Manchester

   

This article is about the city in England. For alternative meanings, see Manchester (disambiguation).

Manchester is a city in North West England, which in 2002 had a population of approximately 422,302. The city is situated in the centre of the large metropolitan county of Greater Manchester, which has population of 2,513,468. The city was voted England's second city in a poll of British people in 2002 [1] (http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/england/2253035.stm), the first time in recent memory that Birmingham had lost this.

In the same way as "London" is used to refer to the entire metropolitan area of London, the term "Manchester" is often used to refer to the Greater Manchester conurbation, rather than the City of Manchester which is a metropolitan borough.
Manchester Town Hall is a typical example of the Victorian architecture found in Manchester and is the home of Manchester City Council (http://www.manchester.gov.uk/)
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Manchester Town Hall is a typical example of the Victorian architecture found in Manchester and is the home of Manchester City Council (http://www.manchester.gov.uk/)
While Greater Manchester contains some towns such as Wigan or Rochdale which clearly have separate identities, it also contains several boroughs such as Salford, Stockport, Tameside and Trafford which run directly into the Manchester urban area.

History

Main article History of Manchester

The Manchester area was settled in Roman times: general Agricola called a fort he set up there Mamucium, meaning "breast shaped hill". A facsimile of a Roman fort exists in Castlefield.

City of Manchester
Manchester
Geography
Status:Metropolitan borough, City (1853)
Region:North West England
Ceremonial County:Greater Manchester
Area:
- Total		Ranked 228th
115.65 km²
Admin. HQ:Manchester
ONS code:00BN
Geographical coordinates:53°29'N 2°15'W
Demographics
Population:
- City (2002 est)
- Total (2002 est)
- Density		Ranked 6th
422,302
2,513,468
3,652 / km²
Ethnicity:81.0% White
9.1% S.Asian
4.5% Afro-Carib.
1.3% Chinese
Politics
Manchester City Council
http://www.manchester.gov.uk/
Leadership:Leader & Cabinet
Executive:Labour
MPs:Keith Bradley, Paul Goggins, Gerald Kaufman, Tony Lloyd, Graham Stringer

In the 14th Century Manchester became home to a community of Flemish weavers, who settled in the town to produce wool and linen, thus beginning the tradition of cloth manufacture.

Manchester remained a market town until the Industrial Revolution beginning in the 18th century. Its damp climate made it and the surrounding area ideal for cotton mills, such as Quarry Bank Mill. Its growth was also aided by its proximity to Liverpool's ports and the emerging rail and canal networks.

At 11.20 am on Saturday 15 June 1996, the IRA detonated a bomb containing 1500 kg of explosives in a van on Corporation Street, near the junction with Market Street. This was the largest IRA bomb ever detonated in Great Britain. However, warnings received in the previous hour had allowed the evacuation of the area, but 206 people were recorded by the ambulance service as having been injured, mainly by falling glass and building debris. A large area of the city centre was devastated, and over 50,000 square metres of retail space and 25,000 square metres of office space subsequently had to be rebuilt. Since then the city centre has undergone extensive rejuvenation along with the more general efforts to regenerate previously degenerated areas of the wider city (such as Hulme and Salford).

In 2002, the city hosted the XVII Commonwealth Games very successfully, earning praise from many previously sceptical sources.

In the 1990s, Manchester earned a reputation for gang-related crime, particularly after a spate of shootings involving young men, and reports of teenagers carring handguns as "fashion accessories". Gun-crime is still a problem in Manchester (some have cynically referred to the city as "Gunchester") but a number of initiatives are in place by the Greater Manchester Police to help reduce the number of youths getting involved with gangs and their associated crimes. As a result, gun crime in the area is falling and other cities have overtaken it. The district of Moss Side gained a particular reputation for gang violence, although substantial community and police initiatives have helped rejuvinate the area. The Canal Street area of the city is well known as the 'Gay Village' and the city itself has now been designated as the 'Gay Capital of the UK'.

Culture

Art galleries

There are many art galleries in Manchester, notably:

Museums

Museums in Manchester include:

Classical 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.

For many years the city's main classical venue was the Free Trade Hall on Peter Street. Since 1996, however, Manchester has had a modern 2,500 seat concert venue called the Bridgewater Hall, which is also home to the Hallé Orchestra. The hall is one of the country's most technically advanced classical music and lecture venues, with an acoustically designed interior and suspended foundations for an optimum sound. Other venues for classical concerts include the RNCM, the Royal Exchange Theatre and Manchester Cathedral.

Manchester is a centre for musical education, being home to the Royal Northern College of Music and Chetham's School of Music.

In the 1950s the city was home to the so-called "Manchester School" of classical composers, which comprised Harrison Birtwistle, Peter Maxwell Davies and Alexander Goehr.

