Ardwick Green is a public space in

Ardwick Ardwick is an area of Manchester, England, southeast of the city centre. The population at the 2011 census was 19,250. Historically in Lancashire, by the mid-nineteenth century Ardwick had grown from being a village into a pleasant and wealt ...

Manchester Manchester () is a city and the metropolitan borough of Greater Manchester, England. It had an estimated population of in . Greater Manchester is the third-most populous metropolitan area in the United Kingdom, with a population of 2.92&nbs ...

, England. It began as a

private park A park is an area of natural, semi-natural or planted space set aside for human enjoyment and recreation or for the protection of wildlife or natural habitats. Urban parks are green spaces set aside for recreation inside towns and cities. N ...

for the residents of houses surrounding it before Manchester acquired it in 1867 and turned it into a

public park An urban park or metropolitan park, also known as a city park, municipal park (North America), public park, public open space, or municipal gardens (United Kingdom, UK), is a park or botanical garden in cities, densely populated suburbia and oth ...

with an ornamental pond and a bandstand. It contains a

cenotaph A cenotaph is an empty grave, tomb or a monument erected in honor of a person or group of people whose remains are elsewhere or have been lost. It can also be the initial tomb for a person who has since been reinterred elsewhere. Although t ...

commemorating the dead of the Eighth Ardwicks, a former unit of the Territorial Army belonging to the

Manchester Regiment The Manchester Regiment was a line infantry regiment of the British Army in existence from 1881 until 1958. The regiment was created during the 1881 Childers Reforms by the amalgamation of the 63rd (West Suffolk) Regiment of Foot and the 96th R ...

. The old drill hall at one end of the park is still used by volunteer soldiers. The other end of the park contains a large boulder, a

glacial erratic A glacial erratic is a glacially deposited rock (geology), rock differing from the type of country rock (geology), rock native to the area in which it rests. Erratics, which take their name from the Latin word ' ("to wander"), are carried by gla ...

. The Church of St Thomas, on the north side of Ardwick Green, was consecrated as a

chapel of ease A chapel of ease (or chapel-of-ease) is a church architecture, church building other than the parish church, built within the bounds of a parish for the attendance of those who cannot reach the parish church conveniently, generally due to trav ...

in 1741. It was rebuilt and extended in the course of the late eighteenth century, and acquired a

campanile A bell tower is a tower that contains one or more bells, or that is designed to hold bells even if it has none. Such a tower commonly serves as part of a Christian church, and will contain church bells, but there are also many secular bell to ...

tower in the 1830s. Many of the grand buildings have been demolished, including the Ardwick Empire Music Hall (later Manchester Hippodrome) at the eastern end. The business premises of Thomas Brown, surveyor and Resident Engineer for the construction of the

Peak Forest Canal The Peak Forest Canal is a narrow ( gauge) locked artificial waterway in northern England. It is long and forms part of the connected English/Welsh inland waterway network. Route and features General description The canal consists of two leve ...

, were in Manchester and by 1841 he was living in Allerton Place at 16 Ardwick Green. He died here on the 30 January 1850, aged 78 years. Allerton Place was demolished and by 1915 a tyre works had been built on the site. The early 19th-century cast iron railings on the north and west sides of Ardwick Green were

Grade II listed In the United Kingdom, a listed building is a structure of particular architectural or historic interest deserving of special protection. Such buildings are placed on one of the four statutory lists maintained by Historic England in England, H ...

on 3 October 1974.

References

Areas of Manchester Parks and commons in Manchester {{UK-garden-stub