Local historian restores iconic Salford history with Langworthy photograph exhibition

A local historian has exhibited a collection of old Salford photographs at Langworthy Cornerstone. 

Striving to preserve Salford’s history at all costs, Lawrence Cassidy from Cheetham Hill found thousands of photographs from the 1950s and 1960s which depicted the streets of Salford and, more importantly, the people who resided there.

Iconic buildings, cars, businesses, and furniture were among the aspects of Salford’s historic 20^th Century that could be spotted on the gallery walls.

Mr. Cassidy described his journey of the discovery and conservation of the photographs: “The collection was in the cellar of a photographer’s. We conserved it over about a five-year period from 2012 and completed the project in 2018.”

The process of restoring the photographs required tireless work from the 15 volunteers working with Ordsall Community Arts. They aimed to clean, catalogue and digitise the collection photographically whilst identifying the names of places and people in the shots.

“There’s thousands of portraits from that period. We don’t know who the portraits are of.”

“On some occasions, people have come forward and said ‘that’s me when I was 17’ and they’re in their 80s or 90s now,” Mr. Cassidy added.

“We had lots of volunteers cleaning the collection. Some of them had dust or mould. It was such a huge task. I didn’t think we’d get it done, but we did.”

From the massive amount of photographs archived for display, Salfordians have the chance to reminisce on the many industries, shop fronts and factories operating in their city over 70 years ago.

The multi-cultural element of Cheetham Hill became a highlight for Mr. Cassidy during his search for the collection.

Migrants, who brought their family photographs from their home countries, birthed the now 126 language-rich area of Salford.

Mr. Cassidy continued: “There’s two sides to it: the infrastructure of shops and buildings that were here in the 50s that have been demolished that people who were born here remember, and then there’s the migrant community side to it, who brought their photographs.”

He believes the Greater Manchester area has benefitted from this change, saying: “It’s more of a reflection on Salford now, than as it was, in a way. So it’s more inclusive in terms of its multi-cultural context.”

The historic collection can be viewed upstairs at Langworthy Cornerstone. For more information, check out their Facebook page here.