Beautifully Ugly - The Last Estate Pubs of Manchester

Love them or loathe them, estate pubs are a symbol of a bygone era - of a regeneration trend in the 1960s and 70s that swept across the nation, wiping away old tired neighbourhoods and replacing them with new, bold and ambitious designs. Tower blocks, concrete lines, composite constructions, streets in the sky. With the new houses came new pubs and they were equally as unusual in their simple modernist, even brutalist design. Strange cuboids and odd sloping roofs. But now those estates are changing once again, and the pubs are going one at a time. Pubs in general are struggling, and these ones get little sympathy. But their dwindling numbers make them historic and endlessly fascinating. For some reason I've fallen for them. And Manchester (and the surrounding area) has a lot to answer for.