We’re sure that every housing officer in Salford would love to frame this beautiful relic we found deep in the vaults of the Working Class Movement Library…
It’s a letter to 73 year old Frank Rourke, a council tenant who lived in a terraced house in Coronation Street in the mid 70s, from Mr B Cloudsdale, the Area Housing Manager.
Frank hadn’t missed a day’s rent to the Council and was told his current house was being modernised. Unfortunately, it was being modernised for someone else and he was told to get out, together with his family – his son, three grandsons, his partially-sighted daughter in law and his pet dog…
The sensitive letter he received states…
“It has been decided that you will be moved from your present address to enable the modernisation to take place…Additionally, you will not be allowed to return to Coronation Street once the modernisation of that address has been completed…”
Frank was told he’d be moved to a flat instead but “no animals are allowed on such property” so if he wanted to move to any Council property he’d have to get rid of his dog.
What made matters worse was that other people who were having their houses modernised were allowed back but Frank had to move because his house wasn’t being kept tidy enough.
Eventually he decided to take the offer of a flat on the Ordsall estate but just as he was about to pick the keys up housing officials told him there’d been some mistake and they’d given it to someone else.
The last we heard of Frank and family he was still in his house in Ordsall, not knowing where he was going to live and suffering from ill health because of it all…
• If anyone knows what happened to Frank or can think of any modern day equivalents please get in touch…The nearest we can get is the Chimney Pot Park house owners who were told their houses were being demolished, only to see them done up by Urban Splash a few years later and put on the market for up to ten times what the Council paid them in compensation.
• This letter was first published as part of a story on Frank in the Salford Champion in 1976. Copies of the ace Seventies community mag are kept at the Working Class Movement Library on The Crescent. For details of opening times and stuff see www.wcml.org.uk/
• Lawrence Cassidy of Re-Tracing Salford fame is currently exploring a new exhibition at the Library and is holding open sessions every Wednesday looking at all the Library’s Salford archives. Everyone is welcome to join in… www.wcml.org.uk/
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