Can this Greater Manchester area at the heart of our heritage be saved?

It is a cluster of buildings which once contributed greatly to Manchester's industrial heartbeat. But they also brought archictectural panache.

Now they are in a so-called conservation area which is badly in need of conservation. Once gloriously designed places of work are in deep decline.

The Empress Conservation Area in Old Trafford was designated in November 1995. Since 2012 it has been on the Heritage At Risk Register for North West England due to its "very bad" and "deteriorating" condition. In 2016 Trafford Council published a "management plan" for the area.

But eight years on the government body, Historic England, has stepped in with a £70,000 grant for yet another "regeneration plan" in a bid to galvanise the action needed to make sure the district does not become home to husks of beautiful, striking buildings that cannot be saved.

The 2016 council plan said: "The special interest and heritage values of the Empress Conservation Area stem from the ability of the surviving historic sections of the Conservation Area to convey the story of its industrial development: workers’ terraces intermingled with the industrial buildings that sprang up to take advantage of the growing canal network and docks.

"Architecturally, the Conservation Area displays three distinct building types, reflective of their use and purpose: residential, industrial and office use, the last of these presenting the public front to the street with grand decorative facades"

The buildings within the Conservation Area range from range from simple, domestic terraces, many of which now have commercial use, to large industrial offices. Historically, the large industrial buildings came with improvements to transport links in the 19th century and the