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Trafford Park
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Trafford Park is an area of the Metropolitan Borough of Trafford, in Greater Manchester, England. Located opposite Salford Quays, on the southern side of the Manchester Ship Canal, it is west-southwest of Manchester City Centre, and north of Stretford.
Trafford Park is almost entirely surrounded by water. The Bridgewater Canal forms its southeastern and southwestern boundaries, and the Manchester Ship Canal its northeastern and northwestern boundaries. The park, occupying an area of , was the first planned industrial estate in the world, and is still the largest in Europe.
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Encyclopedia
Trafford Park is an area of the Metropolitan Borough of Trafford, in Greater Manchester, England. Located opposite Salford Quays, on the southern side of the Manchester Ship Canal, it is west-southwest of Manchester City Centre, and north of Stretford.
Trafford Park is almost entirely surrounded by water. The Bridgewater Canal forms its southeastern and southwestern boundaries, and the Manchester Ship Canal its northeastern and northwestern boundaries. The park, occupying an area of , was the first planned industrial estate in the world, and is still the largest in Europe. It was an important supplier of materiel during the First and Second World Wars, and produced the Rolls-Royce Merlin engines used to power both the Spitfire and the Lancaster. At its peak, in 1945, an estimated 75,000 workers were employed in the park.
In the 1960s employment in the park began to decline, as companies closed in favour of newer, more efficient plants elsewhere. By 1967 employment had fallen to 50,000, and the decline continued during the 1970s. New container ships were too large for the Manchester Ship Canal, leading to a further decline in Trafford Park's fortunes. By 1976, the workforce had fallen to 15,000, and by the 1980s industry had virtually disappeared from the park.
The Trafford Park Urban Development Corporation, formed in 1987, reversed the estate's decline. In the eleven years of its existence the park attracted 1,000 companies, generating 28,299 new jobs and £1.759 billion of private sector investment. As at 2008, there are 1,400 companies within Trafford Park, employing an estimated 35,000 people.
History
Pre-industrial
Until the industrial development of the park began, in the late 19th century, much of the area now known as Trafford Park was a "beautifully timbered deer park". It was formerly the ancestral estate of the family that has lent its name to the area, the de Trafford family, one of the most ancient families in England. Sometime between 1672 and 1720, the de Traffords moved from the home that they had occupied since 1017, in what is now known as Old Trafford, to what was then called Whittleswick Hall, which they renamed Trafford Hall. Their new home was a little to the east of where Tenax Circle is now, at the northwestern end of Trafford Park Road.
Trafford Park contained the hall, its grounds, and three farms: Park Farm, Moss Farm, and Waters Meeting Farm. There were three entrance lodges to the park, at Throstle Nest, Old Trafford, and Barton-upon-Irwell. The Old Trafford entrance lodge is the only one to have survived, having been relocated from its original position opposite what is today the White City retail park to become the entrance to Gorse Hill Park.
In 1761, a section of the Bridgewater Canal was built along the southeast and southwest sides of Trafford Park. The canal, along with the River Irwell, marked the estate's northern boundary, giving the park its present-day "island-like" quality. In about 1860, an ornamental lake was added to the park. The lake became filled with foundry waste and builders' rubble during the mid-20th century, but what remains of it is now the centrepiece of the Trafford Ecology Park.
In 1882, a meeting held at the Didsbury home of engineer Daniel Adamson began the estate's transformation, with the creation of the Manchester Ship Canal committee. Sir Humphrey de Trafford was an implacable opponent of the proposed canal. He objected, amongst other things, that it would bring polluted water close to his residence, interfere with his drainage, and render Trafford Hall uninhabitable, forcing him to "give up his home and leave the place". In spite of Sir Humphrey's opposition, the Ship Canal Bill became law on 6 August 1885, after two previous Bills had failed to get through Parliament. However, the construction of the canal did not begin until 1888, more than two years after Sir Humphrey had died.
