As part of the Modern Backdrop project we are carrying out oral history interviews with people who remember the changes that occurred to housing in Salford and the Pendleton area from the 1950s to the 1970s. If this sounds like you – please get in touch! Your memories will help us to analyze the transition […]
This week we are posting excerpts from an interview between Professor Miles Glendinning and another architect involved in the design and building of the Ellor Street Development Area, Norman Raitt. Raitt had trained in Aberdeen, and after two years working in Sweden joined the Edinburgh University Architecture Research Unit (referred to in the interview as […]
Extracts from an interview with the architect-planner Percy Johnson Marshall In this blog piece, we publish extracts from an interview between Professor Miles Glendinning and Professor Percy Johnson Marshall, who was one of the ‘architect planners’ employed by Salford Council to work on the design and construction of the redevelopment of Pendleton in the 1960s. […]
A reminder that from 20th January to 21st April 2023 we will be running a small exhibition of the work of the Salford-born social documentary photographer, Shirley Baker at the Working Class Movement Library in Salford. The exhibition will focus on the way in which the change to the built environment of Salford from ‘slum’ […]
This week we are featuring a guest blog from Professor Peter Walker, an architect and academic at the University of Salford. Tucked away inside Selina Todd’s brilliant Tastes of Honey: The making of Shelagh Delaney and a cultural revolution[1] is a reference to the long relationship she enjoyed with Cedric Price, to whom she was […]
Get your 2023 diaries and calendars at the ready! From 20th January to 21st April 2023 we will be running a small exhibition of the work of the Salford-born social documentary photographer, Shirley Baker at the Working Class Movement Library in Salford. The exhibition will focus on the way in which the change to the […]
Eddy Rhead of the Modernist Society has written our guest post for this week. Eddy writes about cinemas in Salford and specifically The Ambassador. For some it might bring back memories, for others it casts a light on a golden age of cinema architecture. Feel free to share your comments. At the height of their […]
Sarah Hardacre, a practicing artist with strong connections to Salford has written our guest post for this week. She has kindly allowed us to feature example of her work which is a real treat. Enjoy! Salford is where I made my home in the late 1990s, when I moved from the rural hills of the […]
This week we have another guest post by Dr Deborah Woodman from the University of Salford. One of the cornerstones of northern working-class life was that of the public house. Centred around a pint a whole culture existed. Community, gossip, finding work, gambling, day trips, friendly societies, the list is endless in the role of […]
Walter Greenwood was not the only writer whose work has almost immortalized the link between Salford and the image of the ‘slum’. Robert Roberts, born two years after Greenwood in 1905, wrote one the most influential historical accounts of working-class life in early 20th century Salford in The Classic Slum: Salford life in the First […]