Manchester

Manchester Manchester ( pronounced /ˈmæntʃɛstə/) is a city and metropolitan borough of Greater Manchester , England . Manchester, which has had city status since 1853, has a population of 441,200, making it the most populous district of Greater Manchester.Manchester also forms part of the larger Greater Manchester Urban Area which has a population of 2,240,230, making it the United Kingdom 's third largest conurbation . Manchester is often described as the " Capital of the North ". Forming part of the English Core Cities Group , Manchester today is a centre of the arts , the media , higher education and commerce and competes for the position of the United Kingdom's second city with Birmingham . It is the third most visited city in the United Kingdom by foreign visitors, after London and Edinburgh . [8] Manchester is also well known for its sporting connections, with two major Premier League football teams, Manchester United and Manchester City , and hosted the XVII Commonwealth Games in 2002. Manchester is credited as the world's first industrialised cityand for the subsequent central role it played during the Industrial Revolution . It was the dominant international centre of textile manufacture and cotton spinning . During the 19th century it was nicknamed Cottonopolis , denoting that the area was a metropolis of cotton mills . Manchester City Centre is now on a "tentative list" of UNESCO World Heritage Sites , mainly due to its network of canals and mills, which facilitated its development during the 19th century.

Liverpool Road railway station, Manchester

History of Manchester Manchester developed over little more than a century from a minor town into the world's first and most industrial city. Its history embraces the world's first passenger railway station and first public library . It also led the political and economic reform of 19th century Britain as the vanguard of free trade . By the start of the 21st century it had become a post-industrial city dominated by sport , broadcasting and education .

Manchester (or Cottonopolis as it was sometimes referred) during the early 19th century.

Early history The Manchester area was settled in or before Roman times. [21] The original fort was constructed by General Gnaeus Julius Agricola as a staging post between Chester ( Deva ) and York ( Eboracum ). This Roman settlement was named Mamucium ( Celtic for " breast -shaped hill") after the hill that it was sited on to be better defensible. The original location of the fort is now in the City of Salford . The fort was abandoned in the Dark Ages , and at some point in time the focus of settlement shifted from this spot to the confluence of the rivers Irwell and Irk . In medieval times, this area included a fortified manor house. Thomas De La Warre, a manorial lord who also happened to be a priest, gave the site to the church for use as a College of Priests around 1422, and commenced the construction of the Collegiate Church. The former is now Chetham's School of Music , and the latter Manchester Cathedral . Around the 13th century, Manchester grew heavily due to an influx of Flemish settlers who founded Manchester's new cotton industry [ citation needed ] and sparked the growth of the city to become Lancashire 's major industrial centre.

Industrial Revolution In the late 18th century, Manchester may have become the site of England's first entirely artificial canal when James Brindley built the Bridgewater Canal to bring coal from the eponymous Duke of Bridgewater's mines at Worsley. During the 19th century Manchester grew to become the centre of Lancashire 's cotton industry and was dubbed " Cottonopolis ". During this period the canal system grew, and Manchester became one end of the world's second passenger railway - the Liverpool and Manchester Railway . Manchester quickly grew into the most important industrial centre in the world, and, significantly, the first industrial society [ citation needed ] . The pace of change was fast and frightening. At that time, it seemed a place in which anything could happen — new industrial processes, new ways of thinking (the so called " Manchester School ", promoting free trade and laissez-faire ), 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. "What Manchester does today," it was said, "the rest of the world does tomorrow." [ citation needed ] Also during this period Manchester saw a rise in its population as Lancastarians, the Irish , Jews and many other people immigrated to the city [ citation needed ] .

As well as being a centre of capitalism the city saw its fair share of rebellion by the working and non-titled classes, with the most famous being the events on St Peter’s Field on 16 August 1819 which have become known as ' Peterloo '. The first Trades Union Congress was held in Manchester (at the Mechanics' Institute, David Street), from 2 to 6 June 1868 . Manchester was the subject of Friedrich Engels ' The Condition of the Working Class in England in 1844 , Engels himself spending much of his life in and around Manchester [ citation needed ] . Manchester was also an important cradle of the Labour Party and the Suffragette Movement. Manchester's golden age was perhaps the last quarter of the nineteenth century. Many of the great public buildings (including the Town Hall) 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 with even greater autonomy. During this period, the Manchester Ship Canal was created by the canalisation of the Rivers Irwell and Mersey for 36 miles from Salford to the Mersey estuary at the port of Liverpool. This enabled ocean going ships to sail right into the Salford docks. The docks functioned up until the 1970s , with their closure leading to a large increase in unemployment in the area [ citation needed ] . Manchester suffered greatly from the inter-war depression and the underlying structural changes that began to supplant the old industries, including textile manufacture.

