Drinking Fountain in Alexandra Park, Whalley Range, Manchester, UK Made Andrew Handyside in 1868. Now Restored.

Alexandra Park is a 60-acre park in the Moss Side/Whalley Range districts of Manchester, England. It was designed by Alexander Hennell, opened in 1868. In 2012 a two year £5.5m restoration project to return the park to its original Victorian glory started. The restored park reopened in August 2014.

Part of the restoration included a Drinking fountain made by Andrew Handyside of Derby. I'm so happy to see this fountain restored, it looked in pretty bad shape but thanks to the hard work of Hargreaves Foundry from Halifax its now looking very good. Andrew Handyside would be proud to see his fountain looking like this 146 years after it was installed in this park.

This very same fountain can be found in the grounds of St Pancras Old Church in London, UK and also one in Geelong, Victoria, Australia called "The Belcher Drinking Fountain"

Here are some photographs of this Handyside drinking fountain after its restoration in 2014 :



This is Fountain Design No. 48 on Page 40 of my 1879 publication "An Illustrated book of Designs for Fountains and Vases, costing from £1 to £1200 manufactured by Andrew Handyside".





Here are some photographs showing the poor state the drinking fountain was in prior to restoration :









I found this rather interesting old photograph of the drinking fountain from 1954. These people are from The Band of Hope, part of the Temperance Movement in Manchester. Click to view a large version.

The fountain as seen in 1954 (Copyright Livesey Collection UCLan)

 










Useful links :
Friends of Alexandra Park Facebook page.

Blog entry by Hargreaves Foundry about their restoration of the fountain.

Andrew Handyside exported many decorative fountains around the world during the Victorian era.
The Britannia Foundry's work was well known for its fine quality so these fountains can be found all over the globe but where exactly they are located is difficult to find out.

Thankfully because of my research here people are beginning to contact me with details of Handyside work, I am then able to add it to my world map. It really helps my research being able to use Flickr to see these items for myself and share these finds with the world!

Thanks
Andy Savage