Although Rochdale had built on a large scale in the interwar period, as we saw in last week’s post, and although it had suffered little direct damage during the war itself, peacetime brought renewed challenge and increased expectation, reflecting both the persistence of slum housing in the town and popular demand for reform and reward.
A survey of 18,375 houses in the borough in 1949 revealed 1600 back-to-back properties and 500 still reliant on pail closets or privies. A second survey four years later recorded 4388 substandard homes. (1)
But before the slum clearance programme begun in the 1930s could be renewed, there was an immediate housing crisis met in part in Rochdale, as elsewhere, by the erection of temporary prefab bungalows. Twenty of 67 were declared complete by December 1945; the Prefab Museum map shows a few more dotted around the borough. (2)
This was at best a temporary fix – the bungalows themselves were expected to last ten years though many survived longer – and planning for permanent post-war housing on a large and improved scale had begun early. Just two days after D-Day, as war still raged in Europe, the press reported that Rochdale was leading a Housing Sites Group comprising nine local councils to prepare for post-war construction. (3)
In February 1945, a special Council meeting to discuss housing, armed with a recent Ministry of Health circular empowering local authorities to prepare newbuild sites, proposed to build 538 houses in the first year of peace. New estates in Greave and Newbold were in the advance planning stage and the layout of what would be the borough’s early flagship project in Kirkholt was agreed. (4)
The pace of planning and its place in popular consciousness are shown by the Housing Exhibition the Council organised in the Old Baths on Smith Street in March. The plans for Kirkholt were exhibited and, in a very rare example of public consultation, attendees were invited to express their preference between two types of house (the exhibition provided ground floor prototypes) – one with a small kitchen and separate dining room, the other – which we might think more ‘modern’ – containing a large kitchen-diner and separate utilities room. (5)
Most feedback reportedly criticised the low ceiling height (just eight feet – an economising measure) of the proposed houses; a criticism endorsed by the Housing Committee in a letter to the Ministry of Health. The Committee, despite visiting the Ministry of Works’ demonstration site in Northolt, was also sceptical of permanent prefabricated housing but proceeded somewhat reluctantly with a proposed trial of some 50 to 60 such homes. (6) A larger number of BISF (British Iron and Steel Federation) houses – of steel-frame construction with a characteristic steel sheet cladding on the upper storey – built on Waithlands Road earned the area the typical nickname ‘Tin Town’.
KIrkholt
It is the Kirkholt Estate, planned to house a population of 10,000, that captures the highest hopes of Rochdale’s councillors and best exemplifies post-war ideals. As Borough Surveyor WHG Mercer, observed: (7)
In the 1920s and 1930s, the housing estates were never larger than about 400 dwellings, and being on the fringe of existing developments, did not create communal problems … [But Kirkholt required] all the necessary provisions for day-to-day existence, namely schools for all ages, shops, public houses, churches, health clinic and a community centre.
This was the Neighbourhood Unit, championed by Patrick Abercrombie in his wartime plans for London and Plymouth, adopted in post-war official planning guidance, and exemplified by the London County Council’s Lansbury Estate built for the 1951 Festival of Britain.
The building of Kirkholt began in the summer of 1945 with German prisoners of war used to assist in the construction of roads and sewers. The first two houses completed (61 and 63 Queen Victoria Street) were occupied in July 1948; the first infant school in 1949; a junior school in 1952 and a secondary modern in 1956. The estate as a whole was completed in the late 1950s; the long-promised community centre and central parade of shops on The Strand were finally provided at around the same time. On completion, the estate housed almost one in twelve of Rochdale’s population. (8)
When you look at Kirkholt what you notice first of all is its layout – curving streets set among generous green space that hark back to the bucolic ideals of the earliest so-called cottage estates. Of those ‘cottages’, most are conventional, somewhat boxy, brick-built semi-detached houses although there were apparently some 15 or so housing types constructed and all ‘built in accordance with the recommendations of the Housing Manual of 1944, issued jointly by the Ministry of Health and the Ministry of Works’ according to the Borough’s 1954 Official Handbook. Thirteen three-storey blocks of flats were built but these proved less popular with tenants and unpopular with window cleaners and coalmen. (9)
There was another significant shift noted by Mr Mercer:
when slum clearance began to operate in 1930 it became obvious that there must be a greater variety of dwellings on each estate and … a number of one-bedroomed and four-bedroomed dwellings were erected.
