Stoke-on-Trent Garden Festival
The Stoke-on-Trent National Garden Festival was the second of Britain's
Reclaiming the site
One of the leading political forces behind the festival idea was Councillor Cyril Finney who also pushed through the vital dual carriageway linking the A500 road with the festival site.
The site reclamation cost £5 million, and the festival itself cost £18 million. The reclaimers of the festival site had to contend with highly contaminated and mine shafted land, and there is still debate among environmental professionals[who?] about how such a high-quality clean-up was accomplished in such a short time.[citation needed]
A community employment scheme ran alongside the work. Around 300,000 trees were planted by small teams, some groups comprising ex-steelworkers. Not knowing how trees should be planted, they were planted in, what seemed at the time, disarray. It later transpired that this method of planting resulted in a planted woodland that very closely matched natural-growth woodland, with trees of different types and ages growing alongside each other.
Railway on site
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A lengthy 2 ft (610 mm) gauge railway was built around the grounds with five stations. All the equipment was supplied by the firm of
Upon closure the entire railway was sold to the Bygones Village museum in Fleggburgh, Norfolk. Two of the locos, some of the track and most of the carriages were resold to a safari park in Spain. The remaining two locos plus four carriages were retained for use at Fleggburgh. The locos received new steam-outline bodywork and the carriages were rebuilt with full doors and windows.
Commemorative memorabilia
A set of commemorative stamps were issued nationally by the Post Office.
An extremely rare
Festival Park: the site today
The main retail site was completed in 1995, and is now known as Festival Park. It has been, for the most part, sympathetically treated by St. Modwen Properties which took on its management and development. Much of the parkland, pools and trails have been retained as public open space, and are maturing very well. Some of the gardens, such as the Moorlands Heather Rock Garden and The Rocky Valley, survive with their planting scheme relatively intact. Although most wooden structures have been left to return to nature, Festival Park is actively maintained by groundsmen. Some sculptures and a large Welsh slate water feature remain, as does the full-size stone circle.
The huge wooden suspension bridge across a wooded ravine remains and can still be used. The complex network of paths is maze-like and, since there is no signage, very easy to get lost in. As of December 2017[update] the suspension bridge is closed off for repairs. It is currently being used by local wildlife photographers to capture photos of the Jay – a brightly coloured member of the crow family. The birds can be seen most days in winter.
There is now a large retail park on the eastern side of the site – on what was the festival's car-park and public market area – that now merges into the lower reaches of the city centre. There is also a large
Groundwork UK created a £1 million cycle-path along the bordering Trent and Mersey Canal in 1998, which is now part of the National Cycle Network.
At the northern tip of the site the large complex of festival greenhouses was retained after the festival closed. For decades these operated as the city council's plant nursery. They have since been closed and the site is earmarked for a small geothermal power station – the feasibility of which is being tested via seismic tests and other investigations.
After the festival The Sentinel newspaper offices were also built on the far west of the site, and their large printing plant then served most newspapers in northern England. However, Sentinel Newspapers moved out of the site in 2012 and the site passed to online betting firm Bet365, which has built a major new purpose-built HQ there.[1]
In April 2011 the far western part of the site – including the former steel rolling mill that closed in 2000 – was proposed as an
As of May 2017 the West Midlands Ambulance Service has an ambulance hub based at Forge Lane. The hub provides emergency ambulance cover for all of North Staffordshire. The site was selected for its close proximity to the city centre and close road links to the A500.
References
- ^ "bet365 to create 600 jobs in multi-million pound expansion at The Sentinel's former offices in Etruria". 6 December 2013. Retrieved 15 December 2015.
Further reading
- Morley, Joan. Etruria: Jaspers, Joists and Jillivers – the history of the 1986 Garden Festival site.