A good day to be a Mancunian duck - Castlefield's sky park is expanding

Dear readers – last Thursday, The Mill broke convention, bringing you not one but two stories: exclusive details of a contract giving Sheikh Mansour first dibs on the purchase of land in Manchester, and an interview with Mark Garner about the demise of his website, Confidentials.

Well if that was a treat then you're going to love what we've gone and done for our next trick. Today's Mill features three stories, and hopefully something for everyone. For the property fanatics among you, we've been unravelling the mystery of Circle Court, a 16-storey tower block in Trafford which has new owners (who just so happen to be old friends of The Mill). Meanwhile, we've got Jack's dispatch from the launch of Andy Burnham's new strategy for the city region over the next decade. And for those of you who aren't interested in 120-page policy documents, or 'stock transfer' deals, but would rather read about families of ducks having a great time at the park, then you'll enjoy Mollie's report on the exciting expansion of the Castlefield Viaduct sky park.

Thanks for reading and do let us know if you enjoy these multi-story editions. It was, we thought, about time someone invented a form of news journalism where multiple smaller stories were grouped together in one place. And if you're receiving this email as a non-paying member we hope one (or more) of these stories tempt you into taking out a full subscription: after all, we can only go on re-inventing the wheel as long as you back us.

Your Mill briefing

🏳️‍🌈 Peter Tatchell, a member of the Gay Liberation Front between 1969 and 1974 and a prominent LGBT+ activist, has written to Manchester Pride’s CEO Mark Fletcher urging him to ban GMP officers from this year’s Pride parade. In a letter, Tatchell argued that “allowing GMP to march in uniform at Manchester Pride… sends the wrong message”, citing the force’s historic bad relations with Manchester’s LGBT+ communities.

🚖 The brutalist concrete 1970s car park on Church Street in the Northern Quarter will be demolished and redeveloped into 300 homes, according to a new press release from Manchester City Council. The council says it will sell the 1.54acre site to the property developer Glenbrook, for an unknown amount, subject to planning permission, and says four public squares and green spaces will be included in the scheme.

📚 We enjoyed this review in The Times of Mancunian author Connor Hutchinson’s debut novel about a funeral home worker based in suburban Manchester, which is filled with “poetic snapshots of street life” and evocations of the rituals of “beautifying the dead”. 

Manchester’s park in the sky gets a makeover

By Mollie Simpson

Yesterday morning, we were at Castlefield Viaduct as the National Trust made an exciting announcement about the future of Manchester’s “park in the sky”. The trust has secured most of the necessary funding to extend the gardens there, more than doubling them in size, from 150m to 350m. 

Castlefield Viaduct was built in 1892 and carried goods into the Great Northern Warehouse, but has been disused since its closure in 1969, during which time wildflowers and weeds began to grow there. In July 2022, the space was revitalised as a sky park, inspired by New York’s high line, a garden space also on a disused railway line. Since then, the trust has introduced 3,000 different plant species to the viaduct, plus a small pond that became very popular with local ducks. “Within three years, nature’s taken over again,” says Mike Innerdale, the National Trust’s northern director. “Isn’t that brilliant?”