1996 Manchester bombing During World War II Manchester was involved in heavy industrial construction. It was home to Avro (now BAE Systems ) which built countless aircraft for the Royal Air Force (RAF), the most famous being the Avro Lancaster bomber [ citation needed ] . The city was attacked a number of times by the Luftwaffe , particularly in the "Christmas Blitz" of 1941, which destroyed a large part of the historic city centre and seriously damaged the Cathedral On 15 June 1996 , the Provisional Irish Republican Army (IRA) detonated a large bomb in the city centre . The largest to be detonated on British soil, the bomb blast caused over 200 injuries and heavily damaged nearby buildings. World War II

The devastation left by the IRA bombing

Redevelopment Exchange Square undergoing regeneration. Spurred by the regeneration after the 1996 IRA bomb and aided by the XVII Commonwealth Games , Manchester's city centre has undergone a continued regeneration. New and renovated complexes such as The Printworks and the Triangle have become popular shopping and entertainment destinations. The completion of the renovated Manchester Arndale in September 2006 allowed the centre to hold the title of Europe's largest city centre shopping mall [ citation needed ] . Large sections of the city dating from the 1960s have been either demolished and re-developed or modernised with the use of glass and steel, including the Manchester Arndale . Old mills have been converted into modern apartments, Hulme has undergone extensive regeneration programmes, and million-pound lofthouse apartments have since been developed. The 169 metre tall, 47-storey Beetham Tower , completed in 2006, is the tallest building in the UK outside London and highest residential accommodation in the United Kingdom. The lower 23 floors form the Hilton Hotel, featuring a 'sky bar' on the 23rd floor. Its upper 24 floors are apartments.

Exchange Square undergoing regeneration.

SuperCasino In January 2007, Manchester was briefly awarded the licence to build the only supercasino allowed in the UK, but in March 2007 the House of Lords rejected the decision by three votes rendering the House of Commons acceptance meaningless. This leaves the supercasino and the other fourteen smaller sites awarded smaller concessions in parliamentary limbo until a final decision is made.

Politics Manchester is represented by three tiers of government: Manchester City Council ("local"), UK Parliament ("national"), and European Parliament ("Europe"). The City of Manchester forms part of the metropolitan county of Greater Manchester , the county council of which was abolished (along with the other metropolitan counties) in 1986. Manchester consists of several districts, but these districts do not represent a tier of government, though the names are used as political wards.

Education Universities Manchester is home to two major universities - the University of Manchester and Manchester Metropolitan University - which are both located to the south of the city centre. The University of Manchester is the largest full-time non-collegiate university in the United Kingdom, and was created in autumn 2004 by the merger of Victoria University of Manchester and UMIST . Manchester Metropolitan University was formed out of the old polytechnic college in the city. The University of Manchester , Manchester Metropolitan University and the Royal Northern College of Music are all grouped together on the southern side of the city centre, and effectively form one large campus along and near to Oxford Road (with the exception of the North Campus of the University of Manchester , which was the UMIST campus before the merger). Manchester Business School , which offered the first MBA course in the UK in 1965, forms a part of the University of Manchester.

Schools One of Manchester's most notable secondary schools is the Manchester Grammar School . Established in 1515 as a free grammar school next to what is now the Cathedral, it moved in 1930 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 . Also, Parrs Wood Technology College in south Manchester is one of England's biggest and most successful schools and has won many awards

Places of interest Architecture Manchester has a wide variety of buildings, ranging from Victorian a global centre for the cotton trade. Manchester also has a number architecture to modern. Much of the architecture in the city harks back to its days as of skyscrapers mostly built during the 1960s and 1970s, although recently there has been a renewed interest in building more. Beetham Tower , completed in 2006, includes a Hilton hotel, a restaurant, and residences. It is currently the tallest building in the UK outside of London. An even taller building, the Inacity Tower , is scheduled to commence construction in 2007 behind Manchester Piccadilly station . Beetham Tower on Deansgate . An example of Manchester's new skyscrapers .

