Greater Manchester suburb where burglars don't go has its own queen and 'beautiful' way of life

It was ideal for living on the outskirts of Oldham. Working men and their families would be whisked away from their cramped, overcrowded terraces to modern, light and airy homes set among green fields.

Front gardens, tree-lined lanes, open space and hot water - it was to be an oasis in industrial Lancashire. At least that was the idea anyway.

By the turn of the 20th Century more than three quarters of Britain's population lived in towns and cities. Places at the forefront of the Industrial Revolution, such as Manchester, Rochdale and Oldham, had exploded in size.

But that brought its own problems. In the smokestack cotton towns of the north west gigantic mills and factories towered over rows and rows of cramped, overcrowded and dilapidated courts and back-to-back terraces.

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Out of the chaos and the squalor emerged the garden city movement. It's been described as 'a visionary alternative' and 'perhaps one of England’s most radical contributions to urban planning'.

Its founder, Ebenezer Howard, envisioned the perfect combination of town and country, with high quality, affordable housing, fresh air, greenery and more space for the people who lived there. The estates would be self-sufficient, with work and transport close at hand.

Letchworth Garden City and the model villages of Bourneville in Birmingham and Port Sunlight on The Wirral are some of the most well-known examples of the movement, whereas locally Burnage Garden Village in south Manchester and Alkrington in Middleton were also built on the same principles.

And, in Oldham a group