Before the city of Manchester was incorporated in 1853, the fields on the edge of Stretford, just south of the River Mersey along the Bridgewater Canal, were used as a dumping ground for domestic waste and sewage. These informal tips delineated Manchester’s rapidly expanding industrial centre and the rural county of Cheshire. Man-made layers of trash and detritus impacted the air quality, depleted the soil health, and changed the area's topography, forming low hills made of waste dumped over the years. The 1875 Public Health Act prohibited the dumping of refuse in public localities, but the fields continued to accumulate waste as the pressures of urban growth affected the use and appearance of this large open area.
The Stretford and Urmston Urban District Council purchased the surrounding lands in the early 20th century to provide water management and ecological protection, and rehabilitated much of the area for public recreation and leisure activities under the Mersey Valley Local Plan, adopted in 1986. Collectively situated in the Central Mersey Valley, these municipal parks and open greenspaces include Stretford Ees and Stretford Meadows, now maintained by the Trafford Countryside Management Partnership. As yet unnamed, and with little active maintenance of footpaths and structured planting, the site of a former tip beyond Stretford Ees remains a transitional space, an edgeland suspended in time.
A soundscape of this edgeland begins below the soil's surface, inside one of the many open trenches scattered across the field dug by bottle hunters. In an audio journey from a localised centre of the Earth, the sound of grass, dirt, and debris is encompassed by the surrounding noises of urban activity.
The accompanying photoessay can be explored while listening to the soundscape.
