Whitworth Gardens
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Whitworth Gardens (also known as Sackville Park, and more recently Sackville Gardens) in Manchester, England, is bounded by the City College Manchester City Campus on one side and Whitworth Street, Sackville Street and the Rochdale Canal and Canal Street on the others. The land was purchased by the Manchester corporation in 1900 and laid out with walks, lawns and flower beds.
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[edit] Turing memorial
The park contains the Alan Turing memorial statue. He is sitting on a bench at a central position in the park. The park was chosen for the irony it brought to the statue - on Turing's left is the University of Manchester and on his right is Manchester's gay village. [1]
The statue was unveiled on 23 June, Turing's birthday, in 2001. It was conceived by Richard Humphry, a barrister from Stockport, who set up the Alan Turing Memorial Fund in order to raise the necessary funds. Humphry had come up with the idea of a statue after seeing Hugh Whitmore's play Breaking The Code starring Sir Derek Jacobi. Jacobi became the patron of the Fund. Glyn Hughes, an industrial sculptor from Adlington near Westhoughton, was commissioned to sculpt the statue. The Fund eventually raised around £15,000, which was far short of the £50,000 needed to have the statue cast in Britain; not one major computer company donated a penny to the fund. The statue was cast in China.
Turing is shown holding an apple - a symbol classically used to represent forbidden love, as well as being both the fruit of the tree of knowledge (the object that fell on Isaac Newton) and the means of Turing’s own death. The cast bronze bench carries in relief the text 'Alan Mathison Turing 1912-1954', and the motto 'Founder of Computer Science' as it would appear if encoded by an Enigma machine; 'IEKYF ROMSI ADXUO KVKZC GUBJ'.
A plinth at the statue’s feet says ‘Father of computer science, mathematician, logician, wartime codebreaker, victim of prejudice’. There is also a Bertrand Russell quotation saying ‘Mathematics, rightly viewed, possesses not only truth, but supreme beauty - a beauty cold and austere, like that of sculpture.’ It is said that, buried under the plinth, is an old Amstrad computer[citation needed].
[edit] Beacon of Hope
The park also contains the "Beacon of Hope", which is the UK’s only permanent memorial for people who have or have suffered from HIV/AIDS.
The sculpture is by Warren Chapman and Jess Boyn-Daniel and was erected in 2000. It is a steel column with designs.
On World AIDS Day a candlelight vigil generally takes place at the Beacon. For several years previously, the vigil, the traditional closing event of the Manchester Pride LBGT celebration weekend, had been held at the city's Castlefield Arena, but after the creation of the beacon, and the presence of the Tree of Life, it was decided that the vigil needed to return to the gardens. Following a highly successful event in 2002, organised by the Village Business Association, George House Trust took control of the vigil for Europride in 2003, in collaboration with Manchester City Council and local HIV/AIDS groups such as the Body Positive North West, the Lesbian and Gay Foundation and the Black Health Agency. George House Trust now run the vigil annually at Manchester Pride.
[edit] Gallery
 Turing memorial close-up |
 Turing memorial with the Engineering and Physical Sciences Faculty Office of the University of Manchester in the background |
 Turing memorial looking at Sackville Street |
 Sackville Park looking toward the Engineering and Physical Sciences Faculty Office of the University of Manchester |
 Sackville Park seen from the Whitworth Street entrance |
 Map showing location of Sackville Park |
[edit] External links
- Manchester City Council's Leisure Department's page for the park
- Glyn Hughes' page on the Turing memorial sculpture
- Sci/Tech Computer's inventor snubbed by industry (BBC News story)
