Hulme, Manchester

I was fortunate to be made aware of a program on Radio 4 over the last week. The show was the archive hour and it covered the area Hulme which lies on the outskirts of Manchester City Centre. It is centered round The Crescents, a streets built on streets housing estate which you can see above. It may remind you of Park Hill in Sheffield, where all the buildings were linked hoping to create a 'streets in the sky' effect. The buildings were all linked and were an attempt to recreate the community atmosphere that had been lost. There is an interesting documentary from last year on the Sheffield project and the plans to modernise the estate ( Romancing the Stone) which has now been taken over by those 'not bad one minute/bloody horrendous the next' developers Urban Splash. The Crescents was built to revitalise the area and move away from the terraced slums of the post second World War decades. Didn't happen. Instead it sunk into a slum which was often lawless with the police too scared to enter. However the place also became a base for budding artists, musicians and political activism.

The show is presented by Mark Kermode (the film buff off the BBC with a dodgy barnet) who used to live on Otterburn Close apparently in the late 80s and early 90s. The show is only available till Saturday so...
GET LISTENING.
http://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episode/b00t834y/The_Archive_Hour_The_Peoples_Republic_of_Hulme/

Hulme today. Pictured below is the Life Buildings Apartment complex close to Asda and 'Hulme High Street'. Unrecogniseable to the place I used to go past on the bus as a kid!

For some great pictures of old hulme check out a website called exhulme