The forgotten story of the husband and wife who helped build Wythenshawe and gave their name to Simonsway

In 1926 Sir Ernest Simon and his wife Shena bought Wythenshawe Hall and 250 acres of the surrounding estate and gave it to the people of Manchester 'to be kept forever as an open space'. At the time the wealthy social reformers were one of the driving forces behind ambitious plans to build what would become Europe's largest council estate on nearby countryside.

Their remarkable gift - which cost £1.7m in today's money - would become Wythenshawe Park. It would be the icing on the cake of the soon-to-be built Wythenshawe estate, providing much-needed open space for the thousands of tenants who would move there from the cramped slums of inner-city Manchester.

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Despite the Simons' pivotal role in the development of Wythenshawe and council housing in Manchester, today the couple have been largely forgotten. But now a new exhibition, curated by Manchester University academics Martin Dodge and John Aysford, aims to redress the balance

Born in Didsbury in 1879, Ernest made his fortune from the engineering firms established by his German émigré father Henry. The companies, which revolutionised the manufacture of flour milling machinery and coke ovens, were so successful that, by the 1920s, it's thought Ernest was a multi-millionaire.

Incredibly driven but chronically shy, the industrialist was introduced to Shena, a Cambridge graduate, by friends and fellow reformers Sydney and Beatrice Webb, who thought they would make the perfect match. The Webbs were right. With a shared passion for radical and liberal politics, Ernest and Shena hit it off, married in 1912 and moved into a grand house in Didsbury, where they would go on to raise two