Manchester welcomes its first new park in a century as Mayfield Park opens its gates

Today was a momentous one for Manchester. This morning, the city centre welcomed its first new park for more than a hundred years. It's been a long time coming, but Mayfield Park — next to Piccadilly Station — has flung open its gates.

In doing so, the park represents the realisation of long-held ambitions of both Manchester City Council and developers U+I. It represents the first swathe of greenery to come to the area — once the site of the birth of the industrial revolution in Manchester.

The area is set to undergo a transformation over the next decade.

READ MORE:Diners and staff 'horrified' after mouse spotted at one of Manchester's most expensive restaurants

The new park also hints at how Manchester might add more green space to town as the wish for more greenery versus the demands of developers becomes one of the defining political battles the city will go through in the next decade.

Before all that, however, there’s something more fundamental about Mayfield Park: It’s sense of fun.

The first thing to note about Mayfield Park, in the shadow of the city’s former Royal Mail depot, and now home to superclub Warehouse Project, is its size. This is by no means a sprawling sea of grass, like Heaton Park is, but it is also very well formed.

There’s ‘festival-grade’ turf which will be used as a space for events where a stage can be set up. Under the quickly-becoming-iconic ‘Depot Mayfield’ sign, which motorists see from the neighbouring Mancunian Way, there’s rows of seating cut into the grass.

Surrounding this is the River Medlock, which has been newly-released from its culvert, and is now home to several trout, according to on-site ecologists. It’s lined with 120,000 plants — 140 of them are trees.

At the culmination of