The opening of the Manchester Ship Canal in 1894 made Trafford Park a prime site for industrial development. During the following century, the park was built over with factories and some housing for workers. The deer were initially allowed to continue roaming free in the park, but as its industrialisation gathered pace they were considered inappropriate and were killed, the last of them in 1900. Trafford Hall survived until the 1940s, when it was demolished.
Early development
On 7 May 1896, Sir Humphrey Francis de Trafford put the estate up for auction, but it failed to reach its reported reserve price of £300,000 (£ as of ). There was much public debate, before and after the abortive sale, as to whether Manchester Corporation ought to buy Trafford Park, but the corporation could not agree terms quickly enough, and so on 23 June 1896 Ernest Terah Hooley became the new owner of Trafford Park, for the sum of £360,000 (£ as of ).
On 17 August 1896, Hooley formed Trafford Park Estates Ltd, transferring his ownership of the park to the new company – of which he was the chairman and a significant shareholder – at a substantial profit. The initial plans for the estate included a racetrack, exclusive housing and a cycle works, along with the development of the Ship Canal frontage for "all types of trade including timber". By that time the ship canal had been open for two years, but the predicted traffic had yet to materialise. Hooley met with Marshall Stevens, the general manager of the Ship Canal Company, and both men recognised the benefit that the industrial development of Trafford Park could offer to the ship canal, and the ship canal to the estate. In January 1897, Stevens became the managing director of Trafford Park Estates.
The company initially chose not to construct buildings for letting, but instead to lease land for development by the leaseholders. However, by the end of June 1897 less than 1% of the park had been leased, and so the park's existing assets were put to use until more tenants could be found. Trafford Hall was opened as a hotel in 1899, to serve prospective industrialists considering a move to the park, along with their key employees. It had 40 bedrooms, available to "Gentlemen only". The hall's stables and some other outbuildings were used for stock auctions and the sale of horses, from 1900–1902, and the ornamental lake was leased to William Crooke and Sons, for use as a boating lake, initially on a five-year lease. The lake continued to be used for leisure activities until the 1930s, and what remains of it is now the Trafford Ecology Park. A polo ground was set up in the park in 1902, and of land near the hall were leased to the Manchester Golf Club, who laid out a three-mile (4.8 km) long course. The club moved from Trafford Park to a new site at Hopwood Park in 1912. All of the open-field land uses were subsequently pushed out by industry.
In 1908 the Estates Company decided to reverse its earlier policy of only leasing the land, and to build what were known as "Hives", wide subdivisions of a longer single building that could be internally reconfigured for each tenant's needs. A series of 19 were built initially, available to rent at £80 per annum (£ as of ). Brooke Bond was one of the companies that took advantage of the Hives, before moving to its purpose-built factory on the park in 1922. The Estates Company also built large reinforced concrete warehouses, known as "Safes". These buildings were fitted with sprinkler systems and were considered fireproof, which reduced insurance costs to 25% of those of comparable warehouses elsewhere in the area. Each Safe had a capacity of , sufficient to hold 50,000 bales of cotton.
Industrialisation
Among the first industries to arrive was the Manchester Patent Fuel Company, in 1898. The Trafford Brick Company arrived soon after, followed by J.W Southern & Co. (timber merchants), James Gresham (engineers), and W.T. Glovers & Co. (electric cable manufacturers). Glovers also built a power station in the park, on the banks of the Bridgewater Canal. Most of these early developments were built on the eastern side of the park, while the rest of it remained largely undeveloped.
The first American company to arrive was Westinghouse, which formed its British subsidiary – British Westinghouse Electric Company – in 1899, and purchased on two sites. Building work started in 1900, and the factory began production of turbines and electric generators in 1902. By the following year, British Westinghouse was employing approximately half of the 12,000 workers in Trafford Park. Its main machine shop was long and wide; for almost 100 years Westinghouse's Trafford Park works was the most important engineering facility in Britain. In 1919, Westinghouse was sold to the Vickers Company and renamed Metropolitan-Vickers.
In 1903, the Cooperative Wholesale Society (CWS), bought land at Trafford Wharf and set up a large food packing factory and a flour mill. Other companies to arrive at that time included Kilverts (making lard), the Liverpool Warehousing Company, and Lancashire Dynamo & Crypto Ltd.
