Where near Manchester city centre can you enjoy a spot of peace and quiet surrounded by green grass and wild flowers? In a city not known for its green spaces you can find such an oasis sandwiched between Trafford, Salford and Manchester. A thin sliver of land that has arguably been a reflection of the state of both cities. This sliver is known as Pomona and was formed when the construction of the Bridgewater Canal on its eastern bank turned it into a quasi island (quasi because you couldn’t row a boat all the way round it) with the River Irwell already running down its western bank. In its former lives it has been the site of a stately home; a pleasure gardens and a busy dockland with ships arriving via the Manchester Ship Canal which, in the 19th century, had turned Manchester into a bustling inland port. Today it is a rare strip of greenery a few minutes walk from Manchester city centre.

From Gardens to Industry

Before the docks the land was home to Pomona Pleasure Gardens, opened in 1845, the idea of brothers William and Joseph Beardsley. In 1868 the gardens were sold to one James Reilly who built a palace on the grounds and lived in a nearby mansion. The palace was one of the largest of its kind in the country being able to hold 20,000 souls and hosted large political rallies by both the Liberal and Conservative parties. Unlike today, when the Conservatives turn up every other year in a city that never votes for them, the Conservatives were quite a force amongst the working class of Manchester worried about Catholic Irish immigration into the city. The gardens, palace and, later, a zoological garden offered relief for people from the dirty cramped conditions of a city where overcrowding and filth were the reality of most people’s day-to-day experience. The gardens became so famous that they even had their own ballad written about them that tells the story of a man who picks up a woman in Albert Square to take down to Pomona for a night of fun, only to find out that she is actually his wife!

Manchester at this time was an industrial powerhouse, dubbed the “chimney of the world”, and French travel writer Alexis de Tocqueville said of Manchester that “from this filthy sewer pure gold flows.” However, industrialisation and economic vitality did little for the lot of ordinary working men and women who had left the country for jobs in the city. This expanding vitality also posed an existential threat to the gardens. The city started to expand on this little oasis and docks replaced the gardens in 1894 with the explosion of a nearby chemical works in 1887 doing it no favours either.

Pomona Docks (Manchester Local Image Collection)

Pomona Today

After almost a century the docks disappeared in the 1980s with the onset of containerisation and economic stagnation with many of them being filled in and the place all but left to grow wild. Over time nature took its course but the area became popular with joggers, dog walkers, graffiti artists and homeless people seeking shelter under the railway arches. Birds and rare wildflowers also found an unlikely home there considering its industrial past. They all gave a new purpose to a place which had seemingly been forgotten.

I was mystified by a place that had such history but now had seemingly been left to go to seed. I had to pay it a visit. The day I made the trip was a crisp November morning just a week after Manchester’s Christmas Markets had opened up to welcome slow walking tourists and hen parties. Just ten minutes walk down the Bridgewater Canal brought me to the one road on and off the island and the first thing that struck me was the peace and quiet of a place that is in the middle of two cities. The site is surrounded on two sides by both offices and blocks of flats with the occasional train and tram reminding you of where you are. There was also the unmistakeable sound of the Wu-Tang Clan drifting across the river on a whiff of spray paint as some graffiti artists were hard at work on the opposite bank.

The landscape is mostly flat but offers great views of the transport links that made Manchester what it is today with the Irwell, the canal, the Metrolink and the railway all in sight. It provides an easy walk that could be enjoyed by anybody.

(Wikimedia Commons)

In all, the whole “island” is only 1km long but offers somewhere to escape to that is away from the mania that can be the city centre on a weekend. To have an area this green and this quiet so close to town is a rare treat. Perhaps, with proper care and attention, it could be made into a place that people can use to get away from it all. With some landscaping and amenities it would not be hard to imagine spending the good portion of a day here to enjoy some quiet.

Sadly, the reality of the situation is that nothing like that is going to happen. The dreams and aspirations that anyone might have of this historic area becoming something exciting and unique have been dashed by both the council and the island’s landowners, Peel Group. As in the 19th century it is the expansion of a city on the rise that is threatening Manchester’s little oasis.

Redevelopment and the Future

Following World War II there was a population shift in Britain towards the suburbs as the slum areas of the inner cities were cleared out and demolished. This, coupled with de-industrialisation, had a big effect on Manchester and many other northern cities. By the 1970s it was reported that only 200 people lived within the boundaries of the city centre. This had a knock-on effect on local businesses as there was much less footfall than there was in previous decades. As the seventies came to a close Manchester city council started a concerted campaign to re-populate the city centre. Deals were struck with housing authorities and property developers to build new properties in places like Castlefield, the Northern Quarter and, bizarrely, even above the Arndale Centre. This re-population has continued unabated ever since and by the beginning of the nineties the population of the city centre was approx. 900. By the end of the nineties it had increased to 5,000 and in 2009 19,000 souls called Manchester city centre home. More than a twenty fold increase in less than twenty years.

The effect this has had on Manchester’s landscape has been to leave a ring of flats and developments around the city centre that look like a Lego town built by a particularly unimaginative child. Peel want to add to this hodgepodge approach with two new white boxes on Pomona. A campaign by local residents against the flats has not been able to gain any traction due to lack of funds. They claim that the new towers will be too tall, vital open space will be lost and that local wildlife will suffer. It says a lot about the state of the city that the thoughts of thousands of Mancunians will not get a fair hearing because they don’t have the cash that’s available to local councils and property developers. The Evening News didn’t help the cause much either with them originally labelling the area as ‘hostile’ and an ‘intimidating’ wasteland. Labels that came as direct quotes from Manchester city council. They soon dropped the pejoratives and now refer to the whole proposal as ‘controversial’ after they actually listened to people who don’t have a huge financial interest in the area but rather want it to be somewhere of benefit to the whole city.

This is a huge shame for a city which, as mentioned at the beginning of this piece, is not known for its green spaces. The concrete and dead grass of Piccadilly Gardens doesn’t really cut it does it? Manchester deserves better and it would be great to see the city actually leading the way on something. To be able to shout loud once more. Once it gets started gentrification is notoriously hard to stop. That does not mean people should not try, however, so my hat is off to anyone who have decided to try and save this rare urban oasis. Enjoy it while you still can.

Image of a green Pomona (https://twitter.com/my_pomona)