The one-bedroom properties were bungalows reserved to elderly residents; in the 1950s almost one in five of Rochdale’s new council homes was of this type compared to one in twenty-five before the war.
The Borough’s Development Plan, produced under the terms of the 1947 Town and Country Planning Act and approved by Government in 1953, provides a good overview of the Council’s strategic vision. Its first five years were committed to meeting current housing needs, primarily by completing the Kirkholt Estate; a second 15-year phase envisaged redevelopment and slum clearance and the relief of central congestion. It aimed, reflecting the ambitions and ideals of its time, to create:
12 neighbourhood units (including existing estates) interspersed with green belts of land and separated from industrial areas which will be grouped within defined zones.
In simple numerical terms, Rochdale boasted 6688 council homes on 38 estates by mid-decade. At that point, Kirkholt (1855 homes) was by some way the largest; Brotherod (438), Turf Hill (424), Nook Farm (406) and Spotland (328) were next in order of size. (I’m aware that I probably throw out too many statistics – it’s just that they seem so telling when compared to the paltry numbers of genuine social rent homes being built today.)
And it’s maybe those numbers that allowed Rochdale’s mayor in 1966 to suggest: (10)
He did not think the Rochdale housing position was desperate. The actual number of people needing council houses, as opposed to those who simply desired them, was probably about two hundred and some on the list would be housed under clearance schemes.
He was defending the Council’s decision to build the ‘Seven Sisters’ – the nickname applied to the four 21-storey and three 17-storey point blocks that tower over Rochdale town centre. They were a significant departure in housing policy and were at the time one of the most innovative council housing schemes in the country.
College Bank
The first plans for the College Bank scheme – to give it its official title – were unveiled in 1962 and the seven tower scheme – designed by Wimpey’s chief architect D Broadbent in conjunction with Borough Surveyor WHG Mercer – was officially approved the following year. They were built using no-fines concrete (that is concrete without fine aggregates or sand added to the mix) with posts and beams cast in situ. This was a form of non-traditional construction but here executed in sturdy and durable form.
Three show flats were presented to a viewing public on April 1965 and the first completed, 17-storey, block was opened by Richard Crossman, Labour’s Minister of Housing and Local Government, in October.
Ceramic murals, provided by lecturers at Rochdale College of Art adorned the entrance halls. All but one were removed (with tenant agreement) in 1995; that by George and Joan Stephenson in the Mitchell Hey tower remains. (11)
The flats were intended to attract professional people to Rochdale; they were let to those who applied on a separate waiting and those, primarily, who could afford its higher rents. Bedsitters renting at £2 9s (£2.45p – around £43 a week in today’s terms) and one-bed flats at £3 15s (£66) and £4 2s (£72.25p) let quickly; two-bed flats at £5 2s (about twice the rent of an equivalent council home – £90 a week contemporarily) a little less so but all proved popular. (12)
New residents included Tony McCormick, an art student, and his wife, from Hemel Hempstead (‘readily accepted by Rochdale people’, they said) and, from 1970, Karen and Kevin Quinn; Karen worked in admin, Kevin was a primary school teacher. Robin Parker, a social worker, moved in in 1974. Karen Quinn remembers:
It was quite posh at the time. We were quite proud to bring people there. Our friends thought it was wonderful.
