Historic splendour turned into a teenage skate park
THE landscaping of St Peter’s Square with fountains and polished granite was a vast improvement to the outlook from his office of the assistant director of development – but now provides an excellent bike and skateboard launchpad for local youth.
Lord Goddard, then merely deputy leader of the council before his elevation to the peerage (from humble ex-councillor), had unveiled the newly re-sited statue of Stockport’s great reformer, Richard Cobden, in 2007, beneath which lies a time capsule containing, among other items, a copy of Stockport Heritage Magazine.
Poor St Peter’s Church looked a little moth-eaten and forlorn in the midst of all this splendour.
At first a popular youth club helped embrace the energies of the youngsters who seemed drawn to this gleaming spot – a side effect unforeseen by the planners.
A youth leader was paid for out of Church of England funds until demand outstripped capacity and the youth club petered out.
Now teenagers vent their idle frustrations on church windows and tombstones in the churchyard.
St Peter’s was built in 1768 among what were the fields and gardens on the edge of town. Its wealthy benefactor, William Wright, lord of Offerton, had a splendid mansion house on High Street and built St Petersgate so that he could ride to church on Sundays without getting wet.
It was a rival to St Mary’s Parish Church on the Mar- ket Place and was built of brick in a Georgian style mirrored in many New England Churches of the period.
For decades ex-rector Ken Kenrick has been trying to raise money to repair the tower, spruce up the church, put the flashing back and re-instate the rare tower clock.
Although an exile from Birkenhead with a name belonging to a gentry family in north Wales, genealogical research reveals that his distant ancestors were married in Stockport.
Owing to a phenomena known as pedigree collapse, most of us are related, if we go back only to the 1900s.
This is because no-one can have as many great, great, grandparents as the equation suggests, because everyone marries cousins once, twice or thrice removed at some point.
The rub is that local teenagers are sadly trashing their own relatives tombs and breaking the windows of a church paid for by their great-grandparents.
More stories about Heritage in Stockport Heritage Magazine on sale at newsagents, bookshops, museums and at stockport heritagemagazine.co.uk.