Sackville Gardens
Creative TouristSackville Gardens is one of the nicest green spaces in Manchester – a city where, sadly, parks and green spaces are far too few.
Famously, Sackville Gardens is home to the Alan Turing Memorial. Known as the ‘father of modern computing’, Turing was an important influence in the development of theoretical computer science at the University of Manchester and celebrated as wartime code-breaker.
Alan Turing was also a gay man, like many other gay men of the era, he was prosecuted for ‘homosexual acts’, ultimately leading to his untimely death at the age of just 41.
It’s thought that Alan Turing’s contribution to The Second World War saved 14 million lives. In 2009, the then Prime Minister Gordon Brown made a public apology for the disgraceful way the United Kingdom treated Turing.
The memorial in Sackville Park depicts Turing holding an apple, both a symbol of forbidden love and nod to the tree of knowledge.
Turing symbolises modern Manchester’s place as a city of science and home to a vibrant LGBT community.