further investigations

I missed the walks organised by Buddleia through the hidden greenspaces, so on Wednesday, I took the opportunity to explore for myself. Starting at the greenspace opposite the metrolink on Woodlands Road, I walked through the little vale with stream scattered with debris including glittering red tinsel and a semi burnt tree; it always seems the saddest kind of vandalism to attack a tree. I sat on a bench looking at the tree for some time. The path comes out near the "model allotments" where we met Emilio a few weeks ago. Crossing over Hazelbottom Road and down Smedley Lane to join the River Irk through a very pleasant valley and underneath the massive viaduct. I ended up walking along Collyhurst Road past industrial units which leads into the City. But after passing the HMG paint works  I spotted a footpath sign that led up a mysterious staircase that seemed to just lead into the air. My suspicions that this would lead me back up to my "secret garden" hidden by the Manchester Fort were correct. But the excitement of climbing the stairs and then walking along a bridge that seemed to have no purpose other than to give me a spectacular view of the skyline of manchester gleaming in the sun, was memorable. At the top of the mound I looked over the city and in the neargound the quiet Travellers estate, where in the sunshine, a man was working away on repairs to one of the slumbering fairground rides that they store there.

 Themes in The Secret Garden were apparently influenced by Hodgson-Burnett's growing interest in Theosophy - a kind of spiritual philosophy that has continued to influence many practices and movements today, such as the Steiner education system. The idea that proximity to nature, positive thinking, exercise and ideas in eastern religions such as Hinduism or Bhuddism might create better conditions for health and a broader understanding of the relationship between people and the earth were controversial and far out in her day - hence the "secret" nature of the transformation of the children in The Secret Garden.

At the same time, in Manchester, theories about capitalist economy were being written by Engels and Marx. The realities of poverty and exploitation, which was the cost to the millions at the bottom of a system of Capital were well known to Hodgson Burnett in her early life in Cheetham Hill.

These ideas - a questioning of religions, science and spiritualism and the realities of economics helped to shape the modern city and there was a relationship between people interested in all the new thinking and ideas ( reputable and dangerous alike) that proliferated in the 19th century.