BEETON GROVE
Forty years ago, in the mid-1970s, I embarked on a project to document the lives of my neighbours who lived in a small street of terraced houses close to the centre of Manchester in North West England. Beeton Grove is a typical working class community, of the kind characterised on television by the long-running soap Coronation Street. I lived in there for a couple of years and got to know a few of my neighbours, which made me curious about the others; what made their lives tick, what kind of jobs, families and thoughts did they have. So I knocked on everyone's door and asked if I could interview and photograph them. Fortunately, only four declined, so I set about my task armed with a tape recorder and a Leica camera. The original book had been forgotten about until last year when I decided to seek a publisher, and after a successful Kickstarter campaign Bluecoat Press issued the book in 2016.
