Life in 'Hardcore Valley' - the much-hated housing estate loved by 'hippies and freaks'

On Rochdale's notorious Ashfield Valley estate a group of punks are filmed leaning against a banister daubed with the anarchist symbol and the slogan 'NO POLL TAX'.

It's the early 90s and it's fair to say they probably weren't the kind of tenants the council had in mind when the estate was built just over 20 years earlier.

But then not much about Ashfield Valley went to plan.

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When it was completed in 1968, at a cost of £3.5m the vast estate's 26 alphabetically named blocks were hailed as a solution to Rochdale's housing crisis.

Influenced by the brutalist European school of architecture, Ashfield Valley's 1,014 homes and apartments, linked by aerial walkways, initially proved popular with tenants who were drawn to the spacious, modern surroundings and state-of-the-art fixtures and fittings.

In 1969, Christina Wilkinson, one of the Valley's first residents, told the Rochdale Observer: "In our old house on Merefield Street the kitchen was not big enough to swing a cat round in.

"But my kitchen is now marvellous and the central heating is quite cheap."

But the honeymoon period didn't last long.

Soon crime, vandalism and drugs were rife and local wags dubbed the estate the 'Alcatraz of the North'.

Speaking in the mid-70s, the estate's caretaker George Cartshore went one step further, describing it as a 'leper colony' and a dumping ground for 'has-beens and never-will-bes'.

Soon, just 19 of the original tenants remained, many of the flats were empty and those who remained found they were increasingly stigmatised.

"At one time you couldn't get credit if you lived on Ashfield Valley, you couldn't get a job if you