In 1984, Adam T. Burton moved into a flat at 138 John Nash Crescent in Hulme, Manchester. He remained there until 1987, photographing the estate, its residents and the political activity that became part of his daily life.
The Hulme Crescents had opened little more than a decade earlier. Built as part of the clearance of the area’s older terraced housing, the estate was intended to provide modern homes within a network of elevated walkways, communal spaces and open ground. By the time Burton arrived, that promise had largely broken down. Damp, defective heating, unsafe communal areas and poor maintenance had made the flats increasingly difficult to live in. Many long-term residents had already left, while properties were becoming available to students and others at very low rents.
Burton arrived during an unsettled period in the history of the Crescents, after many of the families for whom they had been built had left, but before the student, squatter, music and artist communities associated with later Hulme had fully developed. His photographs grew out of the experience of living there and document the estate as part of his daily life.
Drawing on his photographs and first-person recollections, including excerpts from his earlier self-published book, this feature traces Burton’s experience of Hulme between 1984 and 1987
Photo © Adam T. Burton / British Culture Archive.
Manchester had been pulling at me for years before I lived there. In 1981, I rode pillion on a friend’s motorcycle from mid-Wales through freezing weather to see Killing Joke. They were supported by an early Dead or Alive. Pete Burns came on with ribbon flowing from a tambourine between songs. It was difficult to distinguish the smoke from the dry ice, but for us it did not matter.
Killing Joke were powerful. Jaz Coleman looked and sounded maniacal, and I knew I had witnessed something that went beyond the business they called show.
Three years later, the city offered me a home. I had been living in Hereford since leaving the Welsh countryside, sharing a variety of one and two-room bedsits with my girlfriend. Her sister had been living in a flat in Hulme with two other women, all studying at Manchester Polytechnic. She was in her final year and was now alone in the flat. The idea of a large three-bedroom place for very little rent, if any rent at all, was tempting.
My sister and her husband drove us up to Manchester with all our belongings in a hired van. So, in 1984, with the miners’ strike in full swing, I moved into 138 John Nash Crescent.
The move made me anxious. For months beforehand, I had a recurring nightmare of burning cars, rabid dogs and fighting scenes: Hieronymus Bosch meeting Direct Works. In fact, it was an absolute prediction of a demolition performance by Dogs of Heaven during the final days of the Crescents, although I could not have known that then.
On my first morning in the flat, I heard shouting at the back and looked out of the window. Two women were fighting below. I took four or five photographs. I think the argument was over a man because I heard “Stay away from my man” several times.
The image of the little girl watching is heartbreaking. It is a sad scene, but only a fraction of a second in their story. It is not the kind of photography I am completely comfortable with, but I think it has importance now within its historical and geographical context.
Photo © Adam T. Burton / British Culture Archive.
The flats were damp and expensive to heat. The heating system used warm-air ducting beneath the floors. The ducts were lined with asbestos, and grey dust would fall from them when the system was used. I once heard an older woman in the post office telling someone about the thin layer of dust that covered her furniture during the winter. I taped up my ducts with gaffer tape and never switched on the heating.
There were no conventional gas or electricity bills. The meter had to be fed with coins. I would get ten pounds of my dole changed into twopences and pennies and sit by the canal beyond Whitworth Street, watching the occasional narrowboat. I always kept an emergency five-pound note hidden inside a cassette case. I knew it was there when I needed electricity or food.
Photo © Adam T. Burton / British Culture Archive.
There were posters in the stairwells warning residents about giro-day robberies. The police, when they appeared, usually drove through in unmarked white Transit vans. Hulme had a reputation that travelled well beyond the estate, but reputation was never the whole experience of living there.
I had some wonderful summers in Hulme. The windows were open and people played music. I could hear conversations across the estate. There were magical sunsets. Summer in the Crescents was more comfortable than winter, when it was difficult to keep the flats warm. I had very little money, but I remember the place with affection as well as anxiety.
Hulme was close to the centre of Manchester, and I spent a great deal of time walking into town. The city mattered to me as much as the estate, and the journey between them was part of my daily life.
I loved the record shops. Virgin was good for finding bargains. Piccadilly Records was a great place, and there were shops in the Corn Exchange and around the city centre. I bought a Panasonic portable cassette recorder from a second-hand shop and used it to tape John Peel programmes. Music was everywhere.
The Crescent pub was across from the flats, and later, record shops such as Eastern Bloc became part of the city’s developing music culture.
