St Michael's Flags & Angel Meadow Park — Attraction in Manchester

This is a small park which is on the site of an old church which was demolished in 1935. The "Flags" of the name refers to the gravestones laid on the grounds, whilst "Angel Meadow" refers to the part of the park that was once the biggest paupers graveyard in Manchester The whole area has a rich history which tells of poverty and deprivation, and was Manchesters worst slum during the Industrial Revolution. Nearby, the building that once housed a Ragged School and Working Girls Home still hosted a cooked breakfast for the homeless until recently. Nowadays the park is considered to be a hidden gem. It's a small, pleasent area, tucked away and surrounded by modern developments and is popular amongst sunbathers in summer. Like most people I was surprised wben I stumbled across it. There are plenty of small artifacts to be seen; some of the gravestones are still here and the steps dotted around the park are probably leftovers from the original structure. Apart from that there are several noticeboards displaying small nuggets of information about the place and if visited during a relatively quiet period - early morning, say - just looking at the land itself makes it obvious that there was once a large and heavy...

This park is a small peaceful oasis on the outskirts of Manchester City Centre. It's not exactly full of spectacular scenery but it's green space with trees and for the most part, peaceful. It's steeped in Manchester History (what's left of it) amongst the ever developing stream of skyscrapers, as the City expands. The place was a Churchyard (with Church) at one time and also a burial ground. The area surrounding Angel Meadow was a very grim slum area in times past and the old Victorian houses were decrepit and squalid. Lifespans were short and it has been described as 'The worst slum in England' during those times. There are over forty thousand bodies of the poor buried under what we see today as a beautiful and quite tranquil place. People sit on the lawned areas to rest, take lunch and to just relax, so don't let its grim past put you off enjoying Angel Meadow as it is today. There has been a problem with drug addicts and alcoholics but I think that problem has been resolved to a degree. It's only because of this that I've only...

Now we have the situation that this stain on the nation's conscience, instead of being preserved as a reproach to our greedy society, is beautified and becomes the centre of a development of expensive appartments. This is the the tract of land used for the disposal of the bodies of the exploited, the casualties of the industrial revolution, mostly young, many children, many killed by machinery. This should be presented like Auschwitz. This was not a decent burial ground, this was a place overloaded with bodies, shallow burials seeping the pollution of decomposition into the river Irk. Because bones were surfacing all the time, it was paved over using headstones, that's how I remember it; that was how it should have remained and a museum attached to the site. That would have been respectful. I would advise young people not to buy homes in the area, the associations are...