Posted by editor on July 20, 2010 under Community, Environment
Surrounded by wildflower meadows, kingfishers and tawny owls, you’d never guess you were in Gorton. But, as Len Grant reports, there’s a whole lot to discover beyond Tesco and the busy Hyde Road.
Simon and Vicky on part of the Gorton Heritage Trail: "It celebrates local heritage amongst outstanding wildlife habitats."
Simon hasn’t always lived in Gorton. In fact, when he moved here from Whalley Range in south Manchester just three years ago he admits he had negative preconceptions about the place. “I was pleasantly surprised when I saw this house,” he says. “But it was the location that really sold it for me: the views and the amazing habitats right on the doorstep.”
Simon’s small cottage is part of a conservation area with some older houses nearby dating back to the Gorton Hall estate. He didn’t realise until he’d moved in that his new home was right next to the Gorton Heritage Trail. “One of the neighbours gave me a leaflet, and that was the first I’d heard of it.”
The Trail was established 10 years earlier in 1997, inspired by local councillor and one time Lord Mayor of Manchester, James Ashley. It was Ashley and a group of local people he brought together who first recognised the potential of celebrating local heritage within a trail that took in some outstanding wildlife habitats. The trail includes Richard Peacock’s Mausoleum (he of Beyer Peacock fame), the ‘Dissenters Graveyard’ at Brookfield Church, an old salt road and lots of clues to an old tannery.
With his fiancée, Vicky Evans, Simon joined in with the group’s efforts to maintain the trail. “As ecologists we are both interested in practical conservation work – we help with the Wildlife Trust as well – and we thought we could lend a hand with some of the hard work.” Content with weeding, litter picking and clearing paths, he wasn’t so keen at first on joining the organising committee.
“James Ashley had died a year or so before I moved here and the committee was becoming gradually disillusioned. They’d put in a massive effort over the first few years but needed new blood to take things forward. And so, despite paperwork not being a strong point, I reluctantly agreed to come on board.”
The timing was good, however. In early 2009 the Environment Team at New East Manchester contacted the group and asked how they could help.
“They asked how the trail was being used,” recalls Simon, “and how it could be developed further as a community asset. Groundwork was then commissioned to conduct a consultation which lasted several months.”
Exhibitions were set up locally in the library and the indoor market; there were door-to-door questionnaires; and walkers were stopped on the footpaths and quizzed about their use of the trail. “Groundwork produced a really detailed masterplan which captured everyone’s comments and ideas and set out funding opportunities and a whole list of medium and long-term goals.
“It’s really invigorated the committee,” enthuses Simon. “Since then we’ve won funding for tools and safety equipment for our clean-up days and new computer equipment for all our admin.”
But there’s a lot to do. “One of the long-term goals is to have a pedestrian crossing at the point where the footpath dissects the busy Hyde Road. That’s quite crucial to the future of the trail. New East Manchester are also applying for an ‘Access to Nature’ grant on our behalf so we could afford a part-time development worker. Yes, the last 18 months have been good, which has been down to the help we’ve had from New East Manchester.
“If I were able to see into the future I’d see the trail being used by lots more local people, being well sign-posted and being accessible to local schools and youth groups for things like pond-dipping and bug hunts. It’d be great!”
See the Gorton Heritage Trail website here
Posted by editor on July 2, 2010 under Art, sport and leisure, Environment
On the same afternoon as England’s bid to reach the World Cup quarter finals, photographer Len Grant led a photography workshop at Clayton Vale hosted by Groundwork.
Photography workshop in the beautiful Clayton Vale. Photo: Len Grant
I was surprised anyone showed up at all. This was the big one: England versus Germany and it seemed every other house in east Manchester was sporting a massive St George’s flag or half a mile of bunting. Many had both.
But as our own kick-off arrived there were many eager snappers fingering their dials and knobs ready to capture the beauty of the Vale.
Billed as being totally non-technical, I firstly extolled the virtues of ‘looking at light’, imagining the sun as one massive photographic light that could be either on, off or many variations in between.
Getting a different viewpoint. Photo: Elliot Brown
The committed participants also heard my recommendation for ‘moving about’, looking for the best viewpoint and not being content with the view of a scene that first presents itself. It sounds incredibly basic but it is consistently overlooked and can make a good photograph even better.
I remember my photographic education – such as it was – took great leaps forward when my evening class teacher encouraged us to start taking pictures in a sequence rather than looking just for that killer shot. So my workshop participants were sent off to take a series of images, of any subject matter, that might be the beginning of ‘story-telling’, or at least thinking about they wanted to say with their photography before lifting the viewfinder to the eye.
Congratulation to all involved. It was a constructive afternoon for photography if not for English football. Here are some of the results.
Posted by editor on June 22, 2010 under Community, Education and health, Environment
Well known for their recycling, east Manchester’s EMERGE is progressively launching new local initiatives that encourage sustainable living. Here Len Grant meets newest recruit, Ben Lear, their Growing Foods Project Leader.
Ben Lear: "Growing and cooking our own food... these are skills we could lose."
Ben’s new job seems easy enough: encourage local people to start growing their own food. On a sunny day in June with the first pea pods appearing in the EMERGE teaching garden, it is surely an idyllic task.
But, even with the increasing popularity of growing your own, the odds are stacked against him. On the main road opposite the newly created garden the construction of two new fast food outlets highlights our preference for instant, unhealthy food. Many of the lorries driving into the New Smithfield Market – where EMERGE are based – bring more fruit and vegetables from around the world and, says Ben, serve as a constant reminder of the importance of locally grown food.