Fast forward to the present, the Seven Sisters still stand – an impressive architectural statement in the heart of Rochdale and, to my mind, as powerful a testament to municipal endeavour and aspiration as the town’s nearby town hall. But much has changed. In the slow evolution that affected council housing more broadly, the flats became less desirable, even, in some eyes, a ‘sink estate’. In Robin Parker’s view, the Council started re-housing people in the blocks ‘not suitable for high-rise living’ – a typical occurrence when the most vulnerable on the waiting list and those with least choice are allocated to so-called ‘hard to let’ estates.
In 2017, the tower’s new landlords, Rochdale Boroughwide Housing (RBH) – an arms-length management organisation created by the Metropolitan Borough Council in 2002, transformed into a mutual housing association in 2012 – declared their intention to demolish the four 21-storey blocks, claiming Mitchell Hey, Dunkirk Rise, Tentercroft and Town Mill Brow were too expensive to refurbish. They would be replaced by 120 low-rise homes.
Established residents such as Audrey Middlehurst, a retired teacher who had lived in Mitchell Hey for 29 years, and Robin Parker, by now a former Labour councillor and erstwhile mayor of Rochdale, led a tenacious campaign to preserve their homes. It’s been a tortuous story (Robin Parker died, aged 78, in 2019; Audrey Middlehurst, aged 89, still lives in her College Bank flat) since then. It seemed the campaigners’ pleas had finally been met in March 2024 when RBH announced a deal with Legal & General that would fund renovation of the blocks. That deal collapsed in October 2024 and, as of now, the fate of the blocks remains uncertain. Residents’ lives, blighted by years of uncertainty, remain in limbo. (13)
For all their checkered history, the Seven Sisters remain. Another innovative but very different Rochdale scheme of the 1960s has been almost entirely demolished.
Ashfield Valley
The Ashfield Valley Estate was approved by the Council in 1966 and completed in 1968. It comprised 1014 flats in 26 deck-access slab blocks named in alphabetical order from Appleby to Zennor. (‘X’ was represented by Exton in case you were wondering.) It was built by Cruden Construction using the Skarne system – an industrialised building system developed in Sweden using precast concrete panels, some including built-in wiring and windows, assembled on-site.
The Council made much of the ‘linked walkways throughout the whole system, thereby ensuring maximum segregation of vehicular and pedestrian traffic’ and pointed to the provision of ‘adequate shopping facilities’ and children’s play areas ‘including a shallow pool constructed by reducing the depth of the Rochdale Canal for a length of some 600 yards’. (14)
Early residents such as Christian Wilkinson seemed happy with their new homes: (15)
In our old house on Merefield Street the kitchen was not big enough to swing a cat round. But my kitchen now is marvellous and the central heating is quite cheap. We never hear any rows or anybody moving about in the flats above or below us.
Ena Lindley said she like the decks – ‘I couldn’t do with corridors like the town centre flats’.
But, if there was a honeymoon period, it was very brief. By the mid-1970s, residents were complaining about an epidemic of vandalism, crime and antisocial behaviour. The estate’s caretaker, George Cartshore, quit in 1978:
More and more people are moving out of the Valley. More and more flats are standing empty and despite the best efforts of caretakers some blocks have deteriorated into an appalling and dangerous condition. Ashfield Valley will be a ghost town in five to ten years.
New residents were typically more vulnerable or more desperate, often housed under homelessness legislation and with least choice as to where they lived. As one long-term resident observed caustically:
This place is a dumping ground for has-beens and never-will-be’s. There are a lot of good people on this estate but we’re treated like a leper colony.
When Anne Power investigated ‘unpopular council housing estates’ in the early 1980s she noted how early blocks let well but by the time the Council reached Z, half the offers were turned down. By then, only 19 of the original tenants were still living on the estate and around a third of all tenants left each year Conversely, ‘it was said single male migrants from Donegal headed straight for the Valley having heard of the empty flats’. (16)
In 1983, a £3 million regeneration programme was completed that removed 37 decks and improved services, entrance facilities and landscaping but Ashfield Valley’s die was cast. It remained a tainted estate, avoided by would-be tenants and blacklisted by many local traders.
