You would never know it was there.

Just yards from the multiplying cranes and the glistening new skyscrapers of Manchester’s booming city centre lies what was once billed as a leafy waterside oasis for the new millennium.

Tucked away on the back road to Collyhurst, a five-minute walk away from town, St Catherine’s was - in 2000 - meant to mark the gateway to a £1.7m new network of parkland trails stretching out along the river to Harpurhey.

Today little more than a plaque and some undergrowth remains, despite the council technically still classing it as a park.

Yet although even those right next door have no idea it exists, in St Catherine’s lies the ghost of the council’s original vision for a green parkland corridor across the former industrial north of the city - one that now, in the housebuilding boom of 2018, it is intent on bringing back to life.

(Image: Jen Williams)

The inconspicuous entrance to this millennial legacy lies a short distance down Dantzic Street, at the point where it becomes Collyhurst Road, a stone’s throw from Angel Meadows.

Next to Theo’s Timber yard is a heavy blue barrier, on the fence next to which a small plaque reads: ‘Irk Valley Millennium Project. St Catherine’s. This project has been created with funds from the National Lottery through the Millennium Commission, and in partnership with local communities in the Irk Valley.’

Squeeze round the barrier - which is locked - and over the small bridge that crosses the Irk and a path takes you into a vague clearing, next to a faded board advertising a map of promised new countryside links down the river and throughout the north of the city.

“Working in partnership with local people and lots of different agencies, the Irk Valley project aims to provide safe, comfortable countryside links that will create long term benefits for both people and wildlife,” it says, only just still readable.

There is no further signage. In one direction a small path strewn with broken glass leads through some undergrowth along the river, before stopping abruptly.

(Image: Manchester Evening News)

In the other lies a clearing, leading, in a roundabout fashion, to another semi-overgrown path along the river - past the bench, where an army of nettles have obscured any view of the water - to a small substation covered in danger signs, up some steps and onto an arid wasteland that has partly been reclaimed by nature and partly scattered with burnt car parts and deep open holes from which the metal covers appear to have been stolen.

In the near distance tower the cranes around the new Angel Gardens development, next to the Co-op’s 21st Century headquarters. In the other direction lies a fairground storage yard on the edge of Cheetham Hill and a striking 19th Century footbridge once painted by Lowry, but now covered with graffiti and lined with discarded cans and scorched grass.

Getting any further out towards the rest of north Manchester down the Irk Valley from here is not really possible. Fences and brambles block the way.

Yet, in 2000, the pocket of woodland and green space that lines the river here was supposed to be the start of something big.

Nearly £2m of government and lottery funding was provided during the late 1990s towards the wider Irk Valley Project, a network of parks that was to stretch from St Catherine’s to Sandhills in Collyhurst, before splitting off in two directions, one to Queen’s Park and Harpurhey and the other towards Moston Vale and Broadhurst Clough.

(Image: Manchester Evening News)

That never really happened, although some of the resulting work has lasted the test of time. But even the council says it no longer has much in the way of records about how much was spent on St Catherine’s or what the exact plan for it was.

References to it are hard to find even on the town hall’s website, but various reports and strategies it has published over the last 20 years show the plan for the wider Irk river park scheme has lingered throughout.

In 2004 the council described a continued determination to ‘build linked trails along the River Irk and its tributaries’.

“The trails will help to restore the river as a central feature within North Manchester connecting all areas and increasing levels of amenity for local residents,” it said.

In 2007 it was still describing the same plan, although even before the crash and subsequent public sector austerity hit Manchester council in a big way, it was already pointing to a lack of maintenance funding for what effectively comprised a vast and awkward area of semi-derelict former industrial land.

(Image: Manchester Evening News)

While it was still talking about ‘all open space forming a regional park network, for the current and future community’, it now qualified that a ‘substantial increase in maintenance resources’ would be necessary for that to get fully off the ground.

Referring to the availability of various further grant funding, it added: “Without revenue for ongoing maintenance the initial investment degrades over time.”

The author would, of course, be proved right.

That was more than a decade ago. Fast-forward to 2012, in the midst of austerity, and an update to council on the Irk Valley made no mention of St Catherine’s, but said of the wider corridor: “The size of the challenge in reclaiming areas of industrial land and creating an asset that will change perceptions of north Manchester and improve the quality of life for residents should not be underestimated.”

By that point, cuts to the neighbourhood services department had meant the various green spaces along the valley - from St Catherine’s up to Sandhills and beyond - were now being maintained to a ‘minimum standard’.

Some argue the council didn’t even do that.

In 2015, a blogger called Alan Rayner stumbled across St Catherine’s while following the paths of Manchester’s various rivers and tributaries.

“I found myself in a strange area called St Catherine’s,” he wrote.

“I say strange, because allegedly it is part of the Irk Valley development program.

“Well, they have put a board up and also tarmaced a path that stretches about 50 yards and ends abruptly with no real meaning of why it’s there.

(Image: Manchester Evening News)

“The area is overgrown, strewn with litter, un-managed coppices, burnt-out cars and everything in between.”

Noting that the faded board at the entrance promised ‘significant investment’, he added sarcastically: “I think somebody ran off with the funds. This area is an absolute disgrace.”

