FOMV

It’s been a great year for the Medlock Valley – our funding from the University of Manchester has made a real difference to the area. Thank you to the Faculty of Humanities for supporting us through the last 12 months.

We’ve now completed two signposted trails around the valley, with plenty of places to stop and rest thanks to the picnic benches installed by volunteers from Soreen (the malt loaf company). It was great to learn that Soreen started as a small company in Beswick 100 years ago. It’s also great to see so many people using the benches and walking around the valley – anyone who has known the area for a long time will have noticed how much more visited it is today. We’ve had 1000s of views on our website, and the sculpture trail is now in the top 100 things to do in Manhcester on Tripadvisor! We’ve also attracted some interest from well known figures such as Martin Zero, who has now made two videos about the Medlock Valley and the work we do there.

We’ve uncovered old streets and installed vintage-style road signs in the middle of the woods, to give an idea of where people used to live and work in what is now mature woodland. With the help of student volunteers, we’ve added many tons of aggregate to the pathways – they now hold up much better in these muddy autumn conditions. We’ve had a huge success with the allotment, with the polytunnels allowing us to grow exquisite heirloom tomatoes for months on end (think San Marzanos and Raspberry Oxhearts). We had so many cucumbers we were struggling to eat them all.

We campaigned for the Environment Agency to clear the unsightly debris screen at Pin Mill Brow – they’ve now done this three times this year, and the river is running far more freely as a result. In the riverbed you can now see the old stanchions that once supported the railway bridge over the Medlock before it was demolished in the 60s. We’ve run numerous bat walks with our new monitors, including one this Halloween, which Dave enriched with ghost stories from the local area. It was great to see the community passing on the knowledge we learned from historians at the University of Manchester.

One of the best things that happened this year was our engagement with other community groups across Manchester. If we can link up with other, like-minded people guarding their green patch in the city, we can transform the whole urban area into a more active, greener, more accessible place for everyone.

All this begs the question of where to aim for next. We want to see the Medlock Valley transformed into an urban farm and a community space for education and research. We want to apply for National Lottery funding to host a student intern from the University, who would help us apply for funding bids in future and look after the valley on a day-to-day basis. Perhaps one day we will be able to provide quality employment opportunities for local residents – a café, a garden centre, a forest school…

We will continue to update this website and our social media with our work and plans for the future. Please stay with us, and thank you to everyone who has got involved to make the Medlock Valley the best green space in Manchester.