The availability – by official and unofficial means – of cheap accommodation did, however prove attractive to younger people and, like the Hulme Crescents, the estate became home to a thriving counterculture of bands, zines and informal artwork. Trevor Hoyle’s 1975 cult novel, Rule of the Night, is based on the estate. Simon Armitage’s poem, Xanadu, recalls his experiences as a probation officer working on the estate. (17)
The final nail in the coffin of Ashfield Valley was the flooding of 15 of the 26 blocks in January 1987 as pipes thawed after a heavy freeze. After that, with some blocks already emptied and with no prospect of viable investment in the estate, demolition came to seem the only answer. Five blocks were razed in 1989; by August 1992, just three remained and these thoroughly renovated and rebranded as Stoneyvale Court. Sandbrook Park – home to an Odeon, Pizza Hut and MacDonalds and, with a lingering nod to an alternative heritage, the headquarters of the Co-operative Pharmacy – has taken its place.
Rochdale’s 1971 Official Guide poignantly described Ashfield Valley as ‘a triumph for contemporary planning and modern building techniques’ but, in 2025, it’s hard to see the scheme as anything other than an unalloyed failure, almost from inception. We should nevertheless avoid that ‘wisdom’ that comes with hindsight as we look at two other troubled estates that culminated Rochdale’s council housing efforts in the late 1960s and 1970s. We’ll examine Lower Falinge and the Freehold Estate and conclude this story in next week’s post.
Thanks
Especial thanks to Mike Ashworth for sharing some images and pages from his Flickr site, a wonderful archive of diverse historical records, too varied to list but well worth your time.
Sources
(1) Rebe P Taylor, Rochdale Retrospect (Corporation of Rochdale,1956)
(2) ‘Rochdale Town Council’, Rochdale Observer, 8 December 1945 and Prefab Museum map
(3) ‘Rochdale Town Council’, Rochdale Observer, 8 July 1944
(4) ‘Rochdale Town Council’, Rochdale Observer, 10 February 1945
(5) ‘Rochdale’s Houses’, Daily Dispatch, 23 March 1945. The exhibition was officially opened by Hartley Shawcross, then Regional Housing Commissioner, who would be elected Labour MP for St Helens in July 1945 and as Attorney General led the British prosecution team at the Nuremberg trials.
(6) ‘Current Topics’, Rochdale Observer, 6 June 1945
(7) Quoted in Taylor, Rochdale Retrospect
(8) Oldham Rochdale HMR Pathfinder Heritage Assessment, Kirkholt Final Report, March 2008
(9) This and the succeeding quotation are drawn fromTaylor, Rochdale Retrospect’
(10) ‘Housing Experiment in a Town’s Centre’, The Guardian, 3 October 1966. The mayor in question was Alderman Cyril Smith. Smith had been appointed mayor as a Labour member but resigned from the party in August 1966 in a protest against rent increases agreed by the Labour majority. (Labour lost its council majority as a result.) Smith was elected Liberal MP for Rochdale in 1970. Well-founded allegations of personal and political wrongdoing tarnished his later years.
(11) Twentieth Century Society, Murals, 24 George and Joan Stephenson, Ceramic Mural, 1966
(12) Joshi Herrman, ‘Towers on the hill: The dwindling life of Rochdale’s ‘Seven Sisters’, The Mill, 3 January 2021
(13) Ewan Gawne, ‘Deal to redevelop town’s “landmark” falls apart’, BBC News, Manchester, 23 October 2024
(14) Borough of Rochdale, Official Handbook, 1971 (with thanks to Mike Ashworth)
(15) ‘Well, it seemed a good idea at the time’, Manchester Evening News, 13 August 2007
(16) Anne Elizabeth Power, The Development of Unpopular Council Housing Estates and Attempted Remedies, 1895-1984, London School of Economics PhD, July 1985
(17) Damon Wilkinson, ‘Greater Manchester’s forgotten punk estate’, Manchester Evening News, 13 October 2018
