![Manchester Cathedral and steps](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/9/90/Manchester_Cathedral_and_steps.jpg)
Manchester () is a city in
Greater Manchester
Greater Manchester is a metropolitan county and combined authority, combined authority area in North West England, with a population of 2.8 million; comprising ten metropolitan boroughs: City of Manchester, Manchester, City of Salford, Salford ...
, England. It had a population of 552,000 in 2021. It is bordered by the
Cheshire Plain
The Cheshire Plain is a relatively flat expanse of lowland within the county of Cheshire in North West England but extending south into Shropshire. It extends from the Mersey Valley in the north to the Shropshire Hills in the south, bounded b ...
to the south, the
Pennines
The Pennines (), also known as the Pennine Chain or Pennine Hills, are a range of uplands running between three regions of Northern England: North West England on the west, North East England and Yorkshire and the Humber on the east. Commo ...
to the north and east, and the neighbouring city of
Salford
Salford () is a city and the largest settlement in the City of Salford metropolitan borough in Greater Manchester, England. In 2011, Salford had a population of 103,886. It is also the second and only other city in the metropolitan county afte ...
to the west. The two cities and the surrounding towns form one of the United Kingdom's most populous
conurbation
A conurbation is a region comprising a number of metropolises, cities, large towns, and other urban areas which through population growth and physical expansion, have merged to form one continuous urban or industrially developed area. In most ca ...
s, the
Greater Manchester Built-up Area
The Greater Manchester Built-up Area is an area of land defined by the Office for National Statistics (ONS), consisting of the large conurbation that encompasses the urban element of the city of Manchester and the metropolitan area that forms ...
, which has a population of 2.87 million.
The
history of Manchester began with the civilian settlement associated with the
Roman
Roman or Romans most often refers to:
*Rome, the capital city of Italy
*Ancient Rome, Roman civilization from 8th century BC to 5th century AD
*Roman people, the people of ancient Rome
*''Epistle to the Romans'', shortened to ''Romans'', a letter ...
fort (''
castra
In the Roman Republic and the Roman Empire, the Latin word ''castrum'', plural ''castra'', was a military-related term.
In Latin usage, the singular form ''castrum'' meant 'fort', while the plural form ''castra'' meant 'camp'. The singular and ...
'') of ''Mamucium'' or ''Mancunium'', established in about AD 79 on a sandstone bluff near the confluence of the rivers
Medlock and
Irwell.
Historically
History (derived ) is the systematic study and the documentation of the human activity. The time period of event before the invention of writing systems is considered prehistory. "History" is an umbrella term comprising past events as well ...
part of
Lancashire
Lancashire ( , ; abbreviated Lancs) is the name of a historic county, ceremonial county, and non-metropolitan county in North West England. The boundaries of these three areas differ significantly.
The non-metropolitan county of Lancashi ...
, areas of
Cheshire
Cheshire ( ) is a ceremonial and historic county in North West England, bordered by Wales to the west, Merseyside and Greater Manchester to the north, Derbyshire to the east, and Staffordshire and Shropshire to the south. Cheshire's county t ...
south of the
River Mersey
The River Mersey () is in North West England. Its name derives from Old English and means "boundary river", possibly referring to its having been a border between the ancient kingdoms of Mercia and Northumbria. For centuries it has formed part ...
were incorporated into Manchester in the 20th century, including
Wythenshawe
Wythenshawe () is a district of the city of Manchester, England. Historic counties of England, Historically in Cheshire, Wythenshawe was transferred in 1931 to the City of Manchester, which had begun building a massive housing estate there in the ...
in 1931. Throughout the
Middle Ages
In the history of Europe, the Middle Ages or medieval period lasted approximately from the late 5th to the late 15th centuries, similar to the post-classical period of global history. It began with the fall of the Western Roman Empire a ...
Manchester remained a
manorial
Manorialism, also known as the manor system or manorial system, was the method of land ownership (or "tenure") in parts of Europe, notably France and later England, during the Middle Ages. Its defining features included a large, sometimes forti ...
township
A township is a kind of human settlement or administrative subdivision, with its meaning varying in different countries.
Although the term is occasionally associated with an urban area, that tends to be an exception to the rule. In Australia, Ca ...
, but began to expand "at an astonishing rate" around the turn of the 19th century. Manchester's unplanned urbanisation was brought on by a boom in
textile manufacture during the Industrial Revolution
Textile manufacture during the British Industrial Revolution was centred in south Lancashire and the towns on both sides of the Pennines in the United Kingdom. The main drivers of the Industrial Revolution were textile manufacturing, iron foundi ...
,
and resulted in it becoming the world's first industrialised city.
•
• Manchester achieved
city status City status is a symbolic and legal designation given by a national or subnational government. A municipality may receive city status because it already has the qualities of a city, or because it has some special purpose.
Historically, city status ...
in 1853. The
Manchester Ship Canal
The Manchester Ship Canal is a inland waterway in the North West of England linking Manchester to the Irish Sea. Starting at the Mersey Estuary at Eastham, near Ellesmere Port, Cheshire, it generally follows the original routes of the river ...
opened in 1894, creating the
Port of Manchester
The Port of Manchester was a port in Salford, North West England, until its closure in 1982. It was created as a customs port on 1 January 1894, four months before the official opening of the Manchester Ship Canal. It extended along the whole l ...
and linking the city to the
Irish Sea
The Irish Sea or , gv, Y Keayn Yernagh, sco, Erse Sie, gd, Muir Èireann , Ulster-Scots: ''Airish Sea'', cy, Môr Iwerddon . is an extensive body of water that separates the islands of Ireland and Great Britain. It is linked to the Ce ...
, to the west. Its fortune declined after the
Second World War
World War II or the Second World War, often abbreviated as WWII or WW2, was a world war that lasted from 1939 to 1945. It involved the vast majority of the world's countries—including all of the great powers—forming two opposin ...
, owing to deindustrialisation, and the
IRA
Ira or IRA may refer to:
*Ira (name), a Hebrew, Sanskrit, Russian or Finnish language personal name
*Ira (surname), a rare Estonian and some other language family name
*Iran, UNDP code IRA
Law
*Indian Reorganization Act of 1934, US, on status of ...
bombing in 1996 led to extensive investment and regeneration. Following considerable redevelopment, Manchester was the host city for the
2002 Commonwealth Games
The 2002 Commonwealth Games, officially known as the XVII Commonwealth Games and commonly known as Manchester 2002 were held in Manchester, England, from 25 July to 4 August, 2002. The 2002 Games were to be hosted in the United Kingdom to coin ...
.
The city is notable for
its architecture,
culture
Culture () is an umbrella term which encompasses the social behavior, institutions, and norms found in human societies, as well as the knowledge, beliefs, arts, laws, customs, capabilities, and habits of the individuals in these groups.Tyl ...
,
musical exports,
media links,
scientific and engineering output,
social impact Social impact may refer to:
* Social impact assessment
* Social impact theory
* Social influence
Social influence comprises the ways in which individuals adjust their behavior to meet the demands of a social environment. It takes many forms and c ...
,
sports clubs
A sports club or sporting club, sometimes an athletics club or sports society or sports association, is a group of people formed for the purpose of playing sports.
Sports clubs range from organisations whose members play together, unpaid, and ...
and
transport connections.
Manchester Liverpool Road railway station
Liverpool Road is a former railway station on the Liverpool and Manchester Railway in Manchester, England that opened on 15 September 1830. The station was the Manchester terminus of the world's first inter-city passenger railway in which all s ...
was the world's first inter-city passenger railway station. At the
University of Manchester
, mottoeng = Knowledge, Wisdom, Humanity
, established = 2004 – University of Manchester Predecessor institutions: 1956 – UMIST (as university college; university 1994) 1904 – Victoria University of Manchester 1880 – Victoria Univer ...
,
Ernest Rutherford
Ernest Rutherford, 1st Baron Rutherford of Nelson, (30 August 1871 – 19 October 1937) was a New Zealand physicist who came to be known as the father of nuclear physics.
''Encyclopædia Britannica'' considers him to be the greatest ...
first split the atom in 1917,
Frederic C. Williams
Sir Frederic Calland Williams, (26 June 1911 – 11 August 1977), known as F.C. Williams or Freddie Williams, was an English engineer, a pioneer in radar and computer technology.
Education
Williams was born in Romiley, Stockport, and ed ...
,
Tom Kilburn
Tom Kilburn (11 August 1921 – 17 January 2001) was an English mathematician and computer scientist. Over the course of a productive 30-year career, he was involved in the development of five computers of great historical significance. With ...
and
Geoff Tootill
Geoff C. Tootill (4 March 1922 – 26 October 2017) was an electronic engineer and computer scientist who worked in the Electrical Engineering Department at the University of Manchester with Freddie Williams and Tom Kilburn developing the Manc ...
developed the world's first
stored-program computer
A stored-program computer is a computer that stores program instructions in electronically or optically accessible memory. This contrasts with systems that stored the program instructions with plugboards or similar mechanisms.
The definition i ...
in 1948, and
Andre Geim
, birth_date =
, birth_place = Sochi, Russian SFSR, Soviet Union
, death_date =
, death_place =
, workplaces =
, nationality = Dutch and British
, fields = Condensed matter physics
...
and
Konstantin Novoselov
Sir Konstantin Sergeevich Novoselov ( rus, Константи́н Серге́евич Новосёлов,
p=kənstɐnʲˈtʲin sʲɪrˈɡʲe(j)ɪvʲɪtɕ nəvɐˈsʲɵləf; born 1974) is a Russian-British physicist, and a professor at the ...
isolated the first
graphene
Graphene () is an allotrope of carbon consisting of a single layer of atoms arranged in a hexagonal lattice nanostructure. in 2004.
Etymology
The name ''Manchester'' originates from the
Latin
Latin (, or , ) is a classical language belonging to the Italic branch of the Indo-European languages. Latin was originally a dialect spoken in the lower Tiber area (then known as Latium) around present-day Rome, but through the power of the ...
name ''Mamucium'' or its variant ''Mancunio'' and the citizens are still referred to as Mancunians (). These names are generally thought to represent a
Latinisation of an original
Brittonic
Brittonic or Brythonic may refer to:
*Common Brittonic, or Brythonic, the Celtic language anciently spoken in Great Britain
*Brittonic languages, a branch of the Celtic languages descended from Common Brittonic
*Britons (Celtic people)
The Br ...
name
A name is a term used for identification by an external observer. They can identify a class or category of things, or a single thing, either uniquely, or within a given context. The entity identified by a name is called its referent. A personal ...
. The generally accepted etymology of this name is that it comes from Brittonic *''mamm-'' ("
breast
The breast is one of two prominences located on the upper ventral region of a primate's torso. Both females and males develop breasts from the same embryological tissues.
In females, it serves as the mammary gland, which produces and secret ...
", in reference to a "
breast-like hill").
[''The Cambridge Dictionary of English Place-Names Based on the Collections of the English Place-Name Society'', ed. by Victor Watts (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2004), under ''MANCHESTER''.] However, more recent work suggests that it could come from *''mamma'' ("mother", in reference to a
local river goddess
A goddess is a female deity. In many known cultures, goddesses are often linked with literal or metaphorical pregnancy or imagined feminine roles associated with how women and girls are perceived or expected to behave. This includes themes of s ...
). Both usages are preserved in
Insular Celtic languages
Insular Celtic languages are the group of Celtic languages of Brittany, Great Britain, Ireland, and the Isle of Man. All surviving Celtic languages are in the Insular group, including Breton, which is spoken on continental Europe in Brittany, ...
, such as ''mam'' meaning "breast" in
Irish
Irish may refer to:
Common meanings
* Someone or something of, from, or related to:
** Ireland, an island situated off the north-western coast of continental Europe
***Éire, Irish language name for the isle
** Northern Ireland, a constituent unit ...
and "mother" in Welsh. The
suffix
In linguistics, a suffix is an affix which is placed after the stem of a word. Common examples are case endings, which indicate the grammatical case of nouns, adjectives, and verb endings, which form the conjugation of verbs. Suffixes can carry ...
''
-chester'' is from
Old English
Old English (, ), or Anglo-Saxon, is the earliest recorded form of the English language, spoken in England and southern and eastern Scotland in the early Middle Ages. It was brought to Great Britain by Anglo-Saxon settlement of Britain, Anglo ...
''ceaster'' ("Roman fortification", itself a loanword from Latin ''castra'', "fort; fortified town").
History
Early history
The
Brigantes
The Brigantes were Ancient Britons who in pre-Roman times controlled the largest section of what would become Northern England. Their territory, often referred to as Brigantia, was centred in what was later known as Yorkshire. The Greek geogr ...
were the major
Celtic tribe
Celtic, Celtics or Keltic may refer to:
Language and ethnicity
*pertaining to Celts, a collection of Indo-European peoples in Europe and Anatolia
**Celts (modern)
*Celtic languages
**Proto-Celtic language
*Celtic music
*Celtic nations
Sports Foo ...
in what is now known as
Northern England
Northern England, also known as the North of England, the North Country, or simply the North, is the northern area of England. It broadly corresponds to the former borders of Angle Northumbria, the Anglo-Scandinavian Kingdom of Jorvik, and the ...
