Stoke-on-Trent Garden Festival
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The Stoke-on-Trent National Garden Festival was the second of Britain's National Garden Festivals. It was held in the city from May 1 to October 26, 1986, and involved the reclamation of one half of the site of the Shelton Bar steelworks (1830-1978), about two miles north-west of the city centre, between Hanley and Burslem. The other half of the area remained a working site for British Steel's Shelton Bar steel rolling mill.
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[edit] Reclaiming the site
The reclamation cost £5 million, and the Festival 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 about how such a high-quality clean-up was accomplished in such a short time.
A community employment scheme ran alongside the work. Around 300,000 trees were planted, and it is said these were mostly planted by a small team of old men, ex-steelworkers. Not knowing how trees should be planted, the men planted them in what seemed at the time like disarray. It later transpired that this ad hoc 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.
[edit] The Festival
There were 87 themed gardens and numerous events. Sculpture was a major theme, reflecting the ceramics heritage of the Potteries, and there was a sculpture trail, with many works that included site-specific sculpture by Antony Gormley and Dhruva Mistry, and a major photography trail. A three-mile train track and a cable car system took visitors around the immense 200-acre site. There was a major Scouts campsite on the site. The site was opened by the Queen, and there was a major Royal Tournament on the showground.
The Festival was blighted by very poor weather. The weather caused poor attendance figures, of just over 2-million, compared to the first Festival. However, Stoke's Festival is widely credited with being the only long-term success-story of the five Garden Festivals. It started the tourism to Stoke-on-Trent's potteries and canals that continues today, allowing Stoke to surpass Stratford-upon-Avon in annual tourist numbers. And peer-reviewed research showed it brought £10-million to the city for every £1-million of public money spent on the Festival. The post-Festival development of the site and its periphery achieved its aims, and the site is now sustainable both economically and ecologically.
Grange Park, merging into the Festival site on its northern side, was a large mining area that was also reclaimed. It stretched to Middleport and Burslem and is now public open parkland, although not of such high quality as the main Festival site.
[edit] Commemorative memorabilia
A set of commemorative stamps were issued nationally by the Post Office.
An incredibly rare Dungeons and Dragons module, Up the Garden Path, was based on the Festival site; only about thirty copies are known to have survived. RPG adventurers travelled to the Garden on a salamander-driven steam train run by gnomes.
[edit] Festival Park: the site today
The main site was completed in 1995, and is now known as Festival Park. It was, for the most part, sympathetically treated by St. Modwen Properties who had taken 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 sculpture and a large Welsh slate water feature still remains, 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, there is no signage, and it is very easy to get lost.
There is now a large 'out-of-town' retail park on one 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. Elsewhere, numerous low-rise offices nestle in the parkland and around the pools of Festival Park. There is a large marina for narrowboats. Along the main road on the western edge of the site there is now a large pleasure baths, a ski-slope, a ten-screen cinema, a ten-pin bowling alley, and a toboggan run. Festival Park's large four-star hotel incorporates Etruria Hall, former home of Josiah Wedgwood.
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 has been retained and these now operate as the City Council's plant nursery for the entire city.
[edit] Festival Waters
From 2007/8 St. Modwen Properties will develop the adjacent Shelton Bar Steel Rolling Mill site, the derelict mill having been demolished in 2004/5, in a £120-million scheme called 'Festival Waters'. This will expand the original Festival site to over 300 acres.
[edit] External links
[edit] Further reading
- Morley, Joan. Etruria: Jaspers, Joists and Jillivers - the history of the 1986 Garden Festival site.
