Snapping up the last images of a vanishing world

Photographer recorded end of era on estates

- DAMON WILKINSON

ON August 4, 2002, as she sheltered under an umbrella from a typical Mancunian downpour, the Queen brought the Commonwealth Games to a close.

But a few hundred yards away in the terraced streets that surrounded the City of Manchester Stadium a new chapter was just beginning.

Three years earlier Beswick, Clayton and Openshaw had received almost £80m in regeneration cash after being named one of the government's New Deal for Communities projects.

Those in charge aimed to build 12,000 new houses and flats and modernise 7,000 existing homes.

It was hoped more than 10,000 new jobs would be created and public transport links would be vastly improved, including the expansion of Metrolink into the area.

But what did that mean for the people who lived there? Photographer Anne Worthington aimed to find out. She spent the best of four years documenting the lives of the people of East Manchester as one of the biggest regeneration projects the city had ever seen went on around them.