Discovering a good way of making money from other’s misfortunes is not new.
So I was less than surprised when my friend Lawrence came up with this photograph and told me that
“as it is 100 years since start of the Great War I thought you might be doing some stories on it.
Anyway went up to Heaton Park, and to Prestwich Library where there is a small exhibition of WW1 stuff about that park in the war.*
What was surprising was replica trenches were built in 1916. You paid to go and see them. Special Sunday trams laid on, kids essay competition, all funds raised went to war charities.
So popular were the Heaton Park trenches with visitors that more were dug in Platt Fields, on the old Infirmary site in Piccadilly, and at Ashfield in Rusholme.”
Of course the historians of the Great War will mutter that such things were common place, but it is the first I knew about it, and so I must thank Lawrence for not only coming up with the picture but sending it across to me.
I suppose in an age of total war such things made sense. If you are going to keep the population behind the conflict especially when the causality rates were rising all this made perfect sense.
Time I think for a trip up to Prestwich Library, and a bigger story on those pretend trenches of 1916.
Picture; from the collection of Lawrence Beedle
“as it is 100 years since start of the Great War I thought you might be doing some stories on it.
Anyway went up to Heaton Park, and to Prestwich Library where there is a small exhibition of WW1 stuff about that park in the war.*
What was surprising was replica trenches were built in 1916. You paid to go and see them. Special Sunday trams laid on, kids essay competition, all funds raised went to war charities.
So popular were the Heaton Park trenches with visitors that more were dug in Platt Fields, on the old Infirmary site in Piccadilly, and at Ashfield in Rusholme.”
Of course the historians of the Great War will mutter that such things were common place, but it is the first I knew about it, and so I must thank Lawrence for not only coming up with the picture but sending it across to me.
I suppose in an age of total war such things made sense. If you are going to keep the population behind the conflict especially when the causality rates were rising all this made perfect sense.
Time I think for a trip up to Prestwich Library, and a bigger story on those pretend trenches of 1916.
Picture; from the collection of Lawrence Beedle
*The exhibition has been produced by Prestwich & Whitefield Heritage Society, http://www.prestwichheritage.co.uk/programme-of-events/ and is on display at Prestwich Library http://www.bury.gov.uk/index.aspx?articleid=2838 till November 2015
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