Happy days spent in ‘town within a town’
Former residents remember early years in flats
PEOPLE living on a giant estate in one of Greater Manchester’s most desirable boroughs have recently spoken of its ‘decline’ with some saying they’re now desperate to get out.
Residents of the Lancashire Hill estate in Reddish South, have complained about long-standing issues including anti-social behaviour and necessary repairs being left undone.
One 54-year old tenant, who has lived there all their lives, recently told the Express: “It used to be nice here but it’s not now.
“We need people that want to be here, not people who are dumped here.”
Another resident said he wanted to “get out as quickly as possible”.
But despite the problems people living there are facing, some who grew up on the estate remember a very different place.
Construction of Lancashire Hill began in 1968.
The estate was part of a major redevelopment of Stockport to transform the Tame Valley and Lancashire Hill areas of the town. With building work well underway, a story in our sister paper the Manchester Evening News in September 1968 reported on the ambitious projects being undertaken in the town, including the creation of the Merseyway shopping centre and Lancashire Hill.
Scores of slum terraced houses had been demolished to build the estate dubbed ‘a town within a town’.
Using the Jespersen system of prefabricated parts and precast concrete panels, two 22-storey tower blocks of council flats with adjoining maisonettes with decked access and connection bridges were built.
The towers named Pendlebury and Hanover still stand, alongside blocks called Stonemill Terrace, The Longsons and The Bentleys.
Built at one of the highest points in the town, Lancashire Hill was lauded at the time as Stockport’s biggest ever housing project, aiming to provide homes for 2,000 people.
Other amenities included landscaped green areas, shops and car parking.
There were also two pubs built at either end of the estate – the Nicholson’s Arms and the Nip Inn.
With spectacular views of industrial Stockport, the distant Derbyshire hills and, to the east, uninterrupted views of Manchester, by 1970 most of the flats had been let.
Beryl Brown moved into a flat on Lancashire Hill in the mid-1970s when she was 17.
She describes it as a ‘good estate’ to bring up her young family.
“You could let your kids out all day. There used to be a back field and they’d play all day on that,” she said.
“At the side of the Nip
Inn – we’d call it a ‘bonking’ where we’re from – was a grass hill going up.
“The kids in summer – God I don’t know where they got the cardboard from – they used to slide down that all day.
“They used to come in looking as though they’d been whipped.”
Another place Beryl remembers the children playing was Nicky’s Pond – an area of woodland with a fishing pond in the middle.
“If they went missing, half the time they’d be up there when they shouldn’t be,” she said.
There was also a friendly rivalry between the two estate pubs which would culminate in Bank Holiday football matches and tug-of-war contests.
Beryl, 65, lived at Lancashire Hill for 15 years before meeting her partner at the Nip Inn pub.
They eventually moved away but her twin sister still lives on the estate.
But for Beryl, things are not the same there anymore, something she puts down to the loss of what was once a strong community spirit marked by the closure of both pubs.
“Once you take the pubs you take the life out of it, I think,” Beryl said.
Her oldest daughter, Amanda, grew up on Lancashire Hill.
It was there she met her best friend Linzi, who she still speaks to every day.
Now 48, she remembers their antics growing up on the estate, including sliding down the ‘bonk’ on a piece of cardboard every summer like her mu m described.
The adventures Amanda describes the pair getting up to would certainly be seen as dangerous in a modern, more safety conscious world.
They included playing on a river rope-swing attached to a pylon on the back field and also making the lifts stop ‘so we could open the doors and
“It was like the concrete jungle, however, we loved it as kids,”
see the lift shaft’.
“Over the landings on the first floor we had elastic with my pump [plimsoll shoe] on the end, dangling over and knocking on the ground floor flats. But one day they cut the elastic and took my pump!” Amanda said.
“It was like the concrete jungle, however, we loved it as kids,” she added.
It’s estate’s rat-run of decks and staircases that Amanda’s childhood best friend, Linzi Harrington, remembers vividly.
Now 48 and working in education, Linzi admits to skipping school with her best friend, while using the knowledge of Lancashire Hill’s sprawling layout to evade the school’s truancy inspector.
“The wag officer would come round but we’d jump out of the bedroom window, crawl over the wall and disappear up through the stairs at the side and along the landing just to evade him,” Linzi says, laughing.
And it wasn’t just kids ‘wagging’ school that found Lancashire Hill’s bewildering network of staircases and landings useful.
“When shoplifters used to thieve from Stockport town centre, they’d run up to Lancashire Hill and go into the block of flats as they knew there was loads of different ways to avoid capture because they could go up, down, left, right – anywhere they wanted,” Linzi said.
This became such a problem, solid concrete walls were installed halfway across the landings, Linzi said, to stop criminals from escaping.
While she eventually left the estate when she was 23 after starting a family, her own mum continued to live in Lancashire Hill until she died in 2021.
“If I’d have been offered a ground floor flat with a garden I’d have been happy to stay there.
“But I think it changed as the old-school people died or moved away – that’s when it ended up losing its community spirit,” she added.
Linzi said she wouldn’t swap her upbringing on Lancashire Hill, despite being one of the estate kids, she says, who were looked down on by some families living in nearby Heaton Norris.
Her childhood friend she grew up with there, Amanda, is still her best friend – and she says she still counts many others who lived there as good friends.
Linzi even attributes the lessons learned growing up on the estate as part of the reason she was able to rebuild her life after suffering a serious stroke aged 26 – an event, she says, doctors thought she may never recover from.
“I absolutely loved growing up on Lanky Hill.
“It gave me determination and resilience,” Linzi said, adding: “It weren’t all sweetness and light – but at the end of the day – it made me into the person I am.”
“I think it changed as the oldschool people died or moved away.” “At the end of the day – it made me into the person I am.”