Popular music

Paul Simon once described Manchester as "One of the music capitals of the world". Manchester was home to The Bee Gees (one of the biggest selling popular music artists) during their formative years in the late 1960s. Other notable bands of this era from Manchester included The Hollies, Van der Graaf Generator and 10cc.

Manchester has played a significant role in British youth and counterculture throughout the 1980s and 1990s, coining the phrase Madchester. During the 1980s Manchester spawned a number of international acts, including Mike & The Mechanics, Simply Red and Lisa Stansfield. The rock bands Oasis, Chameleons, Inspiral Carpets, Stone Roses, Happy Mondays and The Smiths came from Manchester, as did New Wave outfits such as Joy Division and their successor band New Order, Buzzcocks, Magazine_(band) and electronic music outfits such as 808 State, the Chemical Brothers and A Guy Called Gerald. Other influential acts from this era include Take That, The Charlatans, Robbie Williams and Morrissey.

It was also home to one of the world's most famous clubs, the Hacienda nightclub, in the 1980s, until the early 1990s when it was closed due to gang and drug trouble. The story of the Manchester music scene of the 1980s was portrayed in Michael Winterbottom's 2002 film 24 Hour Party People.

More recently, Manchester's contribution to popular music has included artists like Badly Drawn Boy, Michael McGoldrick, Elbow, Mr Scruff and Doves. Manchester's main popular music venue is the Manchester Evening News Arena, which seats over twenty thousand and is the largest arena of its type in Europe. Other venues include the Manchester Apollo and the Manchester Academy.

Theatre

Manchester is noted for its excellent theatres, among them:

  • Contact Theatre, a theatre for young people with a bold contemporary design
  • The Green Room, a small fringe venue
  • The Library Theatre, a small producing theatre situated in the basement of the city's central library
  • The Lowry, a large touring venue in Salford
  • The Opera House, a commercial theatre promoting large scale touring shows which regularly plays host to touring West End shows
  • The Palace Theatre, another large scale commercial theatre
  • The Royal Exchange Theatre, a large producing theatre located in Manchester's former cotton exchange

The city is also home to two highly-regarded drama schools; The Manchester Metropolitan University School of Theatre and the Arden School of Theatre.

Architecture

HSBC Bank
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HSBC Bank
Piccadilly Gardens, one of the city's main public squares
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Piccadilly Gardens, one of the city's main public squares

Manchester has a wide variety of buildings from Victorian architecture through to modern. Much of the architecture in the city harks back to its former days as a global centre for the cotton trade. Many warehouses have now been converted for other uses but the external appearance remains mostly unchanged so the city maintains much of its original character.

Structures of interest in Manchester include:

Media

The BBC has its north west headquarters in New Broadcasting House on Manchester's Oxford Road, while Granada Television also have their original headquarters in the Castlefield area of the city. The city is the main television broadcasting centre outside London.

The city's main newspaper is the Manchester Evening News and the town is home to local radio stations such as BBC GMR, Key 103, Century FM and Smooth FM, as well as some smaller stations.

The Guardian newspaper was founded in Manchester in 1821 as The Manchester Guardian. Its head office is in Manchester, though many of its management functions were moved to London in 1964. It still shares a Manchester office on Deansgate with its sister publication, the Manchester Evening News.

Universities

Manchester is home to two Universities: The University of Manchester and Manchester Metropolitan University. The former is the largest university in Britain, and was created in autumn 2004 by the merger of the former Victoria University of Manchester with UMIST.

Together with nearby Salford University, and the Royal Northern College of Music, these give the area a student population in excess of 50,000. This is one of the biggest student populations in Britain or Europe.

Sport

Sport and especially football are an important part of Manchester culture. Two major football clubs, Manchester United and Manchester City, bear the city's name. United's ground, the largest club football ground in Britain, is just outside the city centre, in the borough of Trafford. These football teams are just two examples: according to the Urbis centre Manchester has the highest concentration of football clubs per capita of anywhere in the world. Other football teams in Greater Manchester include Oldham Athletic, Stockport county, Bury F.C., Wigan Athletic, Rochdale F.C. and Bolton Wanderers.

The legacy of the Commonwealth Games includes many first class sporting facilities such as the Manchester velodrome, the City of Manchester Stadium, the National Squash Centre and the Manchester Aquatics Centre.

Old Trafford cricket ground, home of Lancashire County Cricket Club, hosts many first-class cricket matches including Test Matches.

Manchester is also represented in Rugby League by the Salford Reds who are currently in the process of constructing a new state-of-the-art stadium.

Transport

Air

Manchester International Airport is the third largest airport in the UK (after Heathrow and Gatwick). In 2003 it handled 20 million passengers and provided direct flights to over 180 destinations worldwide by over 90 airlines.