; they had a stronghold in the locality at a sandstone outcrop on which
Manchester Cathedral
Manchester Cathedral, formally the Cathedral and Collegiate Church of St Mary, St Denys and St George, in Manchester, England, is the mother church
Mother church or matrice is a term depicting the Christian Church as a mother ...
now stands, opposite the bank of the
River Irwell
The River Irwell ( ) is a tributary of the River Mersey in north west England. It rises at Irwell Springs on Deerplay Moor, approximately north of Bacup and flows southwards for to meet the Mersey near Irlam. The Irwell marks the boundary be ...
.
Their territory extended across the fertile lowland of what is now
Salford
Salford () is a city and the largest settlement in the City of Salford metropolitan borough in Greater Manchester, England. In 2011, Salford had a population of 103,886. It is also the second and only other city in the metropolitan county afte ...
and
Stretford
Stretford is a market town in Trafford, Greater Manchester, England. It is situated on flat ground between the River Mersey and the Manchester Ship Canal, south of Manchester city centre, south of Salford and north-east of Altrincham. Str ...
. Following the
Roman conquest of Britain
The Roman conquest of Britain refers to the conquest of the island of Britain by occupying Roman forces. It began in earnest in AD 43 under Emperor Claudius, and was largely completed in the southern half of Britain by 87 when the Staneg ...
in the 1st century,
General Agricola ordered the construction of a
fort
A fortification is a military construction or building designed for the defense of territories in warfare, and is also used to establish rule in a region during peacetime. The term is derived from Latin ''fortis'' ("strong") and ''facere'' ...
named
Mamucium
Mamucium, also known as Mancunium, is a former Roman fort in the Castlefield area of Manchester in North West England. The ''castrum'', which was founded c. AD 79 within the Roman province of Roman Britain, was garrisoned by a cohort ...
in the year 79 to ensure that Roman interests in
Deva Victrix
Deva Victrix, or simply Deva, was a legionary fortress and town in the Roman province of Britannia on the site of the modern city of Chester. The fortress was built by the Legio II ''Adiutrix'' in the 70s AD as the Roman army advanced north ag ...
(
Chester
Chester is a cathedral city and the county town of Cheshire, England. It is located on the River Dee, close to the English–Welsh border. With a population of 79,645 in 2011,"2011 Census results: People and Population Profile: Chester Loca ...
) and
Eboracum
Eboracum () was a fort and later a city in the Roman province of Britannia. In its prime it was the largest town in northern Britain and a provincial capital. The site remained occupied after the decline of the Western Roman Empire and ultimate ...
(
York
York is a cathedral city with Roman origins, sited at the confluence of the rivers Ouse and Foss in North Yorkshire, England. It is the historic county town of Yorkshire. The city has many historic buildings and other structures, such as a ...
) were protected from the Brigantes.
Central Manchester has been permanently settled since this time.
A stabilised fragment of foundations of the final version of the Roman fort is visible in
Castlefield
Castlefield is an inner-city conservation area in Manchester, North West England. The conservation area which bears its name is bounded by the River Irwell, A34 road, Quay Street, Deansgate and A56 road, Chester Road. It was the site of the Roma ...
. The Roman habitation of Manchester probably ended around the 3rd century; its
civilian settlement appears to have been abandoned by the mid-3rd century, although the fort may have supported a small garrison until the late 3rd or early 4th century. After the
Roman withdrawal and
Saxon conquest, the focus of settlement shifted to the confluence of the Irwell and
Irk sometime before the
arrival of the Normans after 1066.
Much of the wider area was laid waste in the subsequent
Harrying of the North
The Harrying of the North was a series of campaigns waged by William the Conqueror in the winter of 1069–1070 to subjugate northern England, where the presence of the last House of Wessex, Wessex claimant, Edgar Ætheling, had encouraged An ...
.
![Peterloo Massacre](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/9/98/Peterloo_Massacre.png)
In the
Domesday Book
Domesday Book () – the Middle English spelling of "Doomsday Book" – is a manuscript record of the "Great Survey" of much of England and parts of Wales completed in 1086 by order of King William I, known as William the Conqueror. The manusc ...
of 1086, Manchester is recorded as within the
hundred of Salford
The Salford Hundred (also known as Salfordshire) was one of the subdivisions of the historic county of Lancashire, in Northern England (see:Hundred (county division). Its name alludes to its judicial centre being the township of Salford (the s ...
and held as
tenant in chief
In medieval and early modern Europe, the term ''tenant-in-chief'' (or ''vassal-in-chief'') denoted a person who held his lands under various forms of feudal land tenure directly from the king or territorial prince to whom he did homage, as oppos ...
by a Norman named
Roger of Poitou
Roger the Poitevin (Roger de Poitou) was born in Normandy in the mid-1060s and died before 1140. He was an Anglo-Norman aristocrat, possessing large holdings in both England and through his marriage in France.
He was the third son of Roger of Mon ...
,
later being held by the family of Grelley,
lord of the manor
Lord of the Manor is a title that, in Anglo-Saxon England, referred to the landholder of a rural estate. The lord enjoyed manorial rights (the rights to establish and occupy a residence, known as the manor house and demesne) as well as seig ...
and residents of
Manchester Castle
Manchester Castle was a medieval fortified manor house, probably located on a bluff where the rivers Irk and Irwell meet, near to Manchester Cathedral, where Chetham's School of Music now is,Newman (2006), p. 141. putting it near the edge ...
until 1215 before a Manor House was built.
By 1421 Thomas de la Warre founded and constructed a
collegiate church In Christianity, a collegiate church is a church where the daily office of worship is maintained by a college of canons: a non-monastic or "secular" community of clergy, organised as a self-governing corporate body, which may be presided over by a ...
for the
parish
A parish is a territorial entity in many Christian denominations, constituting a division within a diocese. A parish is under the pastoral care and clerical jurisdiction of a priest, often termed a parish priest, who might be assisted by one or m ...
, now
Manchester Cathedral
Manchester Cathedral, formally the Cathedral and Collegiate Church of St Mary, St Denys and St George, in Manchester, England, is the mother church
Mother church or matrice is a term depicting the Christian Church as a mother ...
; the domestic premises of the college house
Chetham's School of Music
Chetham's School of Music () is an independent co-educational music school in Manchester, England. Chetham's educates students between the ages of 8 and 18, all of whom enter via musical auditions. Students receive a full academic education alon ...
and
Chetham's Library
Chetham's Library in Manchester, England, is the oldest free public reference library in the English-speaking world.Nicholls (2004), p. 20. Chetham's Hospital, which contains both the library and Chetham's School of Music, was established in ...
.
The library, which opened in 1653 and is still open to the public today, is the oldest free public reference library in the United Kingdom.
Manchester is mentioned as having a
market
Market is a term used to describe concepts such as:
*Market (economics), system in which parties engage in transactions according to supply and demand
*Market economy
*Marketplace, a physical marketplace or public market
Geography
*Märket, an ...
in 1282. Around the 14th century, Manchester received an influx of
Flemish
Flemish (''Vlaams'') is a Low Franconian dialect cluster of the Dutch language. It is sometimes referred to as Flemish Dutch (), Belgian Dutch ( ), or Southern Dutch (). Flemish is native to Flanders, a historical region in northern Belgium; ...
weavers, sometimes credited as the foundation of the region's textile industry.
Manchester became an important centre for the manufacture and trade of
wool
Wool is the textile fibre obtained from sheep and other mammals, especially goats, rabbits, and camelids. The term may also refer to inorganic materials, such as mineral wool and glass wool, that have properties similar to animal wool.
As ...
lens and
linen
Linen () is a textile made from the fibers of the flax plant.
Linen is very strong, absorbent, and dries faster than cotton. Because of these properties, linen is comfortable to wear in hot weather and is valued for use in garments. It also ...
, and by about 1540, had expanded to become, in
John Leland's words, "The fairest, best builded, quickest, and most populous town of all Lancashire."
The cathedral and Chetham's buildings are the only significant survivors of Leland's Manchester.
During the
English Civil War
The English Civil War (1642–1651) was a series of civil wars and political machinations between Parliamentarians (" Roundheads") and Royalists led by Charles I ("Cavaliers"), mainly over the manner of England's governance and issues of re ...
Manchester strongly favoured the Parliamentary interest. Although not long-lasting,
Cromwell
Oliver Cromwell (25 April 15993 September 1658) was an English politician and military officer who is widely regarded as one of the most important statesmen in English history. He came to prominence during the 1639 to 1651 Wars of the Three Ki ...
granted it the right to elect its own
MP.
Charles Worsley
Charles Worsley (24 June 1622 – 12 June 1656) was an English soldier and politician. He was an ardent supporter of Oliver Cromwell and was an officer in the Parliamentary army during the English Civil War and the Commonwealth of England. H ...
, who sat for the city for only a year, was later appointed Major General for Lancashire, Cheshire and Staffordshire during the
Rule of the Major Generals
The Rule of the Major-Generals, was a period of direct military government from August 1655 to January 1657, during Oliver Cromwell's Protectorate. England and Wales were divided into ten regions, each governed by a major-general who answered to th ...
. He was a diligent
puritan
The Puritans were English Protestants in the 16th and 17th centuries who sought to purify the Church of England of Catholic Church, Roman Catholic practices, maintaining that the Church of England had not been fully reformed and should become m ...
, turning out ale houses and banning the celebration of Christmas; he died in 1656.
Significant quantities of cotton began to be used after about 1600, firstly in linen/cotton
fustian
Fustian is a variety of heavy cloth woven from cotton, chiefly prepared for menswear. It is also used figuratively to refer to pompous, inflated or pretentious writing or speech, from at least the time of Shakespeare. This literary use is beca ...
s, but by around 1750 pure cotton fabrics were being produced and cotton had overtaken wool in importance.
The Irwell and Mersey were made navigable by 1736, opening a route from Manchester to the sea docks on the Mersey. The
Bridgewater Canal
The Bridgewater Canal connects Runcorn, Manchester and Leigh, Greater Manchester, Leigh, in North West England. It was commissioned by Francis Egerton, 3rd Duke of Bridgewater, to transport coal from his mines in Worsley to Manchester. It was ...
, Britain's first wholly artificial waterway, was opened in 1761, bringing coal from mines at
Worsley
Worsley () is a village in the City of Salford, Greater Manchester, England, which in 2014 had a population of 10,090. It lies along Worsley Brook, west of Manchester.
Within the boundaries of the Historic counties of England, historic county ...
to central Manchester. The canal was extended to the Mersey at
Runcorn
Runcorn is an industrial town and cargo port in the Borough of Halton in Cheshire, England. Its population in 2011 was 61,789. The town is in the southeast of the Liverpool City Region, with Liverpool to the northwest across the River Mersey. ...
by 1776. The combination of competition and improved efficiency halved the cost of coal and halved the transport cost of raw cotton.
Manchester became the dominant marketplace for textiles produced in the surrounding towns.
A
commodities exchange
A commodities exchange is an exchange, or market, where various commodities are traded. Most commodity markets around the world trade in agricultural products and other raw materials (like wheat, barley, sugar, maize, cotton, cocoa, coffee, m ...
, opened in 1729,
and numerous large warehouses, aided commerce. In 1780,
Richard Arkwright
Sir Richard Arkwright (23 December 1732 – 3 August 1792) was an English inventor and a leading entrepreneur during the early Industrial Revolution. He is credited as the driving force behind the development of the spinning frame, known as t ...
began construction of Manchester's first cotton mill.
In the early 1800s,
John Dalton
John Dalton (; 5 or 6 September 1766 – 27 July 1844) was an English chemist, physicist and meteorologist. He is best known for introducing the atomic theory into chemistry, and for his research into colour blindness, which he had. Colour b ...
formulated his atomic theory in Manchester.
Industrial Revolution
Manchester was one of the centres of
textile manufacture during the Industrial Revolution
Textile manufacture during the British Industrial Revolution was centred in south Lancashire and the towns on both sides of the Pennines in the United Kingdom. The main drivers of the Industrial Revolution were textile manufacturing, iron foundi ...
. The great majority of
cotton spinning took place in the towns of south Lancashire and north Cheshire, and Manchester was for a time the most productive centre of cotton processing.
Manchester became known as the world's largest marketplace for cotton goods
and was dubbed "
Cottonopolis
Cottonopolis was a 19th-century nickname for Manchester, as it was a metropolis and the centre of the cotton industry.
Background
Early cotton mills powered by water were built in Lancashire and its neighbouring counties. In 1781 Richard Arkw ...
