I was five when this picture was taken. I’m the girl lying on the ground. The two girls in the light blue dresses are my sisters Kate and Mary, who are twins; my oldest sister Sarah is having her hair combed by her friend Marie. We were generally known as the redheaded Murray sisters. My mum is wearing a flowery dress, and talking to our neighbour, Mrs Bowers. I think it must have been a Sunday, because we’ve all got our nice dresses on. The saucer on the floor would have had ice-cream on it. My mum used to buy a bowl from the van and share it out.

We lived in an area of Manchester known as the slums, but we weren’t really aware of that as children. We were always clean and tidy, and we had plenty to eat. We didn’t feel as though we were missing out. And we had such freedom. There were a lot of half-demolished houses around, and we used to play in them. We’d make swings and hang them off the lamp-posts.

Every 5 November, we’d have a bonfire; we’d spend months beforehand collecting every bit of wood we could salvage from the houses, or taking bits out of abandoned cars. It was important to try to have the biggest bonfire. Kate was always climbing up on the wood, and twice we had to take her to hospital to have her leg stitched because she’d cut it on a nail. But no one ever stopped us from playing.

All the houses in our street backed on to the area in this picture, which we called the croft. It had a real community feel. You didn’t just know all the other boys and girls, but all the older people, too. There was a lady we used to call granny, who lived on her own, and I used to like going to visit her because her house was nice and quiet. A couple of years later, we moved to a new area where we had our own little garden. It was a busy road, so we stopped playing out. But the new house had electricity, so we got a television.

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We found out about this photo in 1989, when Shirley Baker had a book of her photographs published. My mum was still alive, so it was lovely to be able to talk to her about it. She said she didn’t think she’d ever seen someone with such a big camera. Shirley asked us all to act naturally, but my sister Mary thought she was going to be in the newspaper – that’s why she’s smiling at the camera.

After my mum died, my husband wrote to Shirley and asked if we could have a print, and she sent back a lovely letter along with one for each of us. I’ve tucked the letter in the back of the frame and it sits on the wall above the cooker in my kitchen, to remind me of Mum. She was always in the kitchen.

We’ve stayed close, my sisters and I. We all live around south Manchester and see each other at least twice a week. Our children are like siblings, rather than cousins. Chorlton-on-Medlock is mainly a university area now. The Salutation pub is still there, but everything else is gone, even the street where we lived.

That’s why it’s lovely to have this picture. Shirley’s given us a legacy, something we can pass on to our kids and grandkids to say, “This is how life was.”

• Shirley Baker: Women And Children; And Loitering Men is at the Manchester Art Gallery until 28 August.

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