Food containers, tyres... you can grow food in anything
Since arriving in April Ben has coordinated the construction of EMERGE’s teaching garden. There are now raised vegetable plots with courgettes, squash, leeks, spinach and lettuce all making a tentative appearance. Discarded tyres act as pots for potatoes; specially bred worms munch their way through food waste to make ‘the very best compost’, and a large ‘poly tunnel’ has been built as a classroom for Ben’s new project.
“We’re starting a four week course here on July 8th,” he says. “It’s aimed specifically at beginners to give people the confidence to start growing their own food. We’ll start by talking about soils; how to plant things and how to water them; which containers to use. Maybe later we’ll talk a little about garden design and crop rotation but we’ll see how we get on.”
Ben has already set up a Saturday gardening drop-in club down at the wholesale market. “There’s lots to do here and I’m hopeful local people will just pop along and get involved. We’ve built some beds but need more and there’s always lots of maintenance needed at this time of year.”
Keen to take his project out to the community, Ben has already forged linked with some local groups. “With the African Francophone Integration Project in Beswick we are creating a community garden and we might even try and grow some native African vegetables. But I’d like to hear from other groups or individuals who have a plot, however small, that they’d like to cultivate.”
Ben’s job at EMERGE – the social enterprise that spearheaded recycling in Manchester long before it become mainstream – is funded by the Manchester Carbon Innovation Fund. Manchester City Council has invested £1 million in local projects that tackle climate change.
Trucks bringing fruit and veg from around the world are a constant reminder
There are beehives in urban allotments, ‘green roofs’ on community buildings and, in the Northern Quarter, the first ‘smart energy business district’ where offices and homes can monitor and reduce their energy use.
“Following the Growing Foods Project we hoping to open a cookery centre here,” says Ben, “it’s the logical next step after you’ve grown your own local, nutritious food. My granddad is a great gardener and my grandma is a great cook and it’s those skills that we are in danger of losing.”
Like to know more about growing your own food?
Contact Ben Lear at EMERGE on 0161 223 8200 or ben@emergemanchester.co.uk
See EMERGE’s website
Read more about the Manchester Carbon Innovation Fund
Posted by editor on June 1, 2010 under Environment
Like giant mole hills, mounds of earth have recently appeared on the site adjacent to the City of Manchester Stadium. Len Grant dons hard hat to investigate east Manchester’s industrial past revealed by a team of archaeologists.
Old and new: Bradford Iron Wroks revealed in the shadow of the City of Manchester Stadium
It’s the site once earmarked for the ‘super casino’ but not so many decades ago it had been the epicentre of east Manchester’s industrial past. Bradford Colliery’s two shafts, each 18 feet wide and a mile deep, satisfied the local industry’s veracious appetite for coal and had done for more than 100 years.
Over the last few weeks archaeologists have been exploring the surrounding area prior to its preparation by New East Manchester for future development.
“We knew there was a medieval timber-framed, moated hall not far from here in the 13th century,” explains Ian Miller of Oxford Archaeology North. “Some evidence of that was found in 2002 whilst digging the tunnel wall for the Metrolink to travel under Alan Turing Way, but we’ve not been able to find anything new on that site.”
Early maps from 1761 show the remains of a moat and the beginning of coal excavation: shallow pits where miners would have recovered coal very close to the surface.
“By the 1840s,” continues Ian, “there were the beginnings of some major development here. Bradford Colliery had been established, a canal arm from the nearby Ashton Canal had been progressively extended towards the two pit heads, local streets had been laid out and houses built.
“But, by 1893, this whole place had exploded into a major industrial powerhouse, centred on Bradford Colliery. Unlike other areas of the first industrial city that peaked during the 1880s and 90s, this small area of east Manchester just continued to grow exponentially.”
Adjacent to Alan Turing Way, the archaeological team has uncovered the remains of what would have been boiler, fan and engine houses for the colliery. Steel-reinforced concrete foundations from a 1950s redevelopment of the colliery sit amongst Victorian brick remnants. A search for the actual mine shafts has not been a priority as these were capped with huge inverted concrete conical ‘plugs’ in the late 1960s when the colliery eventually closed.
Alongside Alan Turing Way: the colliery buildings
Victorian brick remains and more recent concrete foundations
1950s reinforced concrete atop of brick remains
“We have also uncovered,” explains Ian, “the intact remains of the nearby Bradford Iron Works, which contains some early examples of modern furnace technology.”
"The Iron Works were right here next to Forge Lane"
In the shadow of the City of Manchester Stadium the excavations clearly reveal a series of boilers each connected to two steam hammers used to pound the molten iron. The hammers themselves were invented and produced locally at Patricroft, but it is the system of brick-lined flues which indicate the experimental re-use of exhaust fumes.
“Red hot exhaust gases from the foundry’s furnace were sent down a brick-lined flue,” explains Ian’s colleague Graham Mottershead.
“Once the bricks were white hot the air flow was reversed and cold air was drawn in and rapidly heated by the hot bricks. Alternately switching the flow meant the whole boiler system was much more efficient.”
"The bricks were laid out in such a way as to maximise their surface area and take up as much heat as possible from the exhaust fumes."
These early innovations at Bradford were adapted and improved until, by the 1920s, foundries and other steam-powered processes were 80-90% more efficient.
“There was huge innovation on this site,” says Ian, “ideas were being tried and tested on an astonishing scale. Being able to see the tangible remains really brings home the incredible industrial heritage we’re celebrating in this area.”