" and "Warehouse City" during the
Victorian era
In the history of the United Kingdom and the British Empire, the Victorian era was the period of Queen Victoria's reign, from 20 June 1837 until her death on 22 January 1901. The era followed the Georgian period and preceded the Edwardia ...
.
In Australia, New Zealand and South Africa, the term "manchester" is still used for household linen: sheets, pillow cases, towels, etc.
The industrial revolution brought about huge change in Manchester and was key to the increase in Manchester's population.
Manchester began expanding "at an astonishing rate" around the turn of the 19th century as people flocked to the city for work from Scotland, Wales, Ireland and other areas of England as part of a process of unplanned urbanisation brought on by the
Industrial Revolution
The Industrial Revolution was the transition to new manufacturing processes in Great Britain, continental Europe, and the United States, that occurred during the period from around 1760 to about 1820–1840. This transition included going f ...
.
It developed a wide range of industries, so that by 1835 "Manchester was without challenge the first and greatest industrial city in the world."
[ Engineering firms initially made machines for the cotton trade, but diversified into general manufacture. Similarly, the chemical industry started by producing bleaches and dyes, but expanded into other areas. Commerce was supported by financial service industries such as banking and insurance.
Trade, and feeding the growing population, required a large transport and distribution infrastructure: the canal system was extended, and Manchester became one end of the world's first intercity passenger railway—the ]Liverpool and Manchester Railway
The Liverpool and Manchester Railway (L&MR) was the first inter-city railway in the world. It opened on 15 September 1830 between the Lancashire towns of Liverpool and Manchester in England. It was also the first railway to rely exclusively ...
. Competition between the various forms of transport kept costs down. In 1878 the GPO GPO may refer to:
Government and politics
* General Post Office, Dublin
* General Post Office, in Britain
* Social Security Government Pension Offset, a provision reducing benefits
* Government Pharmaceutical Organization, a Thai state enterpris ...
(the forerunner of British Telecom
BT Group plc (trade name, trading as BT and formerly British Telecom) is a British Multinational corporation, multinational telecommunications holding company headquartered in London, England. It has operations in around 180 countries and is th ...
) provided its first telephones to a firm in Manchester.
The Manchester Ship Canal
The Manchester Ship Canal is a inland waterway in the North West of England linking Manchester to the Irish Sea. Starting at the Mersey Estuary at Eastham, near Ellesmere Port, Cheshire, it generally follows the original routes of the river ...
was built between 1888 and 1894, in some sections by canalisation of the Rivers Irwell and Mersey, running from Salford
Salford () is a city and the largest settlement in the City of Salford metropolitan borough in Greater Manchester, England. In 2011, Salford had a population of 103,886. It is also the second and only other city in the metropolitan county afte ...
to Eastham Locks on the tidal Mersey. This enabled oceangoing ships to sail right into the Port of Manchester. On the canal's banks, just outside the borough, the world's first industrial estate was created at Trafford Park
Trafford Park is an area of the Metropolitan Borough of Trafford, Greater Manchester, England, opposite Salford Quays on the southern side of the Manchester Ship Canal, southwest of Manchester city centre and north of Stretford. Until the la ...
. Large quantities of machinery, including cotton processing plant, were exported around the world.
A centre of capitalism, Manchester was once the scene of bread and labour riots, as well as calls for greater political recognition by the city's working and non-titled classes. One such gathering ended with the Peterloo massacre
The Peterloo Massacre took place at St Peter's Field, Manchester, Lancashire, England, on Monday 16 August 1819. Fifteen people died when cavalry charged into a crowd of around 60,000 people who had gathered to demand the reform of parliament ...
of 16 August 1819. The economic school of Manchester Capitalism
Manchester Liberalism (also called the Manchester School, Manchester Capitalism and Manchesterism) comprises the political, economic and social movements of the 19th century that originated in Manchester, England. Led by Richard Cobden and John ...
developed there, and Manchester was the centre of the Anti-Corn Law League
The Anti-Corn Law League was a successful political movement in Great Britain aimed at the abolition of the unpopular Corn Laws, which protected landowners’ interests by levying taxes on imported wheat, thus raising the price of bread at a time ...
from 1838 onward.
Manchester has a notable place in the history of Marxism
Marxism is a Left-wing politics, left-wing to Far-left politics, far-left method of socioeconomic analysis that uses a Materialism, materialist interpretation of historical development, better known as historical materialism, to understand S ...
and left-wing politics; being the subject of Friedrich Engels
Friedrich Engels ( ,["Engels"](_blank)
'' The Condition of the Working Class in England in 1844
''The Condition of the Working Class in England'' (german: Die Lage der arbeitenden Klasse in England) is an 1845 book by the German philosopher Friedrich Engels, a study of the industrial working class in Victorian England. Engels' first book, ...
''; Engels spent much of his life in and around Manchester, and when Karl Marx
Karl Heinrich Marx (; 5 May 1818 – 14 March 1883) was a German philosopher, economist, historian, sociologist, political theorist, journalist, critic of political economy, and socialist revolutionary. His best-known titles are the 1848 ...
visited Manchester, they met at Chetham's Library. The economics books Marx was reading at the time can be seen in the library, as can the window seat where Marx and Engels would meet. The first Trades Union Congress
The Trades Union Congress (TUC) is a national trade union centre
A national trade union center (or national center or central) is a federation or confederation of trade unions in a country. Nearly every country in the world has a national tra ...
was held in Manchester (at the Mechanics' Institute, David Street), from 2 to 6 June 1868. Manchester was an important cradle of the Labour Party and the Suffragette
A suffragette was a member of an activist women's organisation in the early 20th century who, under the banner "Votes for Women", fought for the right to vote in public elections in the United Kingdom. The term refers in particular to members ...
Movement.
At that time, it seemed a place in which anything could happen—new industrial processes, new ways of thinking (the Manchester School, promoting free trade
Free trade is a trade policy that does not restrict imports or exports. It can also be understood as the free market idea applied to international trade. In government, free trade is predominantly advocated by political parties that hold econo ...
and ''laissez-faire
''Laissez-faire'' ( ; from french: laissez faire , ) is an economic system in which transactions between private groups of people are free from any form of economic interventionism (such as subsidies) deriving from special interest groups. ...
''), new classes or groups in society, new religious sects, and new forms of labour organisation. It attracted educated visitors from all parts of Britain and Europe. A saying capturing this sense of innovation survives today: "What Manchester does today, the rest of the world does tomorrow."
•
• Manchester's golden age was perhaps the last quarter of the 19th century. Many of the great public buildings (including Manchester Town Hall
Manchester Town Hall is a Victorian, Neo-gothic municipal building in Manchester, England. It is the ceremonial headquarters of Manchester City Council and houses a number of local government departments. The building faces Albert Square to th ...
) date from then. The city's cosmopolitan atmosphere contributed to a vibrant culture, which included the Hallé Orchestra. In 1889, when county councils were created in England, the municipal borough became a county borough
County borough is a term introduced in 1889 in the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland, to refer to a borough or a city independent of county council control, similar to the unitary authorities created since the 1990s. An equivalent ter ...
with even greater autonomy.
Although the Industrial Revolution brought wealth to the city, it also brought poverty and squalor to a large part of the population. Historian Simon Schama
Sir Simon Michael Schama (; born 13 February 1945) is an English historian specialising in art history, Dutch history, Jewish history, and French history. He is a University Professor of History and Art History at Columbia University.
He fir ...
noted that "Manchester was the very best and the very worst taken to terrifying extremes, a new kind of city in the world; the chimneys of industrial suburbs greeting you with columns of smoke". An American visitor taken to Manchester's blackspots saw "wretched, defrauded, oppressed, crushed human nature, lying and bleeding fragments".
The number of cotton mill
A cotton mill is a building that houses spinning (textiles), spinning or weaving machinery for the production of yarn or cloth from cotton, an important product during the Industrial Revolution in the development of the factory system.
Althou ...
s in Manchester itself reached a peak of 108 in 1853. Thereafter the number began to decline and Manchester was surpassed as the largest centre of cotton spinning by Bolton
Bolton (, locally ) is a large town in Greater Manchester in North West England, formerly a part of Lancashire. A former mill town, Bolton has been a production centre for textiles since Flemish people, Flemish weavers settled in the area i ...
in the 1850s and Oldham
Oldham is a large town in Greater Manchester, England, amid the Pennines and between the rivers Irk and Medlock, southeast of Rochdale and northeast of Manchester. It is the administrative centre of the Metropolitan Borough of Oldham, wh ...
in the 1860s. However, this period of decline coincided with the rise of the city as the financial centre of the region. Manchester continued to process cotton, and in 1913, 65% of the world's cotton was processed in the area. The First World War interrupted access to the export markets. Cotton processing in other parts of the world increased, often on machines produced in Manchester. Manchester suffered greatly from the Great Depression
The Great Depression (19291939) was an economic shock that impacted most countries across the world. It was a period of economic depression that became evident after a major fall in stock prices in the United States. The economic contagio ...
and the underlying structural changes that began to supplant the old industries, including textile manufacture.
Blitz
Like most of the UK, the Manchester area was mobilised extensively during the Second World War
World War II or the Second World War, often abbreviated as WWII or WW2, was a world war that lasted from 1939 to 1945. It involved the vast majority of the world's countries—including all of the great powers—forming two opposin ...
. For example, casting and machining expertise at Beyer, Peacock & Company
Beyer, Peacock and Company was an English railway locomotive manufacturer with a factory in Openshaw, Manchester. Founded by Charles Beyer, Richard Peacock and Henry Robertson, it traded from 1854 until 1966. The company exported locomotives, ...
's locomotive works in Gorton
Gorton is an area of Manchester in North West England, southeast of the city centre. The population at the 2011 census was 36,055. Neighbouring areas include Levenshulme and Openshaw.
A major landmark is Gorton Monastery, a 19th-century Hi ...
was switched to bomb making; Dunlop's rubber works in Chorlton-on-Medlock
Chorlton-on-Medlock or Chorlton-upon-Medlock is an inner city area of Manchester, England.
Historically in Lancashire, Chorlton-on-Medlock is bordered to the north by the River Medlock, which runs immediately south of Manchester city centre. It ...
made barrage balloon
A barrage balloon is a large uncrewed tethered balloon used to defend ground targets against aircraft attack, by raising aloft steel cables which pose a severe collision risk to aircraft, making the attacker's approach more difficult. Early barra ...
s; and just outside the city in Trafford Park
Trafford Park is an area of the Metropolitan Borough of Trafford, Greater Manchester, England, opposite Salford Quays on the southern side of the Manchester Ship Canal, southwest of Manchester city centre and north of Stretford. Until the la ...
, engineers Metropolitan-Vickers
Metropolitan-Vickers, Metrovick, or Metrovicks, was a British heavy electrical engineering company of the early-to-mid 20th century formerly known as British Westinghouse. Highly diversified, it was particularly well known for its industrial el ...
made Avro Manchester
The Avro 679 Manchester was a British twin-engine heavy bomber developed and manufactured by the Avro aircraft company in the United Kingdom. While not being built in great numbers, it was the forerunner of the famed and vastly more successful ...
and Avro Lancaster
The Avro Lancaster is a British Second World War heavy bomber. It was designed and manufactured by Avro as a contemporary of the Handley Page Halifax, both bombers having been developed to the same specification, as well as the Short Stirlin ...
bombers and Ford
Ford commonly refers to:
* Ford Motor Company, an automobile manufacturer founded by Henry Ford
* Ford (crossing), a shallow crossing on a river
Ford may also refer to:
Ford Motor Company
* Henry Ford, founder of the Ford Motor Company
* Ford F ...
built the Rolls-Royce Merlin
The Rolls-Royce Merlin is a British liquid-cooled V-12 piston aero engine of 27-litres (1,650 cu in) capacity. Rolls-Royce designed the engine and first ran it in 1933 as a private venture. Initially known as the PV-12, it was later ...
engines to power them. Manchester was thus the target of bombing by the Luftwaffe
The ''Luftwaffe'' () was the aerial-warfare branch of the German ''Wehrmacht'' before and during World War II. Germany's military air arms during World War I, the ''Luftstreitkräfte'' of the Imperial Army and the '' Marine-Fliegerabtei ...
, and by late 1940 air raids were taking place against non-military targets. The biggest took place during the Christmas Blitz on the nights of 22/23 and 24 December 1940, when an estimated of high explosives plus over 37,000 incendiary bombs were dropped. A large part of the historic city centre was destroyed, including 165 warehouses, 200 business premises, and 150 offices. 376 were killed and 30,000 houses were damaged. Manchester Cathedral
Manchester Cathedral, formally the Cathedral and Collegiate Church of St Mary, St Denys and St George, in Manchester, England, is the mother church
Mother church or matrice is a term depicting the Christian Church as a mother ...