Monuments Two large squares hold many of Manchester's public monuments. Albert Square , in front of the Town Hall , has monuments to Prince Albert , Bishop James Fraser , Oliver Heywood , William Ewart Gladstone and John Bright . Piccadilly Gardens has monuments dedicated to Queen Victoria , Robert Peel , James Watt and the Duke of Wellington . Other notable monuments include the Alan Turing Memorial (the father of modern computing)in Sackville Park , adjacent to Sackville Street . A monument to Abraham Lincoln was presented to the city by Mr & Mrs Charles Phelps Taft of Cincinnati, Ohio. The statue, located in the eponymous Lincoln Square, is the work of George Gray Barnard and marks the part that Lancashire played in the cotton famine and American Civil War of 1861–1865. The success of the 2002 Commonwealth Games is commemorated by B of the Bang , Britain’s tallest sculpture, located near the City of Manchester Stadium in the Eastlands area of the City. Queen Victoria statue in Piccadilly Gardens

Culture Nightlife There has long been a thriving nightclub culture in Manchester. One of the oldest venues is the Band on the Wall , a live music club in the Northern Quarter . It was built around 1862 as the flagship pub of a local brewery and originally called The George & Dragon. In 1975 it was taken on by jazz musician Steve Morris and Frank Cusick, and renamed The Band on the Wall, a longtime nickname for the club since the late 1920s alluding to its stage high on the back wall. Music Manchester is home to two symphony orchestras , the Hallé Orchestra and the BBC Philharmonic Orchestra . There is also a chamber orchestra , the Manchester Camerata. In the 1950s the city was home to the so-called ‘Manchester School’ of classical composers, which comprised Harrison Birtwistle , Peter Maxwell Davies , David Ellis and Alexander Goehr . Manchester is a centre for musical education, with the Royal Northern College of Music and Chetham’s School of Music . The main classical venue was the Free Trade Hall on Peter Street, until the 1996 debut of the 2,500 seat concert venue Bridgewater Hall . Manchester’s main pop music venue is the Manchester Evening News Arena , situated next to Manchester Victoria railway station . It seats over 21,000, is the largest arena of its type in Europe , and has been voted International Arena of the Year . [ citation needed ] Other major venues include the Manchester Apollo and the Manchester Academy . Smaller venues throughout the city are the Bierkeller, the Roadhouse, and Night and Day Cafe.

Bands that have emerged from the Manchester music scene include the Buzzcocks , The Fall , Joy Division and its successor group New Order , the Happy Mondays , The Charlatans , The Inspiral Carpets , James , The Stone Roses , and Oasis . The Chemical Brothers , although from southern England, formed in Manchester. Ex-Stone Roses frontman Ian Brown and ex- Smiths Morrissey continue successful solo careers. Other Greater Manchester natives include Richard Ashcroft and Jay Kay of Jamiroquai . Literature In the 19th century, Manchester figured in novels that discussed the changes that industrialisation had brought to Britain. These included works such as Mary Barton: A Tale of Manchester Life (1848) by Elizabeth Gaskell , [1] , and The Condition of the English Working Class in 1844 , written by Friedrich Engels while living and working in Manchester. Charles Dickens is reputed to have set his novel Hard Times in the city, and while it is partly modelled on Preston, it shows the influence of his friend Elizabeth Gaskell [2] . Theatre Larger venues include the Manchester Opera House , featuring large scale touring shows and West End shows, the Palace Theatre , the Royal Exchange Theatre in Manchester’s former cotton exchange, and the Lowry Centre , a touring venue in Salford. Smaller sites include the Library Theatre , a producing theatre in the basement of the central library, the Green Room , the Contact Theatre , and Studio Salford . The Dancehouse is dedicated to dance productions.

Sport Two Premiership football clubs, Manchester United and Manchester City , bear the city’s name. Manchester City's ground is at the City of Manchester Stadium , (48,000 capacity); Manchester United’s Old Trafford ground, the second largest club football ground in the United Kingdom with 76,000 capacity, and England's only UEFA-rated 5-star stadium, is just outside the city in the borough of Trafford . First class sporting facilities were built for the 2002 Commonwealth Games , including the Manchester Velodrome , the City of Manchester Stadium , the National Squash Centre and the Manchester Aquatics Centre . Manchester has competed twice to host the Olympic Games , being beaten by Atlanta in 1996 and Sydney in 2000, and various sporting arenas around the city will be used as training facilities prior to the 2012 Olympics in London The City of Manchester Stadium during the Commonwealth games

Manchester

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