Manchester-based MC Construction has completed construction of an urban ‘sky park’ on a disused railway viaduct in Manchester.
The sky park, which opens to the public on 30 July, sits on a 300m-long steel structure. Contractors have transformed the viaduct into an elevated park with trees, plants and flowers for the National Trust.
The park’s 3,000-plus plants and its design features take their inspiration from Manchester’s heritage. Plants include the county flower, cotton grass and fern species once collected by Manchester suffragist and botanist Lydia Becker.
The design of the planters gives a nod to the industrial architecture of the Grade II-listed viaduct. Heenan & Froude, the engineers who worked on Blackpool Tower, built the structure in 1892.
The National Trust has left a section of the viaduct untouched. The aim is to provide a sense of how nature has reclaimed the space it closed in the late 1960s.
Funding from Postcode Earth Trust, as well as public donations, covered two-thirds of the £1.8m build costs.
‘No easy task’
The sky park will be open for 12 months. The National Trust hopes to capture visitor and community opinions to help shape the longer-term future of the viaduct.
Russ Forshaw, group operations director at MC Construction, said: “Regenerating the disused Grade II-listed viaduct that has stood above the historic area of Castlefield for over 125 years has been no easy task. I am thrilled with the end result and I am incredibly proud of the team who have worked tirelessly over the past couple of months to bring National Trust’s vision to life.”
Hilary McGrady, director-general of the National Trust, said: “Today is incredibly exciting. The idea of transforming the viaduct has been around for a while, but it was always put in the ‘too hard to achieve’ box and set aside.”
