Chimney Pot Park in Salford has received this year's top housing design award, which is another twist in the history of the 349 19th-century terraced houses that were built for workers in the local mills.

By the 1960s, the condition of these once-proud artisan dwellings had so deteriorated that the tight cluster of homes was used as the squalid backdrop in the opening scenes of A Taste of Honey, the 1961 film directed by Tony Richardson.

Hazel Blears, now Secretary of State for Communities and Local Government - the minister ultimately responsible for the standard of housing - appeared in the opening scene as a five-year-old urchin wearing her mother's shoes. Ms Blears says: “The film crew asked me and my brother to be extras and my mum, like the good working-class mum she was, dressed us in our best.”

This film - whose themes of unmarried motherhood and interracial relationships were shocking for the time - exposed the social deprivation in cities such as Salford and neighbouring Manchester, conditions that contrasted with the buoyant prosperity of Swinging London.

Chimney Pot Park's rooftops later featured in the opening credits of Coronation Street. Yet the vibrant community life for which the soap opera is best known was missing from Chimney Pot Park's empty and vandalised streets. By 2002, Salford City Council proposed the demolition of the terraces but a combination of public protest, government cash and resolve from the developer Urban Splash saved them. Ms Blears says: “I dragged Tom Bloxham, the head of Urban Splash, around the area on three rainy Saturday mornings and said he had to help us. He kept saying: “Nothing I can do, Hazel, nothing I can do.” Eventually he said he would give it a go.”

In just five years, Urban Splash - a developer known for its revitalisation of former industrial buildings - has replaced the threat of demolition with the clamour of buyers queuing to secure a place. The typical price of one of these houses, pictured inside and out, has gone from £8,000 to as much as £150,000 today.

The judges in the Housing Design Awards said that Chimney Pot Park was an “attractive alternative to apartment living”. The judges' criteria included: finish, sustainability and, above all, a scheme's suitability - it must be at one with its surroundings and meet the needs of the local population. Ms Blears agrees: “I think it's just fabulous.”

The refurbishment of Chimney Pot Park is typified by the topsy-turvy new arrangement of the homes: the kitchens, which were on the dank and dark ground floor, are now on light, bright mezzanine levels.

The living rooms are on the first floor, opening on to raised level gardens laid out on top of parking places. These replaced the neglected, rubbish-strewn alleyways. It is the kind of place where the upwardly mobile characters of today's Coronation Street such as Carla Connor, the owner of Underworld, an underwear business, would be well chuffed to live.

Fast facts

The Housing Design Awards were started by Aneurin Bevan, the Minister for Health, in 1948.

Better housing, as encouraged by the awards, was seen as key to improving health; this conviction had led to the establishment of the NHS in the same year.

Six best-of-the-best prizes, to celebrate 60 years of the awards, have this year been awarded to historic winners, including Golden Lane Estate (see page 13) and Smithfield Buildings, an early Urban Splash scheme.

For more information on the Housing Design Awards go to: www.designforhomes.org/hda /

Where I grew up

Hazel Bears recalls: “Some of these sorts of terraces were very badly built, with thin walls, outside toilets and tin baths. They were not exactly the best places in which to live, though there can be a case of rose-tinted glasses when it comes to them. When my grandmother's terraced house was demolished, she went to the 12th floor of a multistorey block. In the early days she loved it: she had a bathroom for the first time in her life, she had central heating, she had a view out over the city. Later on, when the tower blocks got rough, it was different.

”My mum and dad had two choices: go to an overspill council estate or really, really try to save up a deposit for a house. My mum had three jobs at one stage to do this. When you do a wholesale slum clearance - and our house did get cleared - you lose communities.”

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