Park memorial plan to honour Somme heroes
A MEMORIAL to honour those who lost their lives at the Battle of the Somme is being planned for Heaton Park.
The park was a training ground for Army recruits, the RAF and the Manchester Regiment during the First World War and went on to be used as a military hospital.
Planning documents show the memorial as a curved wall in high-finished concrete designed to represent a Western Front trench stacked with sandbags.
The inscription ‘Somme 1916’ will be cast onto the wall, which is expected to stand around two metres high, with radius of seven metres.
A project team is currently working up exact design proposals.
Manchester council said the memorial was expected to be in place by November to mark Remembrance Sunday.
Heaton Park featured heavily in official commemorations in 2016 to mark the centenary of the battle, hosting a memorial parade and concert attended by tens of thousands of people.
The Battle of the Somme began on July 1, 1916, along a 15-mile front near the river Somme in northern France.
Almost 20,000 British soldiers died on the opening day alone – the bloodiest day of combat in British military history.
By the end of the 141-day offensive, there were more than a million casualties on both sides.
No artists’ impression images of the memorial are available and no exact location for it within Heaton Park has been decided.
To mark the centenary the public were asked to honour individual soldiers or military units by creating designs which were pressed onto tiles to form a pathway through Heaton Park.
The council said some of the 5,000 designs created would also be attached to the memorial.
A spokesman said the memorial would acknowledge both the park’s war history and its role one hundred years later as a national focal for the Somme centenary commemorations.
Coun Luthfur Rahman, executive member for schools, culture and leisure, said: “The memorial will be a fitting and permanent tribute to those who died and will ensure their stories and our memories aren’t forgotten.”