. We found a different route to go for a walk.

The best bits, the fresh air, the room you have in the house compared with one up and one down with six kids, it’s some going.

I thought it was the most wonderful thing we’d ever, ever seen. Walked in here and thought this living room is mine, it was like a ballroom and the bathroom, I kept going in the bathroom and the kids got bathed morning, noon and night.

But there was no pavement, no road, it was all mud and the building debris and when I got me pram out the workmen used to put planks of wood for me to get across the deepest mud and everything to push the pram.

My first impression was I got one of the 125 busses from Manchester up to Mottram Road up Mottram Road to Hattersley Road. Didn’t know where I was going but I wanted to see where we were coming to live and they called it Debtors Retreat the bus drivers, they didn’t say Hattersley Road West, Debtors Retreat and everybody would pile off the bus, you know and walk up.

It snowed and a drift went across the road and me mam only lived down the road and I didn’t see my mam for three weeks.

It was a Thursday night and I’d parked my van at home outside my house and I couldn’t find it next morning. It had drifted and honestly I said to the wife, get them kids up, we had two of them at the time and I got them up to look at it. I said you’ll never see out like this again in your life.

The birth of a new community link by their Mancunian routes was a remarkable social development. People had to adapt to a whole range of different things, such as, mobile shopping.

Shopping wise you’d get a van come into the street and he’d pip his horn and you’d go out to the van and do your shopping.

The bread man that came on the estate, chippy.

I always remember the milkman, that was a funny thing the milkman. He was a smashing lad this milkman, he used to get all the mothers, prescriptions for all the mothers and he’d go down Hyde on his milk float and he’d actually, he’d actually get all the prescriptions, ‘cause there’s no chemist up here, then he’d get all the prescriptions done for them. He was brilliant and if he was coming up the estate and you were walking home from work, I mean not that it happened to me ‘cause I’d always had a vehicle but they used to jump on the back of his, on the back of his milk float for a lift up the estate.

If the bread man saw us, get on the back girls I’ll give you a lift into Hyde. Now my mum and Anne me friend and meself, three of us either standing either on the back of the bread van or on the back of the milk float and they used to drop us off in Hyde.

All the two’s twenty-two, one and seven seventeen.

Community spirit has always been vital. The creation and growth of the Ivy Club helped the people to mix as they gradually adjusted to life away from their traditional social scene but the Ivy Club wasn’t the only organisation that flourished.

I wrote to a lady that I knew from the National Association of Women’s Clubs and they sent a representative down to talk to us and we finished up she helped us set up a group at Arndale School.

And then we had a big meeting then who was doing what and what we was doing. We picked the Cook out for the Old Age Pensioners who was doing the meals and picked somebody else to do this and somebody else to do that and I copped for the Bingo later on. I did the Bingo on a Wednesday night, I did it for twenty-five years and then I was on the Entertainments Committee because we had loads of dancing, a lot of dancing at the weekends.

And we started the Carnival up, slowly at first, it was just like a queens do, you know, we didn’t have a parade, we just picked our Hattersley Queen.

The Carnival and that.

That was good the Carnival, it was a good day out for everybody, wasn’t it, everybody mixing, you know, they come from all over.

I mean, I used to make the paper roses.

I used to tout all the businesses, you know the lorry firms and everything and they used to say well we can let you have a couple of lorries for such a day and things like that you know and we decorated all the floats between us. The schools put floats and in we had the Caribbean band one year and then they stayed at the night time in the Community Centre and they had a dance and they played the music and we did the limbo.

Everybody used to go on the Legion on Saturday night didn’t they, it was brilliant.

Billy Jay Kramer, Manning, Manning was a regular, Bernard Manning and all the comedians. Remember the show The Comedians, there was a show wasn’t there called The Comedians at the time, well all them come, Freddie Star, he came but this was before there was big artists, you know, before they were big stars. Russ Abbot, he came, Tony Christie was a regular and the Pen Man, he used to be called Tony Christie and the Pen Man. He came Tommy Swinger, Tommy Swinger was brilliant, shot his boat, he stayed on too long.

Now it’s been decided to recapture and reflect on that community spirit. Many Hattersley residents are retracing their routes through the Mancunian Reunion Project. It’s led to trips to Whitefield another of the suburbs involved in the relocation programme and also visits back in time to an air raid shelter in Stockport and to the recently renovated Gorton Monastery. It’s brought people together to share their memories and rekindle the sixties spirit of East Manchester.

A book and an exhibition will help others appreciate the huge social change that took place then and at forty years on is now leading to a revival of that spirit.

I’m talking to people now who I used to just pass in the street and now I’m talking to them and they’re talking to me, without this Reunion it wouldn’t have happened, ‘cause we didn’t know each other.

I find people still as friendly as ever, you know, I do, I love it, I wouldn’t like to live anywhere else

The community spirit is coming back again, you know so it’s all coming for the better.

Well most of my life I always wanted to move out to the countryside and I got my wish when I came here and I wouldn’t like to go back to Manchester, you know, I’ll spend the rest of my days here.

It’s still a village this, no matter how you look at it, I still class this as a village.

I don’t think I’d ever move, I wouldn’t like to move anywhere, you know I wouldn’t like to go into Hyde or back into a town or back to Manchester even, ‘cause It wouldn’t be the same anyway.

Enjoyed every bit of it and I wouldn’t move now, they’d have to carry me out in a box.

When my time comes and the grim reaper comes unless I can take me television with me and me camcorder with me I shall refuse to go, ‘cause I’m not leaving Hattersley, it’s as simple as that.