We are an isolated enclave of elderly rebels
LIFE IN THE CITY’S ONLY RURAL VILLAGE NEXT TO AIRPORT
THERE are no streetlights. Birds dart in and out of the hedgerow as a passing dog walker says hello.
A placard on the grass verge advertises fresh eggs for sale at the farm opposite. It’s the archetypal picture of English rural life.
But a different sign attached to a fence in a muddy lay-by a little further down the lane offers a clue as to the village’s unusual location. ‘Think before you park,’ it reads. ‘We ask all airport users not to park outside people’s homes.’
Welcome to Ringway, the only rural village in Manchester. The tiny ancient parish , home to the ruins of a medieval castle, is located on the south western edge of the city boundaries, on the border with Cheshire and Trafford.
In the 2011 census around 100 people called the village home and now it’s thought that number may be even smaller. But Ringway has a very big neighbour.
A few hundred yards away, on the other side of a dual carriageway, lies Manchester Airport. When it first opened in 1938 the airport took its name from the village next door. At that time it was little more than a tin hut in a field. Now things are a bit different.
For 24 hours a day, 365 days a year, hundreds of flights and tens of thousands of passengers come and go at the third busiest airport in the UK.
“Don’t get me started on the airport,” says Jeremy Oddie, 65, who moved to Ringway nine years ago from Sale into the former home of Matt Busby’s son Sandy on Sunbank Lane. “But it’s a very pleasant place to live,” said Mr Oddie. “We live fields apart from our neighbours but we all know each other.”
Having an airport on their doorstep is just a fact of life for the people of Ringway. But that doesn’t mean they’re always happy about it.
The parish council is the smallest in the country, but it’s not been afraid to take on its giant neighbour. In 2016 it took part in a David and Goliath standoff over the airport’s plans for a £1bn ‘super terminal.’
Speaking at the time parish council chair Audrey O’Donovan told the M.E.N: “The airport is our worst enemy – they are on our doorstep and we can’t let them run riot all over us. That’s why we’ve objected. They say they listen to their neighbours but they don’t. Soon we feel like there will be nobody left living in Ringway.”
The parish might have lost that battle, but it continues to stand up for what it believes is best for the village. “We are an isolated enclave of elderly rebels,” Mr Oddie, who’s also a member of the council, says with a laugh.
The parish, a collection of houses and farms around Sunbank Lane and Mill Lane, was first mentioned in medieval times. ‘Ringey Chapel,’ which later became Ringway Chapel, initially appeared in the Bowdon Parish records in 1515.
In those days Bowdon was in Cheshire and Manchester was a small village some miles north. By the 1960s Ringway itself was on the move.
Urban spread from Altrincham into Hale Barns and the loss of farms near Ringway due to road and airport extensions
Manchester Airport is next to Ringway, right had changed the centre of the parish. To mark the shift a new parish church was consecrated in Hale Barns. Then in 1974, local county boundary changes meant Ringway was no longer in Cheshire. When Greater Manchester was created, they changed the boundary to make sure the airport was in Manchester and the neighbouring village of Ringway was brought not just into Greater Manchester, but the city boundary as well.
In more recent years the M56 motorway drove through the village. The dual carriageway, Wilmslow Road, also now cuts across Sunbank Lane, isolating the 400-year-old village pub The Romper, and St Mary’s Church. And, just off Sunbank Lane huge new warehouses and office blocks, home to companies such as Amazon, Evri and The Hut Group, now stand on what was once a farm.
Before the plans were scrapped by Rishi Sunak late last year, Ringway was slap bang in the middle of the route for the £36bn northern leg of HS2.
Several homes along Sunbank Lane, said to be in the HS2 ‘safeguarded zone,’ were bought up by the government under compulsory purchase rules.
A number still stand empty today. It meant years of stress and uncertainty as the lives of those affected were turned upside down. Speaking to the M.E.N. in