, Royal Exchange and Free Trade Hall
The Free Trade Hall on Peter Street, Manchester, England, was constructed in 1853–56 on St Peter's Fields, the site of the Peterloo Massacre. It is now a Radisson hotel.
The hall was built to commemorate the repeal of the Corn Laws in 1846. T ...
were among the buildings seriously damaged; restoration of the cathedral took 20 years.
Post-Second World War
Cotton processing and trading continued to fall in peacetime, and the exchange closed in 1968. By 1963 the port of Manchester was the UK's third largest,
• and employed over 3,000 men, but the canal was unable to handle the increasingly large container
A container is any receptacle or enclosure for holding a product used in storage, packaging, and transportation, including shipping.
Things kept inside of a container are protected on several sides by being inside of its structure. The term ...
ships. Traffic declined, and the port closed in 1982. Heavy industry suffered a downturn from the 1960s and was greatly reduced under the economic policies followed by Margaret Thatcher
Margaret Hilda Thatcher, Baroness Thatcher (; 13 October 19258 April 2013) was Prime Minister of the United Kingdom from 1979 to 1990 and Leader of the Conservative Party (UK), Leader of the Conservative Party from 1975 to 1990. S ...
's government after 1979. Manchester lost 150,000 jobs in manufacturing between 1961 and 1983.
Regeneration began in the late 1980s, with initiatives such as the Metrolink, the Bridgewater Concert Hall, the Manchester Arena
Manchester Arena, currently referred to as the AO Arena for sponsorship reasons, is an indoor arena in Manchester, England, immediately north of the Manchester city centre, city centre and partly above Manchester Victoria station in air rights s ...
, and (in Salford) the rebranding of the port as Salford Quays
Salford Quays is an area of Salford, Greater Manchester, England, near the end of the Manchester Ship Canal. Previously the site of Manchester Docks, it became one of the first and largest urban regeneration projects in the United Kingdom foll ...
. Two bids to host the Olympic Games were part of a process to raise the international profile of the city.
Manchester has a history of attacks attributed to Irish Republicans, including the Manchester Martyrs
The "Manchester Martyrs" () is a term used by Irish nationalists to refer to three men—William Philip Allen, Michael Larkin and Michael O'Brien—who were executed following their conviction of murder in 1867 after an attack on a police van i ...
of 1867, arson in 1920, a series of explosions in 1939, and two bombs in 1992.
On Saturday 15 June 1996, the Provisional Irish Republican Army
The Irish Republican Army (IRA; ), also known as the Provisional Irish Republican Army, and informally as the Provos, was an Irish republican paramilitary organisation that sought to end British rule in Northern Ireland, facilitate Irish reun ...
(IRA) carried out the 1996 Manchester bombing
The 1996 Manchester bombing was an attack carried out by the Provisional Irish Republican Army (IRA) on Saturday, 15 June 1996. The IRA detonated a lorry bomb on Corporation Street in the centre of Manchester, England. It was the biggest ...
, the detonation of a large bomb next to a department store in the city centre. The largest to be detonated on British soil, the bomb injured over 200 people, heavily damaged nearby buildings, and broke windows away. The cost of the immediate damage was initially estimated at £50 million, but this was quickly revised upwards. The final insurance payout was over £400 million; many affected businesses never recovered from the loss of trade.
Since 2000
Spurred by the investment after the 1996 bomb and aided by the XVII Commonwealth Games, the city centre has undergone extensive regeneration.
New and renovated complexes such as The Printworks and Corn Exchange
A corn exchange is a building where merchants trade grains. The word "corn" in British English denotes all cereal grains, such as wheat and barley; in the United States these buildings were called grain exchange. Such trade was common in towns ...
have become popular shopping, eating and entertainment areas. Manchester Arndale
Manchester Arndale (one of a number of shopping centres in the UK by the same developers, also known simply as the Arndale Centre or the Arndale) is a large shopping centre in Manchester, England. It was constructed in phases between 1972 and 19 ...
is the UK's largest city-centre shopping centre.
Large city sections from the 1960s have been demolished, re-developed or modernised with the use of glass and steel. Old mills have been converted into apartments. Hulme
Hulme () is an inner city area and Ward (politics), electoral ward of Manchester, England, immediately south of Manchester city centre. It has a significant industrial heritage.
Historic counties of England, Historically in Lancashire, the nam ...
has undergone extensive regeneration, with million-pound loft-house apartments being developed. The 47-storey, Beetham Tower was the tallest UK building outside of London
London is the capital and largest city of England and the United Kingdom, with a population of just under 9 million. It stands on the River Thames in south-east England at the head of a estuary down to the North Sea, and has been a majo ...
and the highest residential accommodation in Europe when completed in 2006. It was surpassed in 2018 by the South Tower of the Deansgate Square
Deansgate Square, formerly known as Owen Street, is a skyscraper cluster on the southern edge of Manchester City Centre, consisting of four towers, the tallest of which is 201 metres (659 feet). The site is just south of Deansgate railway statio ...
project, also in Manchester. In January 2007, the independent Casino Advisory Panel licensed Manchester to build the UK's only supercasino
In the United Kingdom, a regional casino (super casino or mega casino) was the largest category of casino permitted under law – equivalent in size to the larger casinos in Las Vegas. The first regional casino was proposed in 2007 for Manchester ...
, but plans were abandoned in February 2008.
On 22 May 2017, an Islamist terrorist
Islamic terrorism (also known as Islamist terrorism or radical Islamic terrorism) refers to terrorist acts with religious motivations carried out by fundamentalist militant Islamists and Islamic extremists.
Incidents and fatalities ...
carried out a bombing at an Ariana Grande
Ariana Grande-Butera ( ; born June 26, 1993) is an American singer, songwriter, and actress. Her four-octave vocal range has received critical acclaim, and her personal life has been the subject of widespread media attention. She has received ...
concert in the Manchester Arena
Manchester Arena, currently referred to as the AO Arena for sponsorship reasons, is an indoor arena in Manchester, England, immediately north of the Manchester city centre, city centre and partly above Manchester Victoria station in air rights s ...
; the bomb killed 23, including the attacker, and injured over 800. It was the deadliest terrorist attack and first suicide bombing in Britain since the 7 July 2005 London bombings
The 7 July 2005 London bombings, often referred to as 7/7, were a series of four coordinated suicide attacks carried out by Islamic terrorists in London that targeted commuters travelling on the city's public transport system during the mo ...
. It caused worldwide condemnation and changed the UK's threat level to "critical" for the first time since 2007.
Birmingham has historically been considered to be England or the UK's second city, but in the 21st century claims to this unofficial title have also been made for Manchester.
Government
The City of Manchester is governed by the Manchester City Council
Manchester City Council is the local authority for Manchester, a city and metropolitan borough in Greater Manchester, England. Manchester is the sixth largest city in England by population. Its city council is composed of 96 councillors, three ...
. The Greater Manchester Combined Authority
The Greater Manchester Combined Authority (GMCA) is a combined authority for Greater Manchester, England. It was established on 1 April 2011 and consists of 11 members; 10 indirectly elected members, each a directly elected councillor from one ...
, with a directly elected mayor, has responsibilities for economic strategy and transport, amongst other areas, on a Greater Manchester-wide basis. Manchester has been a member of the English Core Cities Group
The Core Cities Group (also Core Cities UK) is a self-selected and self-financed collaborative advocacy group of large regional cities in the United Kingdom outside Greater London. The group was formed in 1995 and serves as a partnership of el ...
since its inception in 1995.
The town of Manchester was granted a charter by Thomas Grelley in 1301, but lost its borough status
Borough status is granted by royal charter to local government districts in England, Wales and Northern Ireland. The status is purely honorary, and does not give any additional powers to the council or inhabitants of the district. In Scotland, s ...
in a court case of 1359. Until the 19th century local government was largely in the hands of manorial court
The manorial courts were the lowest courts of law in England during the feudal period. They had a civil jurisdiction limited both in subject matter and geography. They dealt with matters over which the lord of the manor had jurisdiction, primarily ...
s, the last of which was dissolved in 1846.
From a very early time, the township of Manchester
A township is a kind of human settlement or administrative subdivision, with its meaning varying in different countries.
Although the term is occasionally associated with an urban area, that tends to be an exception to the rule. In Australia, Ca ...
lay within the historic or ceremonial county boundaries of Lancashire
Lancashire ( , ; abbreviated Lancs) is the name of a historic county, ceremonial county, and non-metropolitan county in North West England. The boundaries of these three areas differ significantly.
The non-metropolitan county of Lancashi ...
. Pevsner Pevsner or Pevzner is a Jewish surname. Notable people with the surname include:
* Aihud Pevsner (1925–2018), American physicist
* Antoine Pevsner (1886–1962), Russian sculptor, brother of Naum Gabo
* David Pevsner, American actor, singer, dan ...
wrote "That eighbouringStretford
Stretford is a market town in Trafford, Greater Manchester, England. It is situated on flat ground between the River Mersey and the Manchester Ship Canal, south of Manchester city centre, south of Salford and north-east of Altrincham. Str ...
and Salford
Salford () is a city and the largest settlement in the City of Salford metropolitan borough in Greater Manchester, England. In 2011, Salford had a population of 103,886. It is also the second and only other city in the metropolitan county afte ...
are not administratively one with Manchester is one of the most curious anomalies of England". A stroke of a baron's pen is said to have divorced Manchester and Salford, though it was not Salford that became separated from Manchester, it was Manchester, with its humbler line of lords, that was separated from Salford. It was this separation that resulted in Salford becoming the judicial seat of Salfordshire
The Salford Hundred (also known as Salfordshire) was one of the subdivisions of the historic county of Lancashire, in Northern England (see: Hundred (county division). Its name alludes to its judicial centre being the township of Salford (the ...
, which included the ancient parish of Manchester. Manchester later formed its own Poor Law Union using the name "Manchester". In 1792, Commissioners – usually known as "Police Commissioners" – were established for the social improvement of Manchester. Manchester regained its borough status in 1838, and comprised the townships of Beswick, Cheetham Hill
Cheetham is an inner-city area and electoral ward of Manchester, England, which in 2011 had a population of 22,562. It lies on the west bank of the River Irk, north of Manchester city centre,
close to the boundary with Salford, bounded by Brou ...
, Chorlton upon Medlock
Chorlton-on-Medlock or Chorlton-upon-Medlock is an inner city area of Manchester, England.
Historically in Lancashire, Chorlton-on-Medlock is bordered to the north by the River Medlock, which runs immediately south of Manchester city centre. It ...
and Hulme
Hulme () is an inner city area and Ward (politics), electoral ward of Manchester, England, immediately south of Manchester city centre. It has a significant industrial heritage.
Historic counties of England, Historically in Lancashire, the nam ...
. By 1846, with increasing population and greater industrialisation, the Borough Council had taken over the powers of the "Police Commissioners". In 1853, Manchester was granted city status City status is a symbolic and legal designation given by a national or subnational government. A municipality may receive city status because it already has the qualities of a city, or because it has some special purpose.
Historically, city status ...
.
In 1885, Bradford
Bradford is a city and the administrative centre of the City of Bradford district in West Yorkshire, England. The city is in the Pennines' eastern foothills on the banks of the Bradford Beck. Bradford had a population of 349,561 at the 2011 ...
, Harpurhey
Harpurhey ( ) is an inner-city suburb of Manchester in North West England, three miles north east of the Manchester city centre, city centre. Historically in Lancashire, the population at the United Kingdom Census 2011, 2011 census was 17,652.
A ...
, Rusholme
Rusholme () is an area of Manchester, England, two miles south of the city centre. The population of the ward at the 2011 census was 13,643. Rusholme is bounded by Chorlton-on-Medlock to the north, Victoria Park and Longsight to the east, Fallo ...
and parts of Moss Side
Moss Side is an Inner city, inner-city area of Manchester, England, south of the Manchester city centre, city centre, It had a population of 20,745 at the United Kingdom Census 2021, 2021 census. Moss Side is bounded by Hulme to the north, Cho ...
and Withington
Withington is a suburb of Manchester, England. Historically part of Lancashire, it lies from Manchester city centre, about south of Fallowfield, north-east of Didsbury and east of Chorlton-cum-Hardy. Withington has a population of just ...
townships became part of the City of Manchester. In 1889, the city became a county borough
County borough is a term introduced in 1889 in the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland, to refer to a borough or a city independent of county council control, similar to the unitary authorities created since the 1990s. An equivalent ter ...
, as did many larger Lancashire towns, and therefore not governed by Lancashire County Council
Lancashire County Council is the upper-tier local authority for the non-metropolitan county of Lancashire, England. It consists of 84 councillors. Since the 2017 election, the council has been under Conservative control.
Prior to the 2009 La ...
