Manchester’s latest city centre park – has formally opened to the public (Friday 24 July) welcoming the local community to the first major green space completed as part of the Victoria North regeneration programme.
Transforming the underused and largely unknown wooded area, the park is at the heart of the emerging Red Bank neighbourhood where new residents have already moved in and there are proposals for over 5,000 more homes as well as supporting community and commercial uses.
The St Catherine’s Wood has been completed as one of the first phases of development in the neighbourhood underpinning the importance of quality green spaces throughout the Victoria North area, becoming a natural anchor for the future developments that will surround it in the coming years. This is a similar approach to other new urban green spaces at Mayfield, Ancoats Green and future park investment at Water Street in Castlefield.
The park is also the first phase of 113acres of interconnected green spaces that will thread through the entire Victoria North regeneration programme – and future phases will include play equipment for young people as local homes are delivered.
Located alongside the River Irk, the park features fully accessible
The park promotes the ‘Wild Urbanism’ approach – a concept that will run throughout the Red Bank neighbourhood – that celebrates a more natural approach to green spaces, supporting biodiversity and expanding habitats for wildlife whilst blending the benefit of sustainable, urban living. This includes significant new trees, featuring three endangered Manchester
The restored woodland has been designed to create a healthy, resilient and biodiverse environment across a layered structure that creates diverse habitats for birds, insects and mammal. These layers create diverse habitats for birds, insects and mammals.
The park is a celebration of the history of the area, including retaining the original bridge access point over the River Irk on Collyhurst Road and completed with a Corten (weathered steel) gate with stencilled leaf design, harking back to the industrial past of the Red Bank area.
Information boards delve into plants across the site and the history of the neighbourhood, including the ‘Impossible Bridge’ made famous by L.S. Lowry, and the original church that closed in 1966 before being demolished, which gave its name to the wood.
Salvaged stone from the Our Town Hall project have also been saved and stored at the park to be used in future phases of the City River Park project.
BAM Nuttall was the main works contractor for the new park, on site since September 2022. And Planit acted as landscape architects for the project.
St Catherine’s Wood was made possible by using part of a £51.6m Housing Infrastructure Fund (HIF) grant from Homes England that will help unlock the wider development area required to open up the park and new homes, along with £6.93m GMCA brownfield funding to deliver the first phase of the City River Park programme.
Access to the park is via Dantzic Street / Collyhurst Road at the junction of Dalton Street.
St Catherines Wood will be managed by Found, FEC’s in-house management company, on behalf of the Victoria North Joint Venture partnership.
