Basic Site Details

Name: Flats, Ellor Street Redevelopment, Pendleton
Town, district or village: Salford
City or county: Greater Manchester
Country: England
Parish:  
Status:  
Grid ref:
Notes: Five 17-storey blocks of flats at the eastern end of the Ellor Street redevelopment area. Precast concrete construction above ground floor level with concrete cross walls and storey height external facing panels. Social housing reduced to its most basic form, the elevation expresses the single and double units of which the blocks were formed.

Cost £1,500,000

Building Type Classification

The building is classified under the following categories:
 ClassificationOriginal classification?Notes
Item 1 of 1Housing  

Events

The following date-based events are associated with this building:
 FromToEvent typeNotes
Item 1 of 119641965Build/construction 

People

Design and Construction

The following individuals or organisations have carried out design/construction work. Where architects or practices worked together, matching letters appear beside their names in the Partnership Group column.
 NameRolePartnership GroupFromToNotes
Item 1 of 2(Professor) Charles Calthorpe Robertson A1965 As Director of ARU
Item 2 of 2Edinburgh University Housing Research Unit (HRU) / Architecture Research Unit (ARU) A1965  

Clients

The following individuals or organisations have commissioned work on this building/design:
 NameNotes
Item 1 of 1City of Salford Housing Committee 

Related Buildings, Structures and Designs

Parent Structure and Site

This structure is related to the following parent structure or site (click the item to view details):
 Building nameNotes
Item 1 of 1Ellor Street Redevelopment, PendletonProfessor R H Matthew of Edinburgh University, one of Scotland’s leading consultant architects, has accepted a commission to prepare a master plan for Salford’s Broad Street redevelopment scheme which will cost £9 million. It includes a major re-housing project, reconstruction of a main shopping area, provision for a civic centre and major improvements on the A6. [Guardian 12 April 1961]

Bounded by Broad Street (A6), Cross Lane, Churchill Way and Fitzwarren Street, and centred on Ellor Street, the area was one predominantly of working class housing built in the first half of the nineteenth century which by the 1930s had become synonymous with some of the worst slums in the country. Better known as “Hanky Park,” it was the setting for Walter Greenwood’s novel Love on the Dole (1933) and Shelagh Delaney’s play A Taste of Honey, (1958), as well as one source for L S Lowry’s typical northern landscapes. Desperate to eradicate all traces of the area’s past. the City Council determined upon a scheme of total redevelopment, replacing all the terraces with high-rise blocks by 1968. But while successful in removing the physical evidence, the fiction remained. Only weeks before Matthew’s appointment and the commencement of demolition work, Granada Television broadcast the first episode of Coronation Street on 9 December 1960.

The planned civic centre was not progressed. Following Local Government reorganisation in 1974, Salford Town Hall and Civic Centre was moved to Swinton while the art gallery and theatre was finally built some forty years later as The Lowry at Salford Quays.

References

Bibliographic References

The following books contain references to this building:
 Author(s)DateTitlePartPublisherNotes
Item 1 of 2RIBA1975RIBA Directory of practices   
Item 2 of 2Sharp, D (editor)1969Manchester Studio VistaC18

Archive References

The following archives hold material relating to this building:
 SourceArchive nameSource catalogue no.Notes
Item 1 of 1Professor Charles Robertson's CVInformation sent from Professor Charles Robertson to Yvonne Hillyard, October 2010