The second major American company to set up a manufacturing base in Trafford Park was the Ford Motor Company, in 1911. Initially Ford used its factory as an assembly plant for the Model T, but other vehicles were assembled there in later years. By 1915, 100 American companies had moved into the park, peaking at over 200 by 1933. When the cotton industry began to decline in the early 20th century, Trafford Park and the Manchester Ship Canal helped Manchester – and to a lesser extent the rest of south Lancashire – to weather the economic depression from which the rest of Lancashire suffered. During the First World War, the park was used for the manufacture of munitions, chemicals and other war materiel. Most firms at Trafford Park survived the Great Depression without going bankrupt, unlike the rest of Lancashire. Ford moved to Dagenham in 1931, returning temporarily to Trafford during the Second World War.
Second World War
During the Second World War, Trafford Park was largely turned over to the production of war materiel, including the Avro Manchester and Avro Lancaster heavy bombers, and the Rolls-Royce Merlin engines used to power the Spitfire, Hurricane, Mosquito and the Lancaster. The engines were made by Ford, under licence. The 17,316 workers employed in the factory produced 34,000 engines. F. Hills & Sons had a wood-working factory next to Carborundum. Between 1940 and 1945, the firm built over 800 Percival Proctor aircraft for the RAF, these being flight tested at the nearby Barton Aerodrome. As an important industrial area, the park suffered from extensive bombing, particularly during the Manchester Blitz of December 1940. On the night of 23 December 1940, the Metropolitan-Vickers aircraft factory in Mosley Road was badly damaged, with the loss of 13 Avro Manchester bombers in final assembly. Trafford Hall was also severely damaged, and was demolished shortly after the war ended. At the outbreak of war in 1939, there were an estimated 50,000 workers employed in the park. By the end of the war in 1945, that number had risen to 75,000, which was probably the peak size of the park's workforce with Metropolitan-Vickers alone employing 26,000 workers.
Decline and regeneration
In the 1960s, employment in the park began to decline, as companies closed their premises in favour of newer, more efficient plants elsewhere. Ellesmere Port and Runcorn at the western end of the Manchester Ship Canal were in the ascendency industrially and they overtook Trafford Park in economic importance. In 1967, employment had fallen to 50,000 and there was a further decline in the 1970s. In 1971, Stretford Council responded by setting up the Trafford Park Industrial Council (TRAFIC), membership of which was open to any firm in Trafford Park. One of TRAFIC's early initiatives was to encourage businesses in the park to address the general air of decay, by improving their own areas through landscaping and other environmental improvements. Use of the Manchester Ship Canal decreased in the 1970s as the new generation of container ships was too large for the canal, and this led to a further decline for Trafford Park. By 1976, the workforce at the park had fallen to 15,000, and by the 1980s industry had virtually disappeared.
On 12 August 1981, of Trafford Park – along with Salford Quays – were declared an Enterprise Zone by the government, in an attempt to encourage new development within the estate. The new status did little to reverse the park's fortunes however, and during a 1984 House of Commons debate, Member of Parliament for Stretford, Tony Lloyd, described the area's decline as "spectacular and disastrous" . The target had been to create 7,000 new jobs over 10 years, but by 1986 only 2,557 had been created, not even enough to compensate for the ongoing job losses caused by firms within the park closing. On 10 February 1987 the Trafford Park Urban Development Corporation was formed, to assume responsibility for a Urban Development Area which included not only Trafford Park but also parts of Stretford, Salford Quays, and the former steelworks at Irlam, now known as Northbank.
Between 1987 and 1998, the Development Corporation attracted 1,000 companies, generating 28,299 new jobs and £1.759 billion of private sector investment. The setting up of the corporation was intended to be only a temporary measure, terminating on 31 March 1997, but it was extended for a further year until March 1998 when responsibility for Trafford Park's development was passed on to Trafford Council. The park is once again a major centre of employment in Trafford, and its regeneration has led to a high start-up rate for businesses and low rates of unemployment in the area. As of 2008, there were 1,400 companies within the park, employing an estimated 35,000 people.
