As you'll see, the author believes that this could be the Tank Bank on a visit to Manchester in 1917. But there's another possible explanation.
Manchester Town Hall used to be on King Street in the city centre. The Council moved into a bigger, better building, facing on to Albert Square (there's a clue in the name) and the old one became a library until it was demolished in 1912. However, the facade, with its impressive colonnade, was rescued and re-erected in Heaton Park, about 6 miles north of the city centre. It's still there. This is what it looked like, and still does:
There's a possibility that this is where the tank was photographed. It seems much more likely that that would make it a Presentation Tank rather than a Tank Bank.
I don't expect anyone to have a knowledge of The History of North Manchester, but maybe there's a list of where the Presentation Tanks were put and where the Tank Bank visited. I think the latter would have set up in Albert Square rather than 6 miles to the north in what would have been comparatively open country a century ago. And, incidentally, where my great-uncle trained before they shipped him off to France.
A curiosity is the soldier on the right of the card. He looks distinctly hand-drawn and superimposed, long before the Princess of Wales took up photography. I wonder if this was Mr. Heath's handiwork.
I could be wrong, and one fluted colonnade looks very much like another, but I think there are enough clues here to form the basis for an argument.
"Sometimes things that are not true are included in Wikipedia. While at first glance that may appear like a very great problem for Wikipedia, in reality is it not. In fact, it's a good thing." - Wikipedia.
Sorry, no. This photo was taken outside the Mansion House in London during the Lord Mayor's Parade on 11 November 1917. See https://lordmayorsshow.london/history/ww1.
Thanks for the clarification, Gwyn. I stand corrected. It looks as if Mr. Heath took a postcard of the Mansion House tank and added his own work to it.
However, something did emerge in the course of my investigations. There was a Presentation Tank in neighbouring Salford, opposite Salford Royal Hospital, at the junction of Chapel Street and Oldfield Road. I didn't know that until this week, and I must have gone past the spot several thousand times. It seems there was not only a Mk IV but also two 7.7cm guns. After the initial enthusiasm it was eventually declared an eyesore by the Council and sold for scrap. For some reason, they kept the 7.7s, at least for a while.
Just discernible in front of the tank is a monument to the Boer War, a Lancashire Fusilier holding aloft his bearskin.
__________________
"Sometimes things that are not true are included in Wikipedia. While at first glance that may appear like a very great problem for Wikipedia, in reality is it not. In fact, it's a good thing." - Wikipedia.