Harpurhey councillor Pat Karney, who was brought up just down the road, admits neither St Catherine’s nor the wider plan lived up to its promises.

“The hype at the time was a linear park from the city centre to north Manchester, that all the residents in the tower blocks could enjoy it,” he says.

“They said ‘if you go up the CIS tower you’ll see what a lovely green corridor we’re creating up to Queen’s Park’.

(Image: Manchester Evening News)

“It never happened. It just looks a bit inhospitable and the hype never matched the reality.”

He believes the plan failed partly because it was badly organised by the council, and did not make the area easily usable for people.

However the difficulty in turning the Irk Valley into a popular green area for north Manchester’s residents is also a legacy of its past.

Aside from the economic crash, a major factor in the minimal regeneration across this huge swathe of the city to date has been its former industrial and heavy rail uses, which left behind polluted earth and jumbled ownership arrangements.

Indeed in 2007 not only was the council unable to work out who owned many of the area’s sites, but in some cases it didn’t even know which bit of itself owned others.

(Image: Manchester Evening News)

“The maps show that most land is council-owned, but split between various departments,” mused its plan for the area that year, in the bureaucratic equivalent of someone scratching their head.

“The real ownership of some sites is not known, with records often ascribing ownership to long-defunct committees or departments no longer existing in their earlier form.

“Consequently, some sites are effectively not owned, managed or maintained at all, even though evidence of corporate council ownership is clear.”

In other words, despite the town hall owning much of the corridor, even its own departments couldn’t agree which of them was responsible for looking after some of it.

Assembling the valley’s land into a coherent strategy has taken the town hall most of the intervening 11 years.

(Image: Manchester Evening News)

What has now emerged on the back of burgeoning investor interest in the city is the council’s latest, if familiar, vision for a green riverside corridor through some of country’s most deprived - and polluted - areas, as it looks to capitalise on the housing boom inching northwards from the city centre.

The Northern Gateway, a vast plan for the Irk Valley backed by huge waves of far eastern wealth, is intended to become a jewel in the council’s regeneration crown.

Just a couple of months ago a report to the council’s executive once again described plans for ‘a linear city river park and green routes connecting from NOMA and Angel Meadow on the edge of the city centre through to Queen’s Park to the north and ultimately onwards towards Heaton Park, with links running through Sandhills to Collyhurst Village Park’.

This time the council believes it will come off - including at Danztic Street’s long-forgotten urban oasis.

“St Catherine’s Wood is a part of the Northern Gateway area,” says a spokesman.

(Image: Manchester Evening News)

“We will be taking a draft Strategic Regeneration Framework to the council’s executive on Wednesday 25 July, setting out the vision, objectives and masterplan / development framework that will guide the long-term and comprehensive redevelopment of this part of the city.

“Details will be set out for how areas such as St Catherine’s Wood can form part of a River Park and connect with other green spaces in the Irk Valley and Northern Gateway area, as part of the redevelopment planned.

“At the time of the Millennium works being carried out, there were plans to appoint a development partner for the area, which foundered at the time of the ‘credit crunch’ and global recession.

“We now have a developer partner in place for the Northern Gateway - FEC - and the Strategic Regeneration Framework is the first part of the process to begin delivery.”

Manchester council also says it has just appointed a new maintenance team for the park, which it insists is maintained to an appropriate level for a semi-wild urban green space. The nettles obscuring the river cannot be cut back for health and safety reasons, it says, because of the steep drop to the water below, while - in echoes of years gone by - the railway sidings are owned by someone else, so it has to deal with fly-tipping and rubbish there separately.

(Image: Manchester Evening News)

Where the future maintenance of St Catherine’s is concerned it admits ‘significant’ investment will be required both to revive it and to create the Irk’s long-planned parkland corridor, but it believes that with the help of developer FEC - including through Section 106 contributions secured during the planning process - the project will finally come off.

“There is so much potential for public recreation and nature conservation along the River Irk, which ultimately connects the city centre to Heaton Park,” adds the spokesman.

Like the council’s leadership, Coun Karney also now has more confidence that the full parkland plan will finally happen, nearly two decades after it was first mooted, including at St Catherine’s - because of the residential schemes planned for the area around it.

“I honestly do have more confidence, because obviously they’re going to be building accommodation closer to it,” he says, while admitting St Catherine’s is currently ‘wild and abandoned’.

“It has to be more organised this time,” he adds.

(Image: Manchester Evening News)

“Just creating this linear green park and expecting people to go there is a bit arrogant.

“It’s not an easy green space, it’s a difficult green space, but the Northern Gateway is a genuine opportunity. The area is so full of interesting twists and turns that take you back into the history.”

In the latest council plan for Collyhurst, which incorporates the Northern Gateway plans, family housing is earmarked for the wasteland above St Catherine’s, as well as on the other side of Dantzic Street, effectively joining up the area with Angel Meadows and the city centre beyond.

Perhaps this forgotten waterside retreat will then, finally, come into its own.

For now, however, the park has been unloved and anonymous for so long that even Theo’s Timber yard next door is unaware of it until the M.E.N. points it out.

“I’ve been here 14 years and I’ve never been over that bridge,” says Theo’s employee Steve Shawcross, adding that the business has been there for 20 years and nobody has ever mentioned it.

“I didn’t know there was anything there.”