IT'S the attitude of the rest of Knutsford which has given Longridge its public face.

For most residents on the estate it's a quiet, comfortable place which simply needs some fresh investment.

But many wonder what the rest of the town thinks of them.

"Someone said to me 'Knutsford is the only place in Cheshire where the churches are still full," said community worker Sue Leech.

"They all still go on Sunday and say their little bit and then for the rest of the week it lets them off.

"In Knutsford everything is built on tradition."

So it seems that the social make-up of the Manchester overspill estates doesn't fit with that tradition.

"Warren Avenue is part of the overspill, but that's been integrated," she said.

"They built a fortress and built up this town within."

Mrs Leech is involved with Knutsford Over Ward Community Action Project - a £20,000 injection of county council cash designed to get local people tackling local problems.

It's assumed that it's all about Longridge. But the cash - for health, youth work, and employment - is for everyone who lives from Brook Street to Montmorency Close.

A survey of family stress - a measure of what makes life difficult for people living in concentrated areas with little money - found that the Over Ward Community Action Project deserved the money.

A stroll around Longridge with Mrs Leech reveals how the estate shows itself to the outside the world - and how it is looked at.

Show a positive face and the rest of Knutsford wants to know why it needs more resources.

Dwell on the negative and prejudices are hardened.

"It makes me angry," said Mrs Leech.

"It's ignorance. People are too ignorant to find out what it's like.

"It's just like anywhere else. People have views and they have children at university."

Our first call is the Welcome Cafe.

The community cafe and charity shop is a base for a whole range of activities - a food co-op, a play group and a prayer meeting.

Two helpers talked about the area as they served coffee and cake.

Misconceptions about the estate are shot down. The area is as quiet after 10pm as any other part of Knutsford, they say.

And the myth that no-one comes to the area doesn't merit close attention.

"Why should anyone come to a residential area unless your visiting someone," said one volunteer. "I wouldn't go to Mereheath Park unless I had a reason."

But they also talk about some of the area's problems and the outside attitudes that have dogged it since it was built.

"When it was built the men had to travel so far to get out for work," said a resident of Shaw Heath for 40 years. "The people knew when they came that they were not wanted by Cheshire.

"It was difficult, but we are third generation now."

Any problems that Longridge or Shaw Heath suffer now are problems of circumstance - nothing to do with the type of person who lives there.

"It's nothing to do with their friends or family," said Mrs Leech. "It's because they have not got the finance they need.

"They're making it a sin that they have not got money."

At the Community House, further into the estate, Anita Greenwood is playing bingo with some older people on the estate.

One of the most dearly-held myths about the Manchester overspill estates is tied in with Knutsford's Royal May Day Festival that no child from Longridge or Shaw Heath has ever been chosen as May Queen - and they're not wanted in the procession.

Not so, said Anita. She said the Longridge and Shaw Heath Carnival she ran was a pre-war Crosstown tradition which was revived when the estates grew.

"Children have always taken part in the May Day," she said.

But the rest of the ladies at the community house, who remember the isolation and the insults, all agreed that Knutsford was not a welcoming place when the estates first arrived.

"They didn't want us," said another elderly lady. "They thought we were coming from a slum area, but they never looked at the people."

Now the general view of Longridge's older residents is that the area has settled into a real community - with far more going for it than people credit.

Most problems are laid at the door of the authorities who refuse to clamp down on the minority of untidy or unruly tenants.

But one young working mum had a different view of the estate's future.

"People don't want to pick up their own problems," she said.

"When you're a victim of their kids they don't want to know.

"You can't knock on a door and complain about the behaviour of a child. I want to know what my children are doing."

She understands most people in Longridge are decent. But what people, who don't live on estates, don't understand is how difficult it is to bring up children in circumstances which you can't control.

"There are more kids per square foot on a typical council estate," she said. "And that frightens people."

Low expectations are learned from the small minority of troublemakers, schoolteachers' attitudes, unemployed adults and the suspicion of people from outside the estate.

"What are the kids on the estate seeing?" she asked. "That in itself makes your job as a parent that much harder."

For Helen Wilson, of the new residents' association, such low expectations become a self-fulfilling prophesy. People live up to how they are told to behave.

In a survey of residents, she discovered that many felt they were discriminated against.

"You only have to talk to the children to realise that things are not right," she said. "They all have chip on their shoulder."

The isolation of Longridge and Shaw Heath and the lack of resources in the area must change, she said, if things are to improve.

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