. Between 1890 and 1933, more areas were added to the city, which had been administered by Lancashire County Council, including former villages such as Burnage
Burnage is a suburb of the city of Manchester in North West England, about south of Manchester city centre and bisected by the dual carriageway of Kingsway. Within the boundaries of the historic county of Lancashire, the population of the Bur ...
, Chorlton-cum-Hardy
Chorlton-cum-Hardy is a suburban area of Manchester, England, southwest of the Manchester city centre, city centre. Chorlton (ward), Chorlton ward had a population of 14,138 at the United Kingdom Census 2011, 2011 census, and Chorlton Park (w ...
, Didsbury
Didsbury is a suburban area of Manchester, England, on the north bank of the River Mersey, south of Manchester city centre. The population at the 2011 census was 26,788.
Within the boundaries of the historic county of Lancashire, there are ...
, Fallowfield
Fallowfield is a suburb of Manchester, England, with a population at the 2011 census of 15,211. Historically in Lancashire, it lies south of Manchester city centre and is bisected east–west by Wilmslow Road and north–south by Wil ...
, Levenshulme
Levenshulme () is an area of Manchester, England, bordering Fallowfield, Longsight, Gorton, Burnage, Heaton Chapel and Reddish; it is approximately halfway between Stockport and Manchester city centre on the A6. Levenshulme is predominantly re ...
, Longsight
Longsight is an inner city suburb of Manchester, England, located south of the city centre. It is bounded by Ardwick and West Gorton to the north; Levenshulme to the south; and Chorlton-on-Medlock, Victoria Park and Fallowfield to the west. ...
, and Withington
Withington is a suburb of Manchester, England. Historically part of Lancashire, it lies from Manchester city centre, about south of Fallowfield, north-east of Didsbury and east of Chorlton-cum-Hardy. Withington has a population of just ...
. In 1931, the Cheshire
Cheshire ( ) is a ceremonial and historic county in North West England, bordered by Wales to the west, Merseyside and Greater Manchester to the north, Derbyshire to the east, and Staffordshire and Shropshire to the south. Cheshire's county t ...
civil parishes
In England, a civil parish is a type of administrative parish used for local government. It is a territorial designation which is the lowest tier of local government below districts and counties, or their combined form, the unitary authority. ...
of Baguley
Baguley ( ) is an electoral ward of the city of Manchester in Wythenshawe, England. The population at the 2011 census was 14,794.
Baguley is derived from the Old English words Bagca, badger, and Leah, clearing or meadow.
Historically in Cheshi ...
, Northenden
Northenden is a suburb of Manchester, Greater Manchester, England, with a population of 14,771 at the 2011 census. It lies on the south side of the River Mersey, west of Stockport and south of Manchester city centre, bounded by Didsbury t ...
and Northen Etchells
Northen Etchells was a township in Cheshire, England.
"Northen" is an old name for Northenden and "Etchells" came from Anglo-Saxon ''ēcels'' = "land added to an estate".
Geography
Northen Etchells covered the rural area that includes much of ...
from the south of the River Mersey
The River Mersey () is in North West England. Its name derives from Old English and means "boundary river", possibly referring to its having been a border between the ancient kingdoms of Mercia and Northumbria. For centuries it has formed part ...
were added. In 1974, by way of the Local Government Act 1972
The Local Government Act 1972 (c. 70) is an Act of the Parliament of the United Kingdom that reformed local government in England and Wales on 1 April 1974. It was one of the most significant Acts of Parliament to be passed by the Heath Gov ...
, the City of Manchester became a metropolitan district of the metropolitan county of Greater Manchester
Greater Manchester is a metropolitan county and combined authority, combined authority area in North West England, with a population of 2.8 million; comprising ten metropolitan boroughs: City of Manchester, Manchester, City of Salford, Salford ...
. That year, Ringway, Greater Manchester, Ringway, the village where the Manchester Airport is located, was added to the city.
In November 2014, it was announced that Greater Manchester would receive a new directly elected mayor. The mayor would have fiscal control over health, transport, housing and police in the area. Andy Burnham was elected as the first mayor of Greater Manchester in 2017 Greater Manchester mayoral election, 2017.
Geography
At , northwest of London, Manchester lies in a bowl-shaped land area bordered to the north and east by the Pennines
The Pennines (), also known as the Pennine Chain or Pennine Hills, are a range of uplands running between three regions of Northern England: North West England on the west, North East England and Yorkshire and the Humber on the east. Commo ...
, an upland chain that runs the length of northern England, and to the south by the Cheshire Plain
The Cheshire Plain is a relatively flat expanse of lowland within the county of Cheshire in North West England but extending south into Shropshire. It extends from the Mersey Valley in the north to the Shropshire Hills in the south, bounded b ...
. Manchester is north-east of Liverpool and north-west of Sheffield, making the city the halfway point between the two. The Manchester city centre, city centre is on the east bank of the River Irwell
The River Irwell ( ) is a tributary of the River Mersey in north west England. It rises at Irwell Springs on Deerplay Moor, approximately north of Bacup and flows southwards for to meet the Mersey near Irlam. The Irwell marks the boundary be ...
, near its confluences with the Rivers Medlock and Irk, and is relatively low-lying, being between above sea level. The River Mersey
The River Mersey () is in North West England. Its name derives from Old English and means "boundary river", possibly referring to its having been a border between the ancient kingdoms of Mercia and Northumbria. For centuries it has formed part ...
flows through the south of Manchester. Much of the inner city, especially in the south, is flat, offering extensive views from many highrise buildings in the city of the foothills and moors of the Pennines, which can often be capped with snow in the winter months. Manchester's geographic features were highly influential in its early development as the world's first industrial city. These features are its climate, its proximity to a port, seaport at Liverpool, the availability of water power from its rivers, and its nearby coal reserves.
The name Manchester, though officially applied only to the metropolitan district within Greater Manchester, has been applied to other, wider divisions of land, particularly across much of the Greater Manchester county and urban area. The "Manchester City Zone", "M postcode area, Manchester post town" and the "Manchester Congestion Charge" are all examples of this.
For purposes of the Office for National Statistics, Manchester forms the most populous settlement within the Greater Manchester Urban Area, the United Kingdom's third-largest conurbation. There is a mix of high-density urban and suburban locations. The largest open space in the city, at around , is Heaton Park. Manchester is contiguous on all sides with several large settlements, except for a small section along its southern boundary with Cheshire
Cheshire ( ) is a ceremonial and historic county in North West England, bordered by Wales to the west, Merseyside and Greater Manchester to the north, Derbyshire to the east, and Staffordshire and Shropshire to the south. Cheshire's county t ...
. The M60 motorway (Great Britain), M60 and M56 motorways pass through Northenden
Northenden is a suburb of Manchester, Greater Manchester, England, with a population of 14,771 at the 2011 census. It lies on the south side of the River Mersey, west of Stockport and south of Manchester city centre, bounded by Didsbury t ...
and Wythenshawe
Wythenshawe () is a district of the city of Manchester, England. Historic counties of England, Historically in Cheshire, Wythenshawe was transferred in 1931 to the City of Manchester, which had begun building a massive housing estate there in the ...
respectively in the south of Manchester. Heavy rail lines enter the city from all directions, the principal destination being Manchester Piccadilly station.
Climate
Manchester experiences a temperate oceanic climate (Köppen climate classification, Köppen: ''Cfb''), like much of the British Isles, with warm summers and cool winters. Summer daytime temperatures regularly top 20°C, quite often reaching 25°C on sunny days during July and August in particular. In more recent years, temperatures have occasionally reached over 30°C. There is regular but generally light precipitation throughout the year. The city's average annual rainfall is compared to a UK average of , and its mean rain days are 140.4 per annum, compared to the UK average of 154.4. Manchester has a relatively high humidity level, and this, along with abundant soft water, was one factor that led to advancement of the textile industry in the area. Snowfalls are not common in the city because of the Urban climate, urban warming effect but the West Pennine Moors to the north-west, South Pennines to the north-east and Peak District to the east receive more snow, which can close roads leading out of the city. They include the A62 road, A62 via Oldham
Oldham is a large town in Greater Manchester, England, amid the Pennines and between the rivers Irk and Medlock, southeast of Rochdale and northeast of Manchester. It is the administrative centre of the Metropolitan Borough of Oldham, wh ...
and Standedge, the A57 road, A57, Snake Pass, towards Sheffield, and the M62 motorway#Milnrow to Outlane, Pennine section of the M62. The lowest temperature ever recorded in Manchester was on 7 January 2010.
Green belt
Manchester lies at the centre of a Green belt (United Kingdom), green belt region extending into the wider surrounding counties. This reduces urban sprawl, prevents towns in the conurbation from further convergence, protects the identity of outlying communities, and preserves nearby countryside. It is achieved by restricting inappropriate development within the designated areas and imposing stricter conditions on permitted building.
Due to being already highly urban, the city contains limited portions of protected green-belt area within Greenfield land, greenfield throughout the borough, with minimal development opportunities, at Clayton Vale, Heaton Park, Chorlton Water Park along with the Chorlton Ees & Ivy Green nature reserve and the floodplain surrounding the River Mersey, as well as the southern area around Manchester Airport. The green belt was first drawn up in 1961.
Demographics
Historically the population of Manchester began to increase rapidly during the Victorian era
In the history of the United Kingdom and the British Empire, the Victorian era was the period of Queen Victoria's reign, from 20 June 1837 until her death on 22 January 1901. The era followed the Georgian period and preceded the Edwardia ...
, estimated at 354,930 for Manchester and 110,833 for Salford in 1865, and peaking at 766,311 in 1931. From then the population began to decrease rapidly, due to Slum clearance in the United Kingdom, slum clearance and the increased building of Public housing, social housing overspill estates by Manchester City Council after the Second World War such as Hattersley and Langley, Greater Manchester, Langley.
The 2012 mid-year estimate for the population of Manchester was 510,700. This was an increase of 7,900, or 1.6 per cent, since the 2011 estimate. Since 2001, the population has grown by 87,900, or 20.8 per cent, making Manchester the third fastest-growing area in the 2011 census. The city experienced the greatest percentage population growth outside London, with an increase of 19 per cent to over 500,000. Manchester's population is projected to reach 532,200 by 2021, an increase of 5.8 per cent from 2011. This represents a slower rate of growth than the previous decade.[
The ]Greater Manchester Built-up Area
The Greater Manchester Built-up Area is an area of land defined by the Office for National Statistics (ONS), consisting of the large conurbation that encompasses the urban element of the city of Manchester and the metropolitan area that forms ...
in 2011 had an estimated population of 2,553,400. In 2012 an estimated 2,702,200 people lived in Greater Manchester
Greater Manchester is a metropolitan county and combined authority, combined authority area in North West England, with a population of 2.8 million; comprising ten metropolitan boroughs: City of Manchester, Manchester, City of Salford, Salford ...
. An 6,547,000 people were estimated in 2012 to live within of Manchester and 11,694,000 within .[
Between the beginning of July 2011 and end of June 2012 (mid-year estimate date), births exceeded deaths by 4,800. Migration (internal and international) and other changes accounted for a net increase of 3,100 people between July 2011 and June 2012. Compared with Greater Manchester and with England, Manchester has a younger population, with a particularly large 20–35 age group.][
There were 76,095 undergraduate and postgraduate students at Manchester Metropolitan University, the ]University of Manchester
, mottoeng = Knowledge, Wisdom, Humanity
, established = 2004 – University of Manchester Predecessor institutions: 1956 – UMIST (as university college; university 1994) 1904 – Victoria University of Manchester 1880 – Victoria Univer ...
and Royal Northern College of Music in the 2011/2012 academic year.
Of all households in Manchester, 0.23 per cent were Same-Sex Civil union, Civil Partnership households, compared with an English national average of 0.16 per cent in 2011.
The Manchester Larger Urban Zone, a Eurostat measure of the functional city-region approximated to local government districts, had a population of 2,539,100 in 2004. In addition to Manchester itself, the LUZ includes the remainder of the county of Greater Manchester
Greater Manchester is a metropolitan county and combined authority, combined authority area in North West England, with a population of 2.8 million; comprising ten metropolitan boroughs: City of Manchester, Manchester, City of Salford, Salford ...
. The Manchester LUZ is the second largest within the United Kingdom, behind that of London.
Religion
Since the 2001 census, the proportion of Christians in Manchester has fallen by 22 per cent from 62.4 per cent to 48.7 per cent in 2011. The proportion of those with no religious affiliation rose by 58.1 per cent from 16 per cent to 25.3 per cent, whilst the proportion of Muslims increased by 73.6 per cent from 9.1 per cent to 15.8 per cent. The size of the Jewish population in Greater Manchester is the largest in Britain outside London.