Governance
Civic history
The eastern area of the park, where the first developments took place, was under the local government control of Stretford Urban District; the west was controlled by the urban district of Barton-upon-Irwell. It was not long before tensions began to emerge between the Estates Company and Stretford Council over the provision of local services and infrastructure. In 1902, W. T. Glover & Co, a cable manufacturing company that had moved to the park from nearby Salford, built a power station next to their works to supply electricity to the rest of the park; the Estates Company had previously approached Manchester Corporation, but Stretford would not allow another local authority to supply electricity within its area.
In 1901, Manchester Corporation formally proposed a merger with Stretford UDC, on the basis that Stretford's growth was due in large part to Trafford Park, the growth of which in turn was largely due to the Manchester Ship Canal. Manchester Corporation had provided one-third of the capital needed to build the ship canal, for which it had doubled its municipal debt, despite having also increased rates by 26% between 1892–1895. Both Stretford and Lancashire County Council opposed the merger, which was rejected following a government inquiry. In 1969 Pevsner wrote: "That [neighbouring] Stretford and Salford are not administratively one with Manchester is one of the most curious anomalies of England."
The tensions between Stretford and the Estates Company began to come to a head in 1906 when, in response to complaints in the press about the state of one particular road in the park, Trafford Park Road, Stretford issued formal notices demanding that all premises with frontage onto the road pay for its improvement. Further disputes over the standard of roads in the park followed until, in 1907, the Estates Company presented a petition to Lancashire County Council demanding that Trafford Park should be an urban district in its own right, independent of Stretford. The County Council dismissed the petition, but later that year, following a petition organised by the Trafford Park Ratepayers Association, a new local government ward, Park Ward, was created within Stretford, However, the new ward did not include the western part of the park, which remained under the control of Barton-upon-Irwell.
In 1974, as a result of the Local Government Act 1972, the borough of Stretford was abolished and Trafford Park has, since 1 April 1974, formed part of the Metropolitan Borough of Trafford, in Greater Manchester. As of 2008, almost all of the park is in the Trafford ward of Gorse Hill, except for a small area to the west, which is part of Davyhulme East.
Political representation
Since 1997, Trafford Park has been in the constituency of Stretford and Urmston. Beverley Hughes, a member of the Labour Party, has been the Member of Parliament (MP) since the constituency was created. At the 2005 General Election, Hughes won the seat with a majority of 7,851, representing 51.0% of the vote. The Conservatives took 30.4% of the vote, the Liberal Democrats 14.0%, the Respect Party 2.5%, and the United Kingdom Independence Party 2.2%.
Geography
The topography of Trafford Park is either flat or gently undulating and it is around above sea level at its highest point. The local bedrock is Triassic Bunter Sandstone, overlaid by sand and gravel deposited during the last ice age, around 10,000 years ago. There are some areas of peat bog in the west of the park, in the area formerly known as Trafford Moss. In 1793, William Roscoe began work on reclaiming the bog, and by 1798 that work was sufficiently advanced for him to turn his attention to the task of reclaiming the much larger Chat Moss in nearby Salford, also owned by the de Trafford family.
The park occupies an area of , and is almost entirely surrounded by water. The Bridgewater Canal forms its southeastern and southwestern boundaries, and the Manchester Ship Canal forms its northeastern and northwestern boundaries. Trafford Park is the most northerly area of Trafford, and faces Salford across the Manchester Ship Canal. Stretford lies to the south and east, and Urmston to the west.
Trafford Park Village
In 1898, a large plot of land was sold to Edmund Nuttall & Co., for the construction of 1,200 houses. The houses were never built, but the land later became the site of Trafford Park Village, known locally as "The Village". The announced arrival of the Westinghouse factory acted a spur to development, and in 1899, Trafford Park Dwellings Ltd was formed, with the aim of providing housing for the anticipated influx of new workers. Nuttall's land was acquired, and by 1903 over 500 houses had been built, rising to over 700 when the development was completed in 1904. In 1907 it was estimated that the population of the Village was 3,060.
