Kersal Moor

Kersal Moor is a recreation area in Kersal, Greater Manchester, England which consists of eight hectares of moorland bounded by Moor Lane, Heathlands Road, St Paul's Churchyard and Singleton Brook. Kersal Moor, first called Karsey or Carsall Moor, originally covered a much larger area, running down to the River Irwell. Evidence of activity during the Neolithic period has been discovered and the area was used by the Romans. It was the site of the first Manchester Racecourse and the second golf course to be built outside Scotland. It has been extensively used for other sporting pursuits, military manoeuvres and public gatherings such as the Great Chartist Meeting of 1838, prompting the political theorist Friedrich Engels to dub it "the Mons Sacer of Manchester". With the increasing industrialisation and urbanisation of Manchester and Salford during the 18th and 19th centuries, the moor became one of the remaining areas of natural landscape of interest to amateur naturalists, one of whom collected the only known specimens of the now extinct moth species Euclemensia woodiella. It is now a Site of Biological Importance and in 2007 was designated as a Local Nature Reserve by English Nature.