Ethnicity
In terms of List of English districts and their ethnic composition, ethnic composition, the City of Manchester has the highest non-white proportion of any district in Greater Manchester. Statistics from the United Kingdom Census 2011, 2011 census showed that 66.7 per cent of the population was White people, White (59.3 per cent White British, 2.4 per cent Irish migration to Great Britain, White Irish, 0.1 per cent Gypsy (term), Gypsy or Irish Traveller, 4.9 per cent Other White – although the size of mixed European and British ethnic groups is unclear, there are reportedly over 25,000 people in Greater Manchester of at least partial Italian Briton, Italian descent alone, which represents 5.5 per cent of the population of Greater Manchester). 4.7 per cent were Mixed (United Kingdom ethnicity category), mixed race (1.8 per cent White and Black Caribbean, 0.9 per cent White and Black African, 1.0 per cent White and Asian, 1.0 per cent other mixed), 17.1 per cent British Asian, Asian (2.3 per cent British Indian, Indian, 8.5 per cent British Pakistanis, Pakistani, 1.3 per cent British Bangladeshi, Bangladeshi, 2.7 per cent British Chinese, Chinese, 2.3 per cent other Asian), 8.6 per cent Black British, Black (5.1 per cent African, 1.6 per cent other Black), 1.9 per cent British Arab, Arab and 1.2 per cent of other ethnic heritage.
Kidd identifies Moss Side
Moss Side is an Inner city, inner-city area of Manchester, England, south of the Manchester city centre, city centre, It had a population of 20,745 at the United Kingdom Census 2021, 2021 census. Moss Side is bounded by Hulme to the north, Cho ...
, Longsight
Longsight is an inner city suburb of Manchester, England, located south of the city centre. It is bounded by Ardwick and West Gorton to the north; Levenshulme to the south; and Chorlton-on-Medlock, Victoria Park and Fallowfield to the west. ...
, Cheetham Hill
Cheetham is an inner-city area and electoral ward of Manchester, England, which in 2011 had a population of 22,562. It lies on the west bank of the River Irk, north of Manchester city centre,
close to the boundary with Salford, bounded by Brou ...
, Rusholme
Rusholme () is an area of Manchester, England, two miles south of the city centre. The population of the ward at the 2011 census was 13,643. Rusholme is bounded by Chorlton-on-Medlock to the north, Victoria Park and Longsight to the east, Fallo ...
, as centres of population for ethnic minorities. Manchester's Irish Festival, including a St Patrick's Day parade, is one of Europe's largest. There is also a well-established Chinatown, Manchester, Chinatown in the city with a substantial number of Chinese restaurants and supermarkets. The area also attracts large numbers of Chinese students to the city who, in attending the local universities, contribute to Manchester having the third-largest Chinese population in Europe.
Ethnicity of Manchester, from 1991 to 2021:
Ethnicity of school pupils
Economy
The Office for National Statistics does not produce economic data for the City of Manchester alone, but includes four other metropolitan boroughs, Salford
Salford () is a city and the largest settlement in the City of Salford metropolitan borough in Greater Manchester, England. In 2011, Salford had a population of 103,886. It is also the second and only other city in the metropolitan county afte ...
, Stockport, Tameside, Trafford, in an area named Greater Manchester South, which had a Gross Value Added, GVA of £34.8 billion. The economy grew relatively strongly between 2002 and 2012, when growth was 2.3 per cent above the national average. The wider metropolitan economy is the third largest in the United Kingdom. It is ranked as a Alpha world city, beta world city by the Globalization and World Cities Research Network.
As the UK economy continues to recover from its 2008–2010 downturn, Manchester compares favourably according to recent figures. In 2012 it showed the strongest annual growth in business stock (5 per cent) of all Core Cities Group, core cities. The city had a relatively sharp increase in the number of business deaths, the largest increase in all the core cities, but this was offset by strong growth in new businesses, resulting in strong net growth.
Manchester's civic leadership has a reputation for business acumen. It owns two of the country's four busiest airports and uses its earnings to fund local projects. Meanwhile, KPMG's competitive alternative report found that in 2012 Manchester had the 9th lowest tax cost of any industrialised city in the world, and fiscal devolution has come earlier to Manchester than to any other British city: it can keep half the extra taxes it gets from transport investment.[
KPMG's competitive alternative report also found that Manchester was Europe's most affordable city featured, ranking slightly better than the Dutch cities of Rotterdam and Amsterdam, which all have a cost-of-living index of less than 95.]
Manchester is a city of contrast, where some of the country's most deprived and most affluent neighbourhoods can be found. According to 2010 Indices of Multiple Deprivation, Manchester is the 4th most deprived local council in England. Unemployment throughout 2012–2013 averaged 11.9 per cent, which was above national average, but lower than some of the country's comparable large cities. On the other hand, Greater Manchester is home to more multi-millionaires than anywhere outside London, with the City of Manchester taking up most of the tally. In 2013 Manchester was ranked 6th in the UK for quality of life, according to a rating of the UK's 12 largest cities.
Women fare better in Manchester than the rest of the country in comparative pay with men. The per hours-worked gender pay gap is 3.3 per cent compared with 11.1 per cent for Britain. 37 per cent of the working-age population in Manchester have degree-level qualifications, as opposed to an average of 33 per cent across other core cities, although its schools under-perform slightly compared with the national average.
Manchester has the largest UK office market outside London, according to GVA Grimley, with a quarterly office uptake (averaged over 2010–2014) of some 250,000 square ft – equivalent to the quarterly office uptake of Leeds, Liverpool and Newcastle upon Tyne, Newcastle combined and 90,000 square feet more than the nearest rival, Birmingham. The strong office market in Manchester has been partly attributed to "northshoring", (from offshoring) which entails the relocation or alternative creation of jobs away from the overheated South to areas where office space is possibly cheaper and the workforce market less saturated.
Landmarks
Manchester's buildings display a variety of architectural styles, ranging from Victorian architecture, Victorian to contemporary architecture. The widespread use of red brick characterises the city, much of the architecture of which harks back to its days as a global centre for the cotton trade. Just outside the immediate city centre are a large number of former cotton mill
A cotton mill is a building that houses spinning (textiles), spinning or weaving machinery for the production of yarn or cloth from cotton, an important product during the Industrial Revolution in the development of the factory system.
Althou ...
s, some of which have been left virtually untouched since their closure, while many have been redeveloped as apartment buildings and office space. Manchester Town Hall
Manchester Town Hall is a Victorian, Neo-gothic municipal building in Manchester, England. It is the ceremonial headquarters of Manchester City Council and houses a number of local government departments. The building faces Albert Square to th ...
, in Albert Square, Manchester, Albert Square, was built in the Gothic Revival architecture, Gothic revival style and is seen as one of the most important Victorian buildings in England.
Manchester also has a number of Tallest Buildings of Manchester, skyscrapers built in the 1960s and 1970s, the tallest being the CIS Tower near Manchester Victoria station until the Beetham Tower was completed in 2006. The latter exemplifies a new surge in high-rise building. It includes a Hilton Hotels, Hilton hotel, a restaurant and apartments. The largest skyscraper is now Deansgate Square South Tower, at 201 metres (659 feet).The Green Building, opposite Manchester Oxford Road railway station, Oxford Road station, is a pioneering eco-friendly housing project, while the recently completed One Angel Square, is one of the most sustainable large buildings in the world.
The award-winning Heaton Park in the north of the city borough is one of the largest municipal parks in Europe, covering of parkland. The city has 135 parks, gardens, and open spaces.
Two large squares hold many of Manchester's public monuments. Albert Square has monuments to Prince Albert of Saxe-Coburg-Gotha, Prince Albert, James Fraser (bishop), Bishop James Fraser, Oliver Heywood, William Ewart Gladstone, William Gladstone and John Bright. Piccadilly Gardens has monuments dedicated to Victoria of the United Kingdom, Queen Victoria, Robert Peel, James Watt and the Arthur Wellesley, 1st Duke of Wellington, Duke of Wellington. Manchester Cenotaph, The cenotaph in St Peter's Square is Manchester's main memorial to its war dead. Designed by Edwin Lutyens, it echoes the Cenotaph, Whitehall, the original on Whitehall in London. The Alan Turing Memorial in Sackville Park commemorates his role as the father of modern computing. A larger-than-life statue of Abraham Lincoln by George Gray Barnard in the eponymous Lincoln Square (having stood for many years in Platt Fields) was presented to the city by Mr and Mrs Charles Phelps Taft of Cincinnati, Ohio, to mark the part Lancashire played in the cotton famine and American Civil War of 1861–1865. A Concorde is on display near Manchester Airport.
Manchester has six designated local nature reserves: Chorlton Water Park, Blackley Forest, Clayton Vale and Chorlton Ees, Ivy Green, Boggart Hole Clough and Highfield Country Park.
Transport
Rail
Manchester Liverpool Road railway station, Manchester Liverpool Road was the world's first purpose-built passenger and goods railway station and served as the Manchester terminus on the Liverpool & Manchester Railway – the world's first Inter-city rail, inter-city passenger railway. It is still extant and its buildings form part of the Science & Industry Museum.
Two of the city's four main line termini did not survive the 1960s: Manchester Central railway station, Manchester Central and Manchester Exchange railway station, Manchester Exchange each closed in 1969. In addition, Manchester Mayfield railway station, Manchester Mayfield station closed to passenger services in 1960; its buildings and platforms are still extant, next to Manchester Piccadilly railway station, Piccadilly station, but are due to be redeveloped in the 2020s.
Today, the city is well served by its rail network although it is now working to capacity, and is at the centre of an extensive county-wide railway network, including the West Coast Main Line, with two mainline stations: Manchester Piccadilly railway station, Manchester Piccadilly and Manchester Victoria railway station, Manchester Victoria. The Manchester station group – comprising Manchester Piccadilly, Manchester Victoria, Manchester Oxford Road railway station, Manchester Oxford Road and Deansgate railway station, Deansgate – is the third busiest in the United Kingdom, with 44.9 million passengers recorded in 2017/2018. The High Speed 2 link to Birmingham Curzon Street railway station, Birmingham and Euston railway station, London is also planned, which if built will include a tunnel under Manchester on the final approach into an upgraded Piccadilly station.
Recent improvements in Manchester as part of the Northern Hub in the 2010s have been numerous electrification schemes into and through Manchester, redevelopment of Victoria station and construction of the Ordsall Chord directly linking Victoria and Piccadilly. Work on two new through platforms at Piccadilly and an extensive upgrade at Oxford Road had not commenced as of 2019. Manchester city centre, specifically the Castlefield Corridor, suffers from constrained rail capacity that frequently leads to delays and cancellations – a 2018 report found that all three major Manchester stations are among the top ten worst stations in the United Kingdom for punctuality, with Oxford Road deemed the worst in the country.
Metrolink (tram)
Manchester became the first city in the UK to acquire a modern light rail tram system when the Manchester Metrolink opened in 1992. In 2016–2017, 37.8 million passenger journeys were made on the system. The present system mostly runs on former commuter rail lines converted for light rail use, and crosses the city centre via on-street tram lines. The network consists of eight lines with List of Manchester Metrolink tram stops, 99 stops. A new line to the Trafford Centre tram stop, Trafford Centre opened in 2020.
Manchester city centre is also serviced by over a dozen heavy and light rail-based park and ride sites.
Bus
The city has one of the most extensive bus networks outside London, with over 50 bus companies operating in the Greater Manchester
Greater Manchester is a metropolitan county and combined authority, combined authority area in North West England, with a population of 2.8 million; comprising ten metropolitan boroughs: City of Manchester, Manchester, City of Salford, Salford ...
region radiating from the city. In 2011, 80 per cent of public transport journeys in Greater Manchester were made by bus, amounting to 220 million passenger journeys each year. After Bus deregulation in the United Kingdom, deregulation in 1986, the bus system was taken over by GM Buses, which after privatisation was split into GM Buses North and GM Buses South. Later these were taken over by First Greater Manchester and Stagecoach Manchester. Much of the First Greater Manchester business was sold to Diamond North West and Go North West in 2019. Go North West operate a three-route Zero-fare public transport, zero-fare Manchester Metroshuttle, which carries 2.8 million commuters a year around Manchester's business districts. Stagecoach Manchester is the Stagecoach Group's largest subsidiary and operates around 690 buses.
Air
Manchester Airport serves Manchester, Northern England
Northern England, also known as the North of England, the North Country, or simply the North, is the northern area of England. It broadly corresponds to the former borders of Angle Northumbria, the Anglo-Scandinavian Kingdom of Jorvik, and the ...
and North Wales. The airport is the Busiest airports in the United Kingdom by total passenger traffic#2010 / 2011 data, third busiest in the United Kingdom, with Busiest airports in the United Kingdom by total passenger traffic#2012 / 2013 data, over double the number of annual passengers of the next busiest non-London airport. Services cover many destinations in Europe, North America, the Caribbean, Africa, the Middle East, and Asia (with more destinations from Manchester than any other airport in Britain). A second runway was opened in 2001 and there have been continued terminal improvements. The airport has the highest rating available: "''Category 10''", encompassing an elite group of airports able to handle "''Code F''" aircraft, including the Airbus A380 and Boeing 747-8. From September 2010 the airport became one of only 17 airports in the world and the only UK airport other than Heathrow Airport and Gatwick Airport to operate the Airbus A380.
