Footbridge used every day by people unaware of its starring role in 'masterpiece' of Manchester cinema

Many people looking for a shortcut across a rusting iron bridge will be unaware it once played a starring role in a top award-winning film of the 1960s.

Known as the Gas Street bridge in Oldham, the footbridge used to cross a large railway goods yard and the town's main railway line. The bridge, still in use today, stands close to where Oldham Mumps Station used to be before it was demolished in 2010.

The long Victorian footbridge now spans a wilderness over the former railway lines. Running from what used to be Gas Street (now part of the A62) to Churchill Street East, it used to be the main walking route from the town centre to Alexandra Park.

Photographer Alan Hart, after taking a photograph of the bridge for his Flickr page in 2014, said: "If ever there is a footbridge that can tell a story it must be this one. Built to span 18 tracks, it must have been a spotters paradise!"

As well as being around to witness the many changes to Oldham's railways over the years, the footbridge's biggest claim-to-fame is that it once played a starring role in the film, A Kind Of Loving.

Regarded as one of the greatest 'angry man' movies made in Britain in the 1960s, the film was shot and set in Manchester. Adapted from the Stan Barstow novel of the same name it was screened in 1962 to huge acclaim.

It was the sixth most popular film at the British box office in 1962. It also won the Golden Bear award, the highest prize awarded for the best film at the Berlin International Film Festival the same year.

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Directed by John Schlesinger, who later directed Midnight Cowboy and Marathon Man, it starred Alan Bates as Vic Brown. Vic is a young