Reddish Vale

[2][3] Reddish Vale is mainly green space, comprising woodland, flat riverside meadows, sloping fields used to graze horses and a golf course.

At the end of Reddish Vale Road near grid reference SJ905935 is a small car park and a visitors' centre housed in portable cabins.

This line has been turned into a public bridleway joining the two parts of the country park and forms a section of the Trans Pennine Trail.

There was a plan at the end of the 18th century for the Beat Bank Branch Canal to run across the vale, and some sections were dug, but it was abandoned before completion.

The ponds were fed from the river above a weir (destroyed in floods in the 1960s,[dubious – discuss] all that remains is the sluice gate) on the upstream side of the viaduct, and provided both power and processing water to Reddish Vale Print Works, a calico printing works dating from before 1800.

[8][10] Part of the fields were once a landfill site for fly ash; this has proved to be a good growing medium for orchids.

Both are in private hands and not open to the public.Reddish Vale Golf Club takes up a substantial area on both sides of the river, but does not form part of the country park.

Further along Riverview, where the track meets the river, once stood two rows of terraced houses identical to the ones opposite the farm.

The same fate may have befallen the terraces opposite the farm if not for the intervention of two twin brothers, John and Christopher Byrne, who removed the Compulsory Purchase Orders put on them, and organised the installation of a sanitation system.

In 1988, the government of the day asked the Greater Manchester Residuary Body to sell off its holdings in the area; 3,000 people, worried that it would be sold to developers, gathered in the vale to protest.

[citation needed] In 1990, a proposal to create an artificial ski slope at Woodhall Fields was opposed by 7,000 signatories to a petition.

[4][15][16] The opposition was led by the Tame Valley Defence Group supported by MP Andrew Bennett and the Reddish Reporter.

[17] This again was opposed by the Tame Valley Defence Group who were strongly supported in this by the Director of Public Health in Stockport.