The National Trust unearths Manchester’s hidden moss history with new exhibition

The National Trust has unveiled Mosschester, a new public programme designed to bring the secrets of local moss to life and explore the region’s natural heritage.

While often overlooked, mosses around Greater Manchester (especially peat-forming species like Sphagnum) are unsung environmental heroes, capturing carbon, combating climate change, preventing flooding and cooling urban environments.

However, only 3% of the lowland bog that once covered the region now remains, with many of the region’s landscapes largely drained for peat extraction, agriculture and urban and industrial development.

As part of the Mosschester programme, The National Trust’s city centre site, Castlefield Viaduct, will play host to The University of Manchester’s MossWorlds exhibition, which is open now until Sun 1 Feb.

Through this free exhibition, visitors will be able to explore the historical, contemporary and future importance of mosses in the Greater Manchester area, through art, music and poetry.

Project leads Dr Anke Bernau, Dr Aurora Fredriksen and Dr Ingrid Hanson, all based at the University of Manchester, add: “The project speaks to our encounters with moss and the stories we tell about them. Commonly considered irrelevant to human needs and uses, easily overlooked and hard to identify, moss is often confined to the margins.

“In recent decades, however, the importance of mosses as both ‘pioneer species’ and as indicator species for pollution monitoring has become increasingly clear. At the same time, mosses are rich with histories of intertwined human, plant and animal life: by paying attention to them, we can learn different ways of being in our interdependent and interspecies world.”

The National Trust will also be delivering a series of linked events across Greater Manchester. In collaboration with Manchester City Council Parks Team, the organisation will be running moss pop-ups across a number of parks throughout half term, with mossy storytelling, educational activities and autumnal crafts that aim to engage children and families with moss.

Kelda Savage from The National Trust’s Greater Manchester team says: “We’re really excited to be working with a number of partners across Greater Manchester to shine a light on this fascinating world. Mosses around Greater Manchester really are unsung environmental heroes, capturing carbon, fighting climate change, prevent flooding and cooling urban environments. Through the MossChester season of activity, we hope to inspire people to look at the nature around them in a new way and appreciate what’s on their very doorstep.”

Full details of the pop-ups and other public events will be displayed on The National Trust’s Mosschester website.