Beeton Grove, Manchester, 1974: Photographs by Chris Hunt

Published 7th December 2020

In 1974, Chris Hunt photographed the residents of Beeton Grove, a terraced street in Longsight, Manchester. Alongside the photographs, he documented conversations with the people he met about their homes, families, work and circumstances.

Hunt was living in a spare room in a friend’s house on Beeton Grove. His neighbours included English, Irish, Pakistani and Cypriot families. He approached them house by house, asking whether he could photograph them at home and record what they had to say.

The resulting work combines photographs with testimony gathered at the time. It documents the appearance of the street and its interiors, but also preserves information that cannot be recovered from the pictures alone.

Photographs and recorded testimony

Hunt had become dissatisfied with the limited information accompanying photographs in books and magazines. A person might be identified by name or a picture reduced to its location, with little indication of the circumstances in which it was made.

For Beeton Grove, he worked with a Leica and a tape recorder. He owned a single cassette and transcribed each conversation before recording the next. The interviews were not conducted separately from the photography but formed part of the same visits.

As Hunt explained:

“I photographed them and then did interviews to find out what was important to them at that time.”

Residents spoke about landlords, unemployment, cash-in-hand work, family life, contraception and crime. “People talked about everything,” Hunt later recalled. “No topic was off limits.”

House by house

Participation was negotiated with each household. Some residents declined to take part. In several homes, the men did not wish to be photographed or interviewed but were content for Hunt to work with other members of the family.

The children generally returned to what they had been doing once their initial questions about the camera had been answered. Adults could be more guarded. Hunt made repeated visits, bringing families prints from the photographs he had already taken. The prints gave them a record of their own and allowed the work to develop over time.

Most of the participating families were Irish, and several had known one another before moving to Manchester. Hunt also photographed two Pakistani brothers who spoke about the racism they experienced. The different households were not presented as a single, representative family. Each was photographed separately and spoke about its own position.

Hunt wanted the work to retain this house-by-house structure. The photographs were intended to appear beside the words of the people pictured, allowing each household to be encountered on its own terms. The recorded conversations were not explanatory captions added afterwards; they were part of the original project.

The photographs extend beyond formal portraits. Hunt recorded domestic interiors, children playing and the work taking place in and around the houses. The details of clothing, furniture and decoration establish the physical setting, while the interviews provide the residents’ own accounts of their lives.

The project also reached beyond the street. Hunt photographed people in nearby shops, workplaces, pubs and social clubs. Mrs Keegan’s grocery shop, situated close to Beeton Grove, was one of the local businesses included.

Mrs Keegan and her husband came to Manchester from Ireland in 1961, when they bought a small grocery shop just around the corner from Beeton Grove for £2,000. Over the years, Mrs Keegan transformed the shop into something more than a business — it became a social hub for the neighbourhood, a place where people would linger for hours, exchanging gossip and catching up on local news. More meeting place than store, it reflected the tight-knit character of the community around it.

A street expected to disappear

At the time, residents expected Beeton Grove to be demolished. The condition of the rented houses and uncertainty over the street’s future were recurring concerns. Hunt left Manchester believing that the buildings and the households he had photographed would soon be dispersed.

The anticipated demolition did not take place. When Hunt returned decades later, Beeton Grove remained recognisable, although cars, replacement windows and new doors had altered its appearance. The nearby grocery shop had gone and most of the people he had known had moved elsewhere.

Some former residents subsequently encountered the photographs again. People recognised themselves, relatives and neighbours; one woman pictured in the work was still living on Beeton Grove when she contacted Hunt.

These later responses add another layer to the archive, but its principal evidence remains the material gathered in 1974. The photographs record the street and its households. The transcripts record what residents chose to say about their own lives.

Beeton Grove in print

Hunt later brought the photographs and transcribed conversations together in the book Beeton Grove, published by Bluecoat Press in 2016.

The 144-page duotone hardback follows the original method of the project, placing residents’ words alongside the photographs. This structure prevents the people pictured from becoming anonymous examples of a broadly defined social history. Their accounts identify differences between households and provide information beyond the visible details of the photographs.

Hunt subsequently moved into advertising photography, having concluded that documentary work would not provide him with a living. Beeton Grove and his closely related Wolverhampton photographs from 1975 belong to the early documentary practice he pursued before entering commercial photography.

The Lord Nelson, Salford

Two photographs made during the same Sunday visit to the Lord Nelson on Chapel Street, Salford, also form part of Beeton Grove. In Sunday Afternoon in The Lord Nelson, 1974, a man enjoys a pint while a band prepares to play through the smoke-filled room, with a Vox amplifier visible in the background.

Chris Hunt: prints and image licensing

Selected photographs from Beeton Grove are represented by British Culture Archive for image licensing and print sales.

View Chris Hunt prints and editions

For publishing, editorial, exhibition, broadcast and commercial enquiries, visit BCA Image Licensing.

First published by British Culture Archive on 7th December 2020. Revised August 2026.