‘Everyone knew and looked after each other’: Manchester’s lost estate where people would go back to live ‘in a heartbeat’

A housing estate remembered for the way “every one looked after each other” met a sad end as part an extensive programme of city-wide demolition.

Brook House was a housing estate made up of over 400 flats, built in West Gorton shortly before World War Two broke out. Early newspaper references to the estate can be found in an advertisement in the Manchester Evening News dated October 1939, advertising vacant shop premises at “the new block of flats known as ‘Brook House,’ in Gorton Lane”.

Impressive in size, the blocks of four-storey flats were part of a self-contained estate in what was then a heavily industrialised part of the city. Separated by Gardner Street, a neighbouring but smaller group of flats was built at the same time called Surrey and Hartland Gardens.

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Photos of the estate held in the Manchester Libraries archive show the imposing housing blocks, dignified by a large archway that suggests a fortress-like appearance in parts. But pitched roofs and tall chimney stacks softened its appearance – a contrast to the alien modernism of later estates, perhaps most oppressively realised by Fort Ardwick.

The chimney stacks were a necessary feature for the expulsion of smoke from the coal fires used to heat the estate’s hundreds of homes. Large bags of coal would regularly be brought up and their contents poured down the coal hole for storage.

The ground floor of one of the blocks was taken up by a shopping precinct, while smack in the middle of the estate was a public wash house – later a laundrette. The superintendent’s office was also part of the wash house building – a title given to the estate’s caretaker, handyman and rent collector.

It was an important job, ensuring the maintenance and smooth operation of an interconnected housing complex occupied by hundreds of families. One man who had that job was Susan Brownbill’s father.

Susan’s story

Susan was four-years old when her family moved to Brook House flats in the mid-1950s. Her dad, Leslie, had taken a job as the estate’s superintendent – a position he enjoyed for nearly a decade until his tragic, early death.

She lived there until she was 11-years old with her mum, dad, and two brothers in one of Brook House’s prime flats, free of charge. Due to her dad’s job their new home also came with a telephone, something she recalls that nobody else on the estate had back then.

Susan told the Manchester Evening News: “Our (flat) was a special one for my dad’s job, I think. It had carpets and a lot of them didn’t.”

Much of her superintendent dad’s time was taken up with work. “At the back of my dad’s office was a big wash house,” she said.

“It had individual washing areas with wooden boards. I used to help my dad go around with a big barrel with brown soap in, and we just to go around and slap soap on each sink.

“All the women used to come in to wash all their clothes. They all used to argue as there were big hot racks you pulled out to put the clothes on to dry.”

Susan said the arguments regularly concerned whose turn it was to use the racks. That was until her dad came up with a booking system with a designated time slot.

“He got some chalk and wrote a time and the name of the person, just to stop them falling out.”

Another busy hub of the estate was the long row of shops that made up the precinct. “There was a green grocers, an iron mongers, a chemist, a shop that sold everything, there was Paris the cake shop, there was an opticians,” Susan said.

“There was a sweet shop called Puff Puffs and there was a post office at the end. It was like a little commune, sort of thing.”

Some of Susan’s most powerful memories centre around the friendships and sense of community of the families living there. “It was just the old fashioned happy days – children out playing,” she said.

“My dad made me what was called a bogie, like a go-cart. I had a friend that used to push me around and we’d come down the hill on it.”

One terrifying incident which could have ended in tragedy, demonstrated the way the families looked out for each other, Susan recalls.

“When I was seven my mother asked my older brother to go to the shop and he wouldn’t go, so I said I’d go. There was a zebra crossing where Sivori’s ice cream was on the corner.

“I got what was needed and as I was coming back across the road this van came up and ran into me. Everybody was screaming because I went right up in the air and landed on the van and then the floor.”

Susan describes the accident bringing people running out of the flats to make sure she was alright.

“I just got up and ran. But this man stopped me and said ‘just sit on this wall’ and my friend went to get my mum and dad.

My mum came running out and said ‘I expected you to be dead’, and I was just sitting on the wall, as happy as anything.

“But it was about the community spirit. Everybody was rushing around to help,” she said.

Susan’s life at Brook House flats was tragically cut short when her dad died of a coronary thrombosis in 1963 aged just 42. She remembers hundreds of families from the estate attending the funeral, such was her dad’s popularity and their closeness to the community.

Despite leaving at an early age, Susan has kept in touch with many of the friends she made at Brook House flats, something she puts down to the “solid relationships” she made there. “It gave me a happy and secure childhood,” she says.

David’s story

Another former resident – who started life at Brook House just before Susan left – was 62-year old David Pawsey. Having been on the estate since his birth in 1961, David lived there until he was 15 with his mum, dad, and twin sister.

David’s grandfather had originally lived in the flat until his death, which his son – David’s dad – then took over.

“There was no lifts,” David said. “My mum had to get us up and down the stairs everyday in the pram.

“The flats themselves were pretty much the same layout. Ours was a small bathroom, three bedrooms and a small kitchen and a lounge area. That’s all it was.”

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David said he spent much of his childhood playing football with friends on some of the grassed areas surrounding the estate. He also remembers playing on the notorious Blackie Brook.

“It was very industrial,” he said. “A chemical factory backed on to the flats and there used to be a brook [Cornbrook River] which ran between [the factory] and the flats known as the Blackie Brook.

“It could have been any colour any time of day because of the chemicals that were dumped in there. And it did stink to high-heaven. As kids you didn’t realise that and you still played around there.

“We used to build bogies out of scrap wooden pram wheels and ride those around the flats. That was pretty much the life we had.”

Like Susan, David still remembers the estate being made up of a close community of families, ready to help each other out.

“I remember my mum looking after one of the elderly neighbours who lived upstairs. She would cook him his tea after his wife died,” he said.

Adding: “Everybody knew each other. Everybody looked after each other.”

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From the mid-1970s, the council began moving families out of the soon to be demolished Brook House flats. David and his family moved out when he was nearly 16-years old in 1977.

Susan and David’s experience of the close community – something they still miss to this day – isn’t unique to them. When I asked other ex-residents of Brook House flats on Facebook to share their experiences, the response was overwhelmingly positive, with a sense of yearning towards their childhoods lived out on the estate.

Sharon McHale, one of three generations to live at Brook House, said all her extended family lived in the flats. It was, she said, a “fabulous upbringing with family, friends and wonder – and characterful neighbours – not to forget the shop keepers.”

George Butler said: “If I had the choice to stay in Brook House I would have died there. Great place to grow up in as a kid, [I] had many friends there and girlfriends. [I] would go back in a heartbeat.”

Christine Mansell, commented: “Best times of my childhood – born and bred in Brook House. That’s when neighbours were also good friends [and] brought up with respect.”

Meanwhile, Terry Musgrave said it was a “great place to live and be brought up”. Adding: “Plenty of things to do and places to get lost in – what I wouldn’t give to be back there now playing football to all hours”.

In 1978, it was announced that over 1,500 flats in Manchester – most of them built before the Second World War– were to be demolished and their tenants rehomed. Largest of the flat blocks to come down was the Brook House estate with 439 flats affected.

Other blocks to be pulled down were Heywood House, Ardwick (248 flats), Every Street, Ancoats (302 flats) Miles Platting Flats (212 flats) and Kennet House, Cheetham (373 flats).

By 1979, the close-knit families that made up the estate had all gone and in 1980, Brook House flats was demolished. Work soon began on the new modern housing estate, largely made up of detached and semi-detached houses, that took its place.

Does the Brook House flats estate in West Gorton awaken any memories for you? Let us know in the comments section below.

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