Stop 8 - Mandeville Place

Make sure your volume is on: "Waypoint 8 - Modern Park"

Show transcript

Mandeville Place – the name is a reference to Stoke Mandeville hospital where a German neurologist proposed helping his patients by getting them to train and compete in sports. In 1948 Ludwig Guttman’s patients – severely disabled war veterans – carried out an archery contest to coincide with London’s ‘Austerity Olympics’, and the concept of the Paralympics took root.

Sixty four years later the London 2012 games took the Paralympics to new heights. For the first time, every single venue was sold out, and paralympian athletes were household names. Every single sponsor of the Olympic Games also sponsored the Paralympics, and major TV networks committed to full coverage of the event.

The success of the 2012 Paralympics is commemorated in the pink brick monument in the middle of Mandeville Place – look closely and you can see it is actually an orchard. The pavilion was built using bricks from the Athletes Village Paralympic Wall, and the apple trees come from the counties of the British paralympian gold medalists.

One of the trees is an entirely new variety, called Paradice Gold – named as part of a schools competition. That’s an unusual spelling of Paradice – the first half of the word ‘para’ for Paralympics, and the second part ‘d-i-c-e’ for the Paralympic virtues Determination, Inspiration, Courage and Equality.

For the next stop, go to the grassy edge of Mandeville Place between the two arms of the Diamond Bridge, and look down.