The people whose lives have been turned upside down by HS2 - all for nothing
manchestereveningnews.co.uk"I didn't know whether to run around jumping for joy or cry buckets." For Mary Daniel and her husband Andrew, Rishi Sunak's conference speech, in which he confirmed he was scrapping the Manchester leg of HS2, was an emotionally bittersweet moment.
Just a few months ago, the couple completed the sale of their home to HS2- after years of agonising. The couple re-built the house from scratch around 20 years ago on land that was part of a then-working farm run by Andrew's father and grandfather before him in Ashley, Cheshire, and turned it into their dream family home. READ MORE: HS2 to Manchester: What was planned and what has been axed as Rishi Sunak 'ends the saga' READ MORE: Plans for the now doomed part of the project would have seen a new station at the Manchester Airport with the line entering the airport on the surface, before descending into a tunnel under Wythenshawe, Northenden, Withington, Fallowfield, Rusholme, and Longsight, before re-emerging and running on a huge concrete viaduct in West Gorton and Ardwick on the approach to a new HS2 station at Piccadilly.
The line was to run right through the eastern side of Ashley, a quiet and rural village, which sits on Cheshire's Greater Manchester border near Altrincham, and is just a 10-minute drive from Manchester Airport.
Mary and Andrew, both in their 60s, say that had it not been for the plans for the new high-speed line, they would never have even contemplated moving from the home where they brought up their children.
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