The development was laid out in a grid pattern, with the roads being numbered instead of being named. Avenues numbered 1 to 4 ran north–south, and streets numbered 1 to 12 ran east–west. The Village was almost completely self-contained, with its own churches, public hall, post office, police station, school, social club, and sports facilities. However, the design attracted criticism from the start; the streets were narrow, with few gardens, and the whole development was close to the pollution of the neighbouring industries. In that respect, it resembled the terraced properties in the surrounding areas, many of which were condemned as slums in later years. By the 1970s The Village was also considered by Stretford Council to be a slum area, and unsuitable for residential housing. In the first phase of clearance, in the mid-1970s, 298 houses were demolished. A further 325 houses were demolished in the early 1980s, leaving only the largest 84 houses remaining.
Landmarks
The Imperial War Museum North, opened on 5 July 2002, is in Trafford Wharf, on the southern edge of the ship canal looking over towards Salford Quays. An example of deconstructivist architecture, it was the first building in the United Kingdom to be designed by Daniel Libeskind. The structure consists of three interlocking sections: the air shard, the earth shard, and the water shard, representing a world torn apart by conflict. Entrance to the museum is via the air shard, which is in height, and is open to the elements. It has a viewing platform about high, offering views across Salford and the Quays towards Manchester city centre. The museum houses two extensive exhibition spaces. The largest is dedicated to the permanent exhibition covering conflicts from 1900 to the present day, and the other space is used for special exhibitions.
Trafford Ecology Park
The Trafford Ecology Park is what remains of Trafford Park's ornamental boating lake. Boating continued on the lake until the 1930s, but by then its water had become polluted by asbestos and oil seepage from the neighbouring Anglo American Oil depot. During the Second World War the site was used as a tip for foundry waste. In 1974, Esso bought the land and levelled and partly seeded it, to improve the frontage to its own site. Trafford council bought the land from Esso in 1983, for £50,000. Government spending restrictions delayed the park's restoration and conversion, so it was not fully opened to the public until 1990.
The present lake is about one-third of its original size and, although relatively small, the park supports a wide variety of wildlife, including foxes, weasels, rabbits, hedgehogs, lapwings, kestrels, herons, coot, Canada Geese, and several varieties of newt. In 2007, the park was designated a Local Nature Reserve, one of only two in Trafford.
Transport
At the end of the 19th century, there were no public transport routes in, or running close to, Trafford Park. Its size meant that the Estates Company was obliged to provide some means of travelling around the park, and so a gas-powered tramway was commissioned, with the intention that the track could be used for carrying both people and freight. The first tram ran on 23 July 1897, but after a few days of operation there was an accident in which a tramcar was derailed, and the service was suspended until the following year. A separate electric tramway was installed in 1903, but the gas trams continued to run until 1908, when they were replaced by steam locomotives. Additional railway lines were soon built in the park, and linked to the Manchester Ship Canal Company's railway system. The Trafford Park Company was set up in 1904, as a result of the Trafford Park Act of that year, with responsibility for all of the park's roads and railways. The railway network could subsequently be extended as required, without the need to seek additional permissions from Parliament. The network was also connected to the Manchester, South Junction and Altrincham Railway near Cornbrook. At its peak, the estate's railway network covered 26 route miles (42 km), handling about 2.5 million tons (2.54 million t) of cargo in 1940. Like the rest of the park though, it fell into decline during the 1960s, exacerbated by the increasing use of road transport, and it was closed in 1998. The Trafford Park Euroterminal rail freight terminal, which has the capacity to deal with 100,000 containers a year, was opened in 1993, at a cost of £11 million .
Trafford Park Aerodrome was Manchester's first purpose-built airfield, laid out on a site between Trafford Park Road, Mosley Road, and Ashburton Road. The first aircraft landed there on 7 July 1911, flown from Liverpool by Henry G. Melly. The aerodrome was in use until the early years of the First World War, and possibly until 1918, when it was replaced by the newly completed Alexandra Park Aerodrome. Today, Tenax Road runs north–south through the centre of the site.
See also
Bibliography
External links
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