Road

The main roads serving Manchester are the M56, M6, M60, M61, M62 and M66 motorways. This accounts for a large percentage of the UK's motorway network and is the best network provided for any city in the UK outside of London.

Manchester and the surrounding area has a good bus network with regular services in and out of the city connecting to all the satellite towns and villages. Maps of bus routes and a public transport journey planner for the local area of Greater Manchester can be found on the GMPTE website (http://www.gmpte.com)

Rail

The city has two major stations, Manchester Victoria and Manchester Piccadilly linking Manchester to the rest of the United Kingdom. There are also many smaller local stations, such as Manchester Oxford Road.

Metrolink

A Metrolink Tram in Manchester city centre
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A Metrolink Tram in Manchester city centre

Despite Manchester's size, it is not provided with an underground train system, such as the famous London Underground and similar systems in Glasgow and Newcastle. The reason for this is the geology of the city; Manchester is built on Clay which is not suitable for an underground system.

Instead, the city has a tram system called the Metrolink. Operated by Serco, Metrolink links the city centre to Altrincham, Eccles and Bury.

Plans to extend the Manchester Metrolink into the surrounding towns and boroughs that form Greater Manchester have recently been resurrected after being abandoned by the Government. GMPTE (the Passenger Transport Executive responsible for the Greater Manchester area) are leading the fight to ensure that the extensions are built, with significant support from the local councils and community.

Buses

The city has a large number of different bus companies. Most major routes are well provided for including Oxford Road which is one of the busiest routes in Europe (which serves a large chunk of the student population from Fallowfield/Withington into the centre of town).

Routes with less competition either run often but are considered overpriced (stagecoach) or are cheap but infrequent.

Water

One legacy of the industrial revolution is an extensive network of canals: the Manchester, Bolton & Bury Canal, Rochdale Canal, Manchester Ship Canal which provides access to the sea, Bridgewater Canal, Ashton Canal and the Leigh Branch of the Leeds & Liverpool Canal. Today, most of these canals are mainly used for recreation.

Shopping

Manchester is the only city in the country to be able to boast two indoor shopping centres, each with over 280 stores. The first is the Arndale Centre in the middle of the city, the largest city-centre shopping centre in Europe. The second is the out-of-town Trafford Centre which boasts a massive food hall, multi-screen cinema and Namco games centre. Other shopping centres are provided, including The Triangle which caters for more upmarket tastes. The city also provides two Selfridges department stores, a Harvey Nichols store, the soon-to-open largest Next store in the UK and a large John Lewis department store.

Places

Towns that run directly into the Manchester urban area include Salford, Sale, Altrincham, Cheadle, Stockport, Ashton-under-Lyne, and Oldham, Bury, Rochdale, Stockport and Stretford. Places like Trafford and Salford can be considered part of the Manchester urban area in a way that Wigan or Bolton are not.

Places in the borough of Manchester include:


See also:

Bibliography

  • Manchester architecture
    • Manchester. Clare Hartwell. Pevsner Architectural Guides ISBN 0300096666
    • Manchester: A guide to recent architecture. David Hands and Sarah Parker. Ellipsis. ISBN 1899858776
    • Manchester - an Architectural History John Parkinson Bailey. Manchester University Press. ISBN 0719056063
  • General
  • Manchester culture
    • Morrissey's Manchester: The Essential Smiths Tour Phil Gatenby ISBN 1901746283
    • Manchester, England. The story of the pop cult city. Dave Haslam ISBN 1841151467
    • And God Created Manchester. Sarah Champion. Wordsmith. ISBN 1873205015
    • The Hacienda Must be Built. Edited by Jon Savage. International Music Publications ISBN 0863598579

External links


Districts of England - North West England Flag of England

Allerdale | Barrow-in-Furness | Blackburn with Darwen | Blackpool | Bolton | Burnley | Bury | Carlisle | Chester | Chorley | Congleton | Copeland | Crewe and Nantwich | Eden | Ellesmere Port and Neston | Fylde | Halton | Hyndburn | Knowsley | Lancaster | Liverpool | Macclesfield | Manchester | Oldham | Pendle | Preston | Ribble Valley | Rochdale | Rossendale | St Helens | Salford | Sefton | South Lakeland | South Ribble | Stockport | Tameside | Trafford | Vale Royal | Warrington | West Lancashire | Wigan | Wirral | Wyre

Administrative counties with multiple districts: Cheshire, Cumbria, Greater Manchester, Lancashire, Merseyside


af:Manchester da:Manchester de:Manchester eo:Manchester fr:Manchester la:Mamucium nl:Manchester pl:Manchester ja:マンチェスター no:Manchester sv:Manchester


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