In this guest post, Marion Hewitt, former Head of the North West Film Archive, discusses the background to The Changing Face of Salford, a film trilogy created in the 1970s by John Michael Goodger, a former lecturer at the University of Salford. The films recorded the living conditions in the slums of Ordsall, Salford, which […]
Click on the sound file below to hear a clip from an interview that Micheal Goodger did with a resident who lived in Salford prior to the demolishing of terraced houses. Around 1967 Goodger visited several residents, interviewed, filmed and photographed them and their living conditions for his film The Changing Face of Salford. I […]
Between 1950 and 1952 several newspaper articles in The Manchester Guardian appeared that described the condition of houses in Salford. Among them is “Tremendous” Cost Of Repairs To Slum Property” published on December 4, 1952. It describes a peculiar, yet apparently common practice that was a result of the then long-standing plans to undertake slum […]
This image is described as “Rag and Bone Man.” He seems to have been someone who collected items from households around Salford. Together with the Knocker-upper, a photo of which we showed in another post, this is another occupation in Salford at that time. The photo was taken in 1967 and the brown and orange […]
‘They call this part “Hanky Park”’. This was how the Salford-born writer Walter Greenwood opened his breakthrough novel Love on the Dole, published for the first time in 1933 . Although the novel is a work of fiction, Hanky Park was a real life area of Salford, roughly where the shopping precinct is situated today. […]
Today, we are posting a ‘podcast’ that is a reading from the book “The Condition of the Working Class in England” by Friedrich Engels. The text below is the transcript of the introduction and wrap-up of the blog. The reading is from the chapter “The Great Cities.” I hope you enjoy the reading the text. […]
This is a guest post from Professor Chris Hopkins, Emeritus Professor of English from Sheffield Hallam University where he was Head of the Humanities Research Centre from 2003 until 2020. Chris works mainly on British writing between 1900 and 1950, with particular interests in working-class writing, women’s writing, Welsh writing in English, writing of World […]
Browsing through the University of Salford’s archives the other day I came across a booklet for an ‘Ellor Street & Dock Ward Trail’. It was put together by the Community Services arm of the University’s Students Union, and was first devised in 1973, although this version dates from three years later. It seems to have […]
Michael Goodger photographed this corner shop in 1967. It seems to have sold common household items and toys. What I find most fascinating are some of the fashionable goods of the late 1960 in comparison to some items, we still find today for sale. There are, for example the colourful beachballs hanging from the entryway […]
This architectural model shows a development plan that had been approved in 1960 by the City Council of Salford. It shows plans for 90 acres south of Broad Street. The plan was to provide with 2,300 dwellings in 15, 12 and 4 storey blocks. The image was published in The Architects Journal. They explain that […]