Photo © Adam T. Burton / British Culture Archive.
One Sunday evening, I went downstairs to make a communal brew and found a leaflet that had been pushed through the letterbox. It asked:
“Are you against racism?”
It invited people to a rally in support of Viraj Mendis, who was being threatened with deportation.
I thought, “I’m against racism,” so I went along.
There were around ten supporters: friends of Viraj, and perhaps seven of us who had responded to the leaflet. We listened to speeches. Then Viraj took the megaphone and told us his story.
Within a couple of weeks, I had become the photographer for the campaign. These were the early days of the Viraj Mendis Defence Campaign. We attended weekly meetings, sometimes in rooms at Manchester Town Hall. We marched in support of the miners and for gay rights, and we drank in the Manchester Polytechnic students’ union bar.
Viraj and Malik, a fellow campaigner, also helped people involved in other anti-deportation campaigns. We travelled across Manchester photographing those living under threat from what we regarded as the racist and heavy-handed actions of British immigration authorities.
Many people involved with the campaign were members of the Revolutionary Communist Group. I was never much of a joiner, but I liked them as people. They had strict rules about cannabis, although drinking was fine. I think everyone I knew smoked a little with us, each asking that we keep it quiet from the others.
The campaign became part of my life in Manchester. It introduced me to political organisation, public demonstrations and a community of people confronting deportation, racism and other forms of injustice.
Photo © Adam T. Burton / British Culture Archive.
I did not arrive in Hulme intending to produce a definitive photographic account of the Crescents. I was living there, working, attending meetings, listening to music and trying to make enough money to continue photographing.
Film was expensive. I was sometimes on the dole and at other times employed through temporary work or short contracts. I photographed a great deal, but in retrospect I could have spent all my time documenting life there. At the time, I did not understand what an interesting period it was.
The photographs were made alongside the rest of my life. They include the architecture, the walkways, the damage, notices on walls, children, neighbours and incidents I happened to witness. They also include demonstrations and people connected with political campaigns elsewhere in Manchester.
I started working for an environmental agency in Stretford as a video producer and photographer, producing a half-day publicity programme each week alongside other projects with a new video camera. My colleague John wrote press releases, while Mike and Charley produced graphics and artwork. We helped to create communal gardens and converted buses into play buses. The work gave me experience, although I did not see much of the money I was supposed to be earning.
Photography developed through circumstance. I learned from friends, from work and by doing it. One friend, Pat Simmons, photographed bands at the Polytechnic Students’ Union and the Boardwalk. Mike and I began making videos for bands, including an early promotional film for the Inspiral Carpets, shot on black-and-white Super 8 and processed in a basement.
Hulme Library was an important resource. It carried photography books, records and tapes, and I spent time looking at the work of other photographers. The Crescents were physically difficult, but they were also close to Manchester’s colleges, libraries, venues, campaign groups and music culture.
Photo © Adam T. Burton / British Culture Archive.
These photographs do not claim to provide a complete account of Hulme and the Crescents. They are a document of my experiences while living there.
I was in the privileged position of being able to choose to live in Hulme, and fortunate enough to leave when I wanted. My circumstances were different from those of residents who had been placed there, raised families there or had fewer choices available to them.
Much of the work appears drab and cold. Some of it is depressing and, at times, without hope. Yet there was also a strong sense that we were all in it together.
The photographs give only a glimpse of my years in Hulme. They include things that may be familiar, and perhaps forgotten, to people who lived there. For those who did not, I hope they offer an account of that time and place.
In September 1987, I moved to Aberystwyth, a town by the sea in Wales, where I set up a small animation business and later worked for the BBC. Its entire population was roughly that of a single Crescent.
I have lived in many places since, but Hulme is the one that stayed with me.
Photo © Adam T. Burton / British Culture Archive.
Photo © Adam T. Burton / British Culture Archive.
Photo © Adam T. Burton / British Culture Archive.
Adam T. Burton’s photographs form part of British Culture Archive’s wider documentation of Hulme across several decades. The archive includes David Chadwick’s photographs of residents during the early years of the Crescents, Anne Worthington’s work from the estate’s final period, and Al Baker’s photographs of Hulme after redevelopment.
Together, these bodies of work document the area from the clearance of its nineteenth-century housing, through the construction and decline of the Crescents, to demolition and the development that followed.
View the full Adam T. Burton Hulme gallery at British Culture Archive.