A smaller City Airport Manchester exists to the west of Manchester city centre. It was Manchester's first municipal airport and became the site of the first air traffic control tower in the UK, and the first municipal airfield in the UK to be licensed by the Air Ministry. Today, private Air charter, charter flights and general aviation use City. It also has a Flight training, flight school, and both the Greater Manchester Police#Air Support Unit, Greater Manchester Police Air Support Unit and the North West Air Ambulance have helicopters based there.
Canal
An extensive canal network, including the Manchester Ship Canal
The Manchester Ship Canal is a inland waterway in the North West of England linking Manchester to the Irish Sea. Starting at the Mersey Estuary at Eastham, near Ellesmere Port, Cheshire, it generally follows the original routes of the river ...
, was built to carry freight from the Industrial Revolution onward; the canals are still maintained, though now largely repurposed for leisure use. In 2012, plans were approved to introduce a water taxi service between Manchester city centre and MediaCityUK at Salford Quays
Salford Quays is an area of Salford, Greater Manchester, England, near the end of the Manchester Ship Canal. Previously the site of Manchester Docks, it became one of the first and largest urban regeneration projects in the United Kingdom foll ...
. It ceased to operate in June 2018, citing poor infrastructure.
Cycling
Cycling for transportation and leisure enjoys popularity in Manchester and the city also plays a major role in British cycle racing.
Culture
Music
Bands that have emerged from the Manchester music scene include Van der Graaf Generator, Oasis (band), Oasis, The Smiths, Joy Division and its successor group New Order (band), New Order, Buzzcocks, The Stone Roses, The Fall (band), The Fall, The Durutti Column, 10cc, Godley & Creme, The Verve, Elbow (band), Elbow, Doves (band), Doves, The Charlatans (English band), The Charlatans, M People, The 1975, Simply Red, Take That, Dutch Uncles, Everything Everything, Pale Waves and The Outfield. Manchester was credited as the main driving force behind British Indie music, indie music of the 1980s led by The Smiths, later including The Stone Roses, Happy Mondays, Inspiral Carpets, and James (band), James. The later groups came from what became known as the "Madchester" scene that also centred on The Haçienda nightclub developed by the founder of Factory Records, Tony Wilson. Although from southern England, The Chemical Brothers subsequently formed in Manchester. Former Smiths frontman Morrissey, whose lyrics often refer to Manchester locations and culture, later found international success as a solo artist. Previously, notable Manchester acts of the 1960s include The Hollies, Herman's Hermits, and Davy Jones (musician), Davy Jones of the Monkees (famed in the mid-1960s for their albums and their American TV show), and the earlier Bee Gees, who grew up in Chorlton-cum-Hardy, Chorlton. Another notable contemporary band from near Manchester is The Courteeners consisting of Liam Fray and four close friends. Singer-songwriter Ren Harvieu is also from Greater Manchester.
Its main pop music venue is Manchester Arena
Manchester Arena, currently referred to as the AO Arena for sponsorship reasons, is an indoor arena in Manchester, England, immediately north of the Manchester city centre, city centre and partly above Manchester Victoria station in air rights s ...
, voted "International Venue of the Year" in 2007.
With over 21,000 seats, it is the largest arena of its type in Europe. In terms of concertgoers, it is the busiest indoor arena in the world, ahead of Madison Square Garden in New York and The O2 Arena in London, which are second and third busiest. Other venues include Manchester Apollo, Albert Hall, Manchester, Albert Hall, O2 Victoria Warehouse, Victoria Warehouse and the Manchester Academy. Smaller venues include the Band on the Wall, the Night and Day Café, the Ruby Lounge, and The Deaf Institute. Manchester also has the most Independent music, indie and rock music events outside London.
Manchester has two symphony orchestras, the Hallé and the BBC Philharmonic, and a chamber orchestra, the Manchester Camerata. In the 1950s, the city was home to a so-called "New Music Manchester, Manchester School" of classical composers, which was composed of Harrison Birtwistle, Peter Maxwell Davies, David Ellis and Alexander Goehr. Manchester is a centre for musical education: the Royal Northern College of Music and Chetham's School of Music
Chetham's School of Music () is an independent co-educational music school in Manchester, England. Chetham's educates students between the ages of 8 and 18, all of whom enter via musical auditions. Students receive a full academic education alon ...
. Forerunners of the RNCM were the Northern School of Music (founded 1920) and the Royal Manchester College of Music (founded 1893), which merged in 1973. One of the earliest instructors and classical music pianists/conductors at the RNCM, shortly after its founding, was the Russian-born Arthur Friedheim, (1859–1932), who later had the music library at the famed Peabody Institute conservatory of music in Baltimore, Maryland, named after him. The main classical music venue was the Free Trade Hall
The Free Trade Hall on Peter Street, Manchester, England, was constructed in 1853–56 on St Peter's Fields, the site of the Peterloo Massacre. It is now a Radisson hotel.
The hall was built to commemorate the repeal of the Corn Laws in 1846. T ...
on Peter Street until the opening in 1996 of the 2,500 seat Bridgewater Hall.
Brass band (British style), Brass band music, a tradition in the north of England, is important to Manchester's musical heritage; some of the UK's leading bands, such as the Co-operative wholesale society, CWS Manchester Band and the Fairey Band, are from Manchester and surrounding areas, and the Whit Friday brass-band contest takes place annually in the neighbouring areas of Saddleworth and Tameside.
Performing arts
Manchester has a thriving theatre, opera and dance scene, with a number of large performance venues, including Manchester Opera House, which feature large-scale touring shows and West End productions; the Palace Theatre, Manchester, Palace Theatre; and the Royal Exchange Theatre, Manchester, Royal Exchange Theatre in Manchester's former cotton exchange, which is the largest theatre in the round in the UK.
Smaller venues include the Contact Theatre and Z-arts in Hulme. The Dancehouse on Oxford Road is dedicated to dance productions. In 2014, HOME (Manchester), HOME, a new custom-built arts complex opened. Housing two theatre spaces, five cinemas and an art exhibition space, it replaced the Cornerhouse and The Library Theatre.
Since 2007 the city has hosted the Manchester International Festival, a biennial international arts festival with a focus on original work, which has included major new commissions by artists, including Bjork. A government statement in 2014 announced a £78 million grant for a new "large-scale, ultra-flexible arts space" for the city. Later the council stated it had secured a further £32 million. The £110 million venue was confirmed in July 2016.[Pdf.]
The theatre, to be called The Factory (Manchester), The Factory, after Manchester's Factory Records, will provide a permanent home for the Manchester International Festival. It is due to open at the end of 2019.
Museums and galleries
Manchester's museums celebrate Manchester's Roman history, rich industrial heritage and its role in the Industrial Revolution
The Industrial Revolution was the transition to new manufacturing processes in Great Britain, continental Europe, and the United States, that occurred during the period from around 1760 to about 1820–1840. This transition included going f ...
, the textile industry, the Trade Union movement, women's suffrage and Association football, football. A reconstructed part of the Roman fort of Mamucium is open to the public in Castlefield
Castlefield is an inner-city conservation area in Manchester, North West England. The conservation area which bears its name is bounded by the River Irwell, A34 road, Quay Street, Deansgate and A56 road, Chester Road. It was the site of the Roma ...
. The Museum of Science and Industry (Manchester), Science and Industry Museum, housed in the former Liverpool Road railway station (Manchester), Liverpool Road railway station, has a large collection of steam locomotives, industrial machinery, aircraft and a replica of the world's first stored computer program (known as the Manchester Baby). The Museum of Transport in Manchester, Museum of Transport displays a collection of historic buses and trams. Trafford Park in the neighbouring borough of Trafford is home to Imperial War Museum North. The Manchester Museum opened to the public in the 1880s, has notable Egyptology and natural history collections.
The municipally owned Manchester Art Gallery in Mosley Street houses a permanent collection of European painting and one of Britain's main collections of Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood, Pre-Raphaelite paintings.
In the south of the city, the Whitworth Art Gallery displays modern art, sculpture and textiles and was voted Museum of the Year in 2015. Other exhibition spaces and museums in Manchester include Islington Mill in Salford, the National Football Museum at Urbis, Castlefield Gallery, the Manchester Costume Gallery at Platt Fields Park, the People's History Museum and the Manchester Jewish Museum.
The work of Stretford
Stretford is a market town in Trafford, Greater Manchester, England. It is situated on flat ground between the River Mersey and the Manchester Ship Canal, south of Manchester city centre, south of Salford and north-east of Altrincham. Str ...
-born painter , known for "matchstick" paintings of industrial Manchester and Salford, can be seen in the City and Whitworth Manchester galleries, and at the Lowry art centre in Salford Quays
Salford Quays is an area of Salford, Greater Manchester, England, near the end of the Manchester Ship Canal. Previously the site of Manchester Docks, it became one of the first and largest urban regeneration projects in the United Kingdom foll ...
(in the neighbouring borough of Salford), which devotes a large permanent exhibition to his works.
Literature
Manchester is a UNESCO City of Literature known for a "radical literary history". Manchester in the 19th century featured in works highlighting the changes that industrialisation had brought. They include Elizabeth Gaskell's novel ''Mary Barton: A Tale of Manchester Life'' (1848), and studies such as ''The Condition of the Working Class in England in 1844
''The Condition of the Working Class in England'' (german: Die Lage der arbeitenden Klasse in England) is an 1845 book by the German philosopher Friedrich Engels, a study of the industrial working class in Victorian England. Engels' first book, ...
'' by Friedrich Engels
Friedrich Engels ( ,["Engels"](_blank)
'' Karl Marx
Karl Heinrich Marx (; 5 May 1818 – 14 March 1883) was a German philosopher, economist, historian, sociologist, political theorist, journalist, critic of political economy, and socialist revolutionary. His best-known titles are the 1848 ...
. The two began writing ''The Communist Manifesto'' in Chetham's Library
Chetham's Library in Manchester, England, is the oldest free public reference library in the English-speaking world.Nicholls (2004), p. 20. Chetham's Hospital, which contains both the library and Chetham's School of Music, was established in ...
– founded in 1653 and claiming to be the oldest public library in the English-speaking world. Elsewhere in the city, the John Rylands Library holds an extensive collection of early printing. The Rylands Library Papyrus P52, believed to be the earliest extant New Testament text, is on permanent display there.
Letitia Landon's poetical illustration ''Manchester'' to a vista over the city by G. Pickering in Fisher's Drawing Room Scrap Book, 1835, records the rapid growth of the city and its cultural importance.
Charles Dickens is reputed to have set his novel ''Hard Times (novel), Hard Times'' in the city, and though partly modelled on Preston, Lancashire, Preston, it shows the influence of his friend Mrs Gaskell. Gaskell penned all her novels but ''Mary Barton'' at her home in 84 Plymouth Grove. Often her house played host to influential authors: Dickens, Charlotte Brontë, Harriet Beecher Stowe and Charles Eliot Norton, for example. It is now open as a literary museum.
Charlotte Brontë began writing her novel ''Jane Eyre'' in 1846, while staying at lodgings in Hulme
Hulme () is an inner city area and Ward (politics), electoral ward of Manchester, England, immediately south of Manchester city centre. It has a significant industrial heritage.
Historic counties of England, Historically in Lancashire, the nam ...
. She was accompanying her father Patrick Brontë, Patrick, who was convalescing in the city after cataract surgery. She probably envisioned Manchester Cathedral churchyard as the burial place for Jane's parents and the birthplace of Jane herself. Also associated with the city is the Victorian poet and novelist Isabella Banks, famed for her 1876 novel ''The Manchester Man (novel), The Manchester Man''. Anglo-American author Frances Hodgson Burnett was born in the city's Cheetham Hill
Cheetham is an inner-city area and electoral ward of Manchester, England, which in 2011 had a population of 22,562. It lies on the west bank of the River Irk, north of Manchester city centre,
close to the boundary with Salford, bounded by Brou ...
district in 1849, and wrote much of her classic children's novel ''The Secret Garden'' while visiting nearby Salford's Buile Hill Park.
Anthony Burgess is among the 20th-century writers who made Manchester their home. He wrote here the dystopian satire ''A Clockwork Orange (novel), A Clockwork Orange'' in 1962. Dame Carol Ann Duffy, Poet Laureate of the United Kingdom, Poet Laureate from 2009 to 2019, moved to the city in 1996 and lives in Didsbury, West Didsbury.
