Portal:Geography/Featured article/May, 2011

Trafford Park is an area of the Metropolitan Borough of Trafford, in Greater Manchester, England. Located opposite Salford Quays, on the southern side of the Manchester Ship Canal, it is 3.4 mi west-southwest of Manchester city centre, and 1.3 mi north of Stretford. Until the late 19th century it was the ancestral home of the Trafford family, who sold it to financier Ernest Terah Hooley in 1896. Occupying an area of 4.7 mi2, it was the first planned industrial estate in the world, and remains the largest in Europe. Trafford Park is almost entirely surrounded by water; the Bridgewater Canal forms its southeastern and southwestern boundaries, and the Manchester Ship Canal, which opened in 1894, its northeastern and northwestern boundaries. Hooley's plan was to develop the Ship Canal frontage, but the canal was slow to generate the predicted volume of traffic, therefore in the early days the park was largely used for leisure activities such as golf, polo, and boating. British Westinghouse was the first major company to move in, and by 1903 it was employing about half of the 12,000 workers then employed in the park, becoming one of the most important engineering facilities in Britain.