Ardwick Green
Encyclopedia
Ardwick Green is a public space in Ardwick
Ardwick
Ardwick is a district of the City of Manchester, in North West England, about one mile east of Manchester City Centre.By the mid-19th century Ardwick had grown from being a village into a pleasant and wealthy suburb of Manchester, but by the end of that century it had become heavily industrialised...

, Manchester
Manchester
Manchester is a city and metropolitan borough in Greater Manchester, England. According to the Office for National Statistics, the 2010 mid-year population estimate for Manchester was 498,800. Manchester lies within one of the UK's largest metropolitan areas, the metropolitan county of Greater...

, England
England
England is a country that is part of the United Kingdom. It shares land borders with Scotland to the north and Wales to the west; the Irish Sea is to the north west, the Celtic Sea to the south west, with the North Sea to the east and the English Channel to the south separating it from continental...

. It began as a private park for the residents of houses surrounding it. Manchester acquired it in 1867 and turned it into a public park with an ornamental pond and a bandstand.

It contains a cenotaph
Cenotaph
A cenotaph is an "empty tomb" or a monument erected in honour of a person or group of people whose remains are elsewhere. It can also be the initial tomb for a person who has since been interred elsewhere. The word derives from the Greek κενοτάφιον = kenotaphion...

 commemorating the dead of the "Eighth Ardwicks", a former unit of the Territorial Army belonging to the Manchester Regiment. The old drill hall is situated at one end of the park, and is still in use by the volunteer soldiers today.

The other end of the park contains a large boulder, a glacial erratic
Glacial erratic
A glacial erratic is a piece of rock that differs from the size and type of rock native to the area in which it rests. "Erratics" take their name from the Latin word errare, and are carried by glacial ice, often over distances of hundreds of kilometres...

.

The Church of St Thomas, on the north side of Ardwick Green, was consecrated as a chapel of ease
Chapel of ease
A chapel of ease is a 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....

 in 1741. It was rebuilt and extended in the course of the late eighteenth century, and acquired a fine campanile
Campanile
Campanile is an Italian word meaning "bell tower" . The term applies to bell towers which are either part of a larger building or free-standing, although in American English, the latter meaning has become prevalent.The most famous campanile is probably the Leaning Tower of Pisa...

 tower in the 1830s. Many of the grand buildings have been demolished – the Ardwick Empire Music Hall (later called Manchester Hippodrome) was at the eastern end.

The business premises of Thomas Brown
Thomas Brown (engineer)
Thomas Brown was an English surveyor, civil engineer, businessman and landowner.Born at Disley in Cheshire, he had interests in coal-mining, particularly in the Haughton and Hyde areas of Greater Manchester, as well as lime burning and mineral extraction interests...

, surveyor and Resident Engineer for the construction of the Peak Forest Canal
Peak Forest Canal
The Peak Forest Canal, is a narrow locked artificial waterway in northern England. It is long and forms part of the connected English/Welsh inland waterway network.-General description:...

, 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. In recent times, Ardwick Green has suffered, like most inner city areas, with some crime. The larger Ardwick Green area, a mix of both businesses and council, housing association and private residences, is a comparatively reasonable place to live.

All the houses in Allerton Place were subsequently demolished and by 1915 a tyre works had been built on the site.
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