Nightlife
The night-time economy of Manchester has expanded significantly since about 1993, with investment from breweries in bars, public houses and clubs, along with active support from the local authorities.[ The more than 500 licensed premises][ in the city centre have a capacity to deal with more than visitors, with 110,000–130,000 people visiting on a typical weekend night,][ making Manchester the most popular city for events at 79 per thousand people. The night-time economy has a value of about £100 million, and supports 12,000 jobs.]
The Madchester scene of the 1980s, from which groups including The Stone Roses, the Happy Mondays, Inspiral Carpets, 808 State, James (band), James and The Charlatans UK, The Charlatans emerged, was based around clubs such as The Haçienda. The period was the subject of the movie ''24 Hour Party People''. Many of the big clubs suffered problems with organised crime at that time; Haslam describes one where staff were so completely intimidated that free admission and drinks were demanded (and given) and drugs were openly dealt.[ Following a series of drug-related violent incidents, The Haçienda closed in 1997.][
]
Gay village
Public houses in the Canal Street (Manchester), Canal Street area have had an LGBTQ+ clientele since at least 1940,[ and now form the centre of Manchester's LGBTQ+ community. Since the opening of new bars and clubs, the area attracts 20,000 visitors each weekend][ and has hosted a popular festival, Manchester Pride, each August since 1995.
]
Education
There are three universities in the City of Manchester. The University of Manchester
, mottoeng = Knowledge, Wisdom, Humanity
, established = 2004 – University of Manchester Predecessor institutions: 1956 – UMIST (as university college; university 1994) 1904 – Victoria University of Manchester 1880 – Victoria Univer ...
, Manchester Metropolitan University and Royal Northern College of Music. The University of Manchester is the second largest full-time non-collegiate university in the United Kingdom, created in 2004 by the merger of Victoria University of Manchester, founded in 1904, and UMIST, founded in 1956, having developed from the Mechanics' Institute, Manchester, Mechanics' Institute founded, as indicated in the university's logo, in 1824. The University of Manchester includes the Manchester Business School, which offered the first MBA course in the UK in 1965.
Manchester Metropolitan University was formed as Manchester Polytechnic on the merger of three colleges in 1970. It gained university status in 1992, and in the same year absorbed Crewe and Alsager College of Higher Education in South Cheshire. The Cheshire campus permanently closed in 2019. The University of Law, the largest provider of vocation legal training in Europe, has a campus in the city.
The three universities are grouped around Oxford Road on the southern side of the city centre, which forms Europe's largest urban higher-education precinct. Together they have a combined population of over 80,000 students as of 2022.
One of Manchester's notable secondary schools is Manchester Grammar School. Established in 1515,
as a free grammar school next to what is now the cathedral, it moved in 1931 to Old Hall Lane in Fallowfield, south Manchester, to accommodate the growing student body. In the post-war period, it was a direct grant grammar school (i.e. partially state funded), but it reverted to independent status in 1976 after abolition of the direct-grant system. Its previous premises are now used by Chetham's School of Music
Chetham's School of Music () is an independent co-educational music school in Manchester, England. Chetham's educates students between the ages of 8 and 18, all of whom enter via musical auditions. Students receive a full academic education alon ...
. There are three schools nearby: William Hulme's Grammar School, Withington Girls' School and Manchester High School for Girls.
In 2019, the Manchester Local Education Authority was ranked second to last out of Greater Manchester's ten LEAs and 140th out of 151 in the country LEAs based on the percentage of pupils attaining grades 4 or above in English and mathematics GCSEs (General Certificate of Secondary Education) with 56.2 per cent compared with the national average of 64.9 per cent. Of the 63 secondary schools in the LEA, four had 80 per cent or more pupils achieving Grade 4 or above in English and maths GCSEs: Manchester High School for Girls, King David School, Manchester, The King David High School, Manchester Islamic High School for Girls, and Kassim Darwish Grammar School for Boys.
Sport
Two Premier League association football, football clubs bear the city's name – Manchester City FC, Manchester City and Manchester United FC, Manchester United. Manchester City's home is the City of Manchester Stadium in Bradford, Manchester, Bradford in east Manchester, built for the 2002 Commonwealth Games
The 2002 Commonwealth Games, officially known as the XVII Commonwealth Games and commonly known as Manchester 2002 were held in Manchester, England, from 25 July to 4 August, 2002. The 2002 Games were to be hosted in the United Kingdom to coin ...
and then reconfigured as a football ground. Manchester United play home games at Old Trafford (football ground), Old Trafford, the largest club ground in the United Kingdom – although this is not located within the City of Manchester and is in the neighbouring metropolitan borough of Trafford. Lancashire County Cricket Club also play in Trafford at Old Trafford Cricket Ground and regularly hosts international test matches.
Sporting facilities built for the 2002 Commonwealth Games
The 2002 Commonwealth Games, officially known as the XVII Commonwealth Games and commonly known as Manchester 2002 were held in Manchester, England, from 25 July to 4 August, 2002. The 2002 Games were to be hosted in the United Kingdom to coin ...
include the City of Manchester Stadium, National Squash Centre and Manchester Aquatics Centre. Manchester has competed twice to host the Olympic Games, beaten by Atlanta for Bids for the 1996 Summer Olympics, 1996 and Sydney for Bids for the 2000 Summer Olympics, 2000. The National Cycling Centre includes a velodrome, BMX Arena and Mountainbike trials, and is the home of British Cycling, UCI ProTeam Team Sky and Sky Track Cycling. The Manchester Velodrome, built as a part of the bid for the 2000 games, has become a catalyst for British success in cycling. The velodrome hosted the UCI Track Cycling World Championships for a record third time in 2008. The National Indoor BMX Arena (2,000 capacity) adjacent to the velodrome opened in 2011. The Manchester Arena
Manchester Arena, currently referred to as the AO Arena for sponsorship reasons, is an indoor arena in Manchester, England, immediately north of the Manchester city centre, city centre and partly above Manchester Victoria station in air rights s ...
hosted the FINA World Swimming Championships in 2008. Manchester hosted the World Open (squash), World Squash Championships in 2008, the 2010 World Lacrosse Championship, the 2013 Ashes series, 2013 Rugby League World Cup and 2015 Rugby World Cup.
Media
Print
''The Guardian'' newspaper was founded in the city in 1821 as ''The Manchester Guardian''. Until 2008, its head office was still in the city, though many of its management functions were moved to London in 1964. For many years most national newspapers had offices in Manchester: ''The Daily Telegraph'', ''Daily Express'', ''Daily Mail'', ''Daily Mirror'', ''The Sun (United Kingdom), The Sun''. At its height, 1,500 journalists were employed, earning the city the nickname "second Fleet Street". In the 1980s the titles closed their northern offices and centred their operations in London.
The main regional newspaper in the city is the ''Manchester Evening News'', which was for over 80 years the sister publication of ''The Manchester Guardian''. The ''Manchester Evening News'' has the largest circulation of a UK regional evening newspaper and is distributed free of charge in the city centre on Thursdays and Fridays, but paid for in the suburbs. Despite its title, it is available all day.
Several local weekly free papers are distributed by the MEN group. The ''Metro (Associated Metro Limited), Metro North West'' is available free at Metrolink stops, rail stations and other busy locations.
An attempt to launch a Northern daily newspaper, the ''North West Times'', employing journalists made redundant by other titles, closed in 1988.[ Another attempt was made with the ''North West Enquirer'', which hoped to provide a true "regional" newspaper for the North West England, North West, much in the same vein as the ''Yorkshire Post'' does for Yorkshire or ''The Northern Echo'' does for the North East England, North East; it folded in October 2006.]
Television
Manchester has been a centre of Television in the United Kingdom, television broadcasting since the 1950s. A number of television studios have been in operation around the city, and have since relocated to MediaCityUK in neighbouring Salford.
The ITV (TV network), ITV franchise Granada Television has been based in Manchester since 1954. Now based at MediaCityUK, the company's former headquarters at Granada Studios on Quay Street with its distinctive illuminated sign were a prominent landmark on the Manchester skyline for several decades. Granada produces ''Coronation Street,'' local news and programmes for North West England. Although its influence has waned, Granada had been described as "the best commercial television company in the world".
With the growth in regional television in the 1950s, Manchester became one of the BBC's three main centres in England. In 1954, the BBC opened its first regional BBC Television studio outside London, Dickenson Road Studios, in a converted Methodist chapel in Rusholme
Rusholme () is an area of Manchester, England, two miles south of the city centre. The population of the ward at the 2011 census was 13,643. Rusholme is bounded by Chorlton-on-Medlock to the north, Victoria Park and Longsight to the east, Fallo ...
. The first edition of ''Top of the Pops'' was broadcast here on New Year's Day 1964.
From 1975, BBC programmes including ''Mastermind (television), Mastermind'', and ''Real Story'', were made at New Broadcasting House (Manchester), New Broadcasting House on Oxford Road, Manchester, Oxford Road. The ''Cutting It'' series set in the city's Northern Quarter and ''The Street (BBC series), The Street'' were set in Manchester as was ''Life on Mars (UK TV series), Life on Mars''. Manchester was the regional base for BBC One North West Region programmes before it relocated to MediaCityUK in nearby Salford Quays
Salford Quays is an area of Salford, Greater Manchester, England, near the end of the Manchester Ship Canal. Previously the site of Manchester Docks, it became one of the first and largest urban regeneration projects in the United Kingdom foll ...
.
The Manchester television channel, Channel M, owned by the Guardian Media Group operated from 2000, but closed in 2012. Manchester is also covered by two internet television channels: Quays News and Manchester.tv. The city had a new terrestrial channel from January 2014 when YourTV Manchester, which won the OFCOM licence bid in February 2013. It began its first broadcast, but in 2015, That's Manchester took over to air on 31 May and launched the freeview channel 8 service slot, before moving to channel 7 in April 2016.
Radio
The city has the highest number of local radio stations outside London, including BBC Radio Manchester, Hits Radio Manchester, Capital Manchester and Lancashire, Greatest Hits Radio Manchester & The North West, Heart North West, Smooth North West, Gold (British radio network), Gold, Radio X (United Kingdom), Radio X, NMFM (North Manchester FM) and XS Manchester.[ Student radio stations include Fuse FM at the University of Manchester and MMU Radio at the Manchester Metropolitan University. A community radio network is coordinated by Radio Regen, with stations covering Ardwick, ]Longsight
Longsight is an inner city suburb of Manchester, England, located south of the city centre. It is bounded by Ardwick and West Gorton to the north; Levenshulme to the south; and Chorlton-on-Medlock, Victoria Park and Fallowfield to the west. ...
and Levenshulme
Levenshulme () is an area of Manchester, England, bordering Fallowfield, Longsight, Gorton, Burnage, Heaton Chapel and Reddish; it is approximately halfway between Stockport and Manchester city centre on the A6. Levenshulme is predominantly re ...
(All FM 96.9) and Wythenshawe
Wythenshawe () is a district of the city of Manchester, England. Historic counties of England, Historically in Cheshire, Wythenshawe was transferred in 1931 to the City of Manchester, which had begun building a massive housing estate there in the ...
(Wythenshawe FM 97.2).[Se]
Radio
at the Ofcom web site and subpages, especially th
directory of analogue radio stations
, the map (PDF), and the map (PDF). Retrieved on 6 November 2007. Defunct radio stations include Sunset 102, which became Kiss 102, then Galaxy Manchester), and KFM which became Signal Cheshire (later Imagine FM). These stations and pirate radio played a significant role in the city's house music culture, the Madchester scene.
International relations
Manchester has formal Town twinning, twinning arrangements (or "friendship agreements") with several places. In addition, the British Council maintains a metropolitan centre in Manchester.
*Amsterdam, Netherlands (2007)
*Bilwi, Nicaragua
*Chemnitz, Germany (1983)
*Córdoba, Spain, Córdoba, Spain
*Faisalabad, Pakistan (1997)
*Los Angeles, United States (2009)
*Rehovot, Israel
*Saint Petersburg, Russia (1962)
*Wuhan, People's Republic of China (1986)
*Melbourne, Australia
*Osaka, Japan
Manchester is home to the largest group of consul (representative), consuls in the UK outside London. The expansion of international trade links during the Industrial Revolution led to the introduction of the first consuls in the 1820s and since then over 800, from all parts of the world, have been based in Manchester. Manchester hosts consular services for most of the north of England.
See also
*List of Freemen of the City of Manchester
*Manchester dialect
*Symbols of Manchester, including the city's Symbols of Manchester#Worker bee, worker bee motif
*Tampere
References
Further reading
Architecture
*
*
*
*
*
*
General
*
*
*
*
*
*
*
*
Culture
*
*
*
*
*
*
*
*
Sport
*
*
External links
Manchester City Council
Official tourist board site
{{Authority control
Manchester,
1st-century establishments in Roman Britain
79 establishments
Cities in North West England
Metropolitan boroughs of Greater Manchester
Populated places established in the 1st century
Towns in Greater Manchester