All along Regent Road there were shops, even 2 deparment stores! I remember being amazed at the overhead wires where clerks sent bills and invoices whizzing across customers heads in one of them. Can't remember what it was called though. wrote Dave Polshaw in 2004.

They had that sort of rig in Master's which was however on Broad Street. We used to get school uniforms from there- they had the monopoly, and were far too expensive for anything else. Most other stuff came from BHS on Regent Road. Don't forget that the shops ran right from the Woolpack at Pendleton Church though to Regent Road baths and beyond.

There was a railway from Windsor Bridge to the docks that ran through a tunnel right underneath St. Joseph's school playground- my dad taught there for some years. It was known as the Funda- because of the noise when a train went through it.

If anyone from that small part of the world which is not Salford would like to understand a little more of the environment McColl sang about, you could do a lot worse than get hold of Robert Roberts' books "The Classic Slum" and "A Ragged Schooling", both of which my father, from Salford though not Hanky Park, recognised as close to his own experience.