Proud park has been a centre of free speech
ALEXANDRA Park has a proud history of being the place for meeting, talking and protesting in Manchester. Its long tradition of free speech ranges all the way from the suffragettes to Rock Against Racism, from Oswald Mosley to last year’s Black Lives Matter event.
It even has its own Speakers’ Corner at the Alexandra Road South and Claremont Road entrance to the park.
The suffragettes used Alexandra Park for many marches and rallies.
After all, it was home ground for leading suffragette Emmeline Pankhurst, who was born and raised in Moss Side.
The protests were not always peaceful.
In 1913, the same year Emily Davison died after falling under the hooves of the King’s horse at the Derby, the cactus house of Alexandra Park was damaged by a bomb. Fortunately no-one was hurt. Local residents thought the 4.20am blast was a gas explosion.
Conscientious objectors gathered at the park gates at times of war – and the same location was used by Oswald Mosley when he campaigned in 1960.
Political activist and actress Vanessa Redgrave campaigned in the park, too, when she stood for Parliament in the Moss Side by-election of 1978. She polled 394 votes to finish last. Redgrave was a founder of the Workers Revolutionary Party in the 1970s.
The actress has another link to the area.
In our picture she plays Emmeline Pankhurst’s daughter Sylvia in the film Oh! What a Lovely War in 1968.
We’ve also included a rare archive photograph of the real Sylvia Pankhurst dating from July, 1913.
A major event for Alexandra Park was the Rock Against Racism rally and concert which followed the march through Manchester on Saturday, July 5, 1978.
A crowd of around 35,000 started arriving in the park from 2.30pm to watch acts including Bolton band the Buzzcocks, Exodus, China Street and Steel Pulse.
The festival was inspired by the London event in Victoria Park at the end of April, 1978.
There was some debate locally about where to hold the concert.
Alexandra Park - bordered by Whalley Range and Moss Side - won out because it had such a ‘wonderful natural arena of mature trees that framed the crowd so well.’
Moss Side and Alexandra Park also play host to the annual Caribbean Carnival of Manchester. Our pictures are from May 1973. It’s now one of the highlights of Manchester’s festival calendar.
The park today is a shining example of restoration.
A £5.5m transformation in 2013 to 2014 returned it to its rightful place as a focal point of the community.
It was funded by the Heritage Lottery Fund, Manchester City Council, the Lawn Tennis Association, English Cricket Board and Sport England.
Alexandra Park is one of Manchester’s earliest and most intact Victorian parks.
The 60-acre site was bought by Manchester Corporation and laid out between 1868 and 1870 - before the area became part of the city.
The park was designed by Alexander Gordon Hennell, of Chancery Lane, London.
Opened in 1870, it was created to ‘cope with the promenading of large numbers of persons’ and to ‘deter the working men of Manchester from the alehouses during their day off!’
The design was ahead of its time because it included sports facilities.
It created broad sweeping and curved footpaths, perfect for the Victorian fashion of promenading. There were also oval activity areas. This was all a massive contrast to the rigid geometry seen in previous Victorian landscapes.
Originally, no sport was allowed in the park on Sundays – a ban that lasted until 1941.
And only religious or classical music could be played from the bandstand on Sundays.
The bandstand was originally behind the pavilion.
Rules were strongly enforced by the formidable Victorian parkkeepers or parkies - they all carried truncheons!
The truncheons were eventually replaced by whistles, which were in use up to the 1950s.
Young lads played tricks on the parkies by using their own whistles to fool them!
An important part of the park’s history is the former aerodrome, now commemorated by a plaque in the sports pavilion at Hough End Playing Fields.
It was opened by the War Department in May, 1918, following the closure of the Trafford Park Aerodrome.
On May 1, 1919, the first day of civil flying after the First World War, an aeroplane carrying ten passengers in its windowless fuselage took 3 hours 40 minutes to fly from London against strong headwinds.
The Avro Transport Company operated the UK’s first scheduled domestic air service from Alexandra Park via Birkdale Sands (Southport) to South Shore (Blackpool) between May 24 and September 30, 1919.
Aircraft left Alexandra Park at 2pm and arrived in Blackpool 45 minutes later, after stopping over at Southport.
Tickets cost nine guineas return or five guineas one-way, equivalent to about £324 and £180 today.
The aerodrome closed to air traffic on August 24, 1924.
Finally in our picture line-up, an Alexandra Park connection that was only realised years after it was made!
It was between Julie Walters, who in her student days lived in a bedsit on Demesne Road, and the muchmissed Victoria Wood.
Julie takes up the story: ‘We met in 1978 in a revue at the Bush Theatre.
“We we’re having lunch when Vic said: We’ve met before – at Manchester Poly.
“She told me that in 1971 I was a first-year student there and she’d come for an audition – then it all came back in a rush.
“I remember this little girl being sick and terribly nervous.
“I was showing off in my leotard, regaling them all with awful stories I expect!
“And it was Victoria Wood!”