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

Earlier history

The Manchester area was settled in or before Roman times. In the course of a campaign against the Brigantes, the Roman general Agricola set up a fort at Mamucium on the East bank of the Irwell. This temporary structure was rebuilt several times, and became an important staging post where the roads between the legionary fortresses of Chester and York, and the road northwards, crossed. There was a civilian settlement, or vicus. An extremely rare Christian word square was discovered in excavations some years ago. The North Gate of this fort has been reconstructed on the original site, together with a section of the fortress wall, and these may be found in the Castlefield district, at the end of Deansgate.

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.

A medieval charter accidentally divorced Salford from Manchester, which became a separate township. Consequently, the suburb (now City) of Salford arose on the West bank of the River Irwell, which is only 20 metres wide where it runs between the two cities.

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

Manchester was an important place in the county of Lancashire by the time of the reformation. Perhaps the textile connections (which included the City Of London) resulted in the spread of Puritanism and nonconformity. In 1642, Lord Strange attempted to seize the militia magazine for the King. This was opposed, and the resulting casualty, one Richard Percival, is said to have been the first man to be killed in the English Civil War. Lord Strange returned to besiege the town without success.

In 1745, Charles Edward Stuart passed through the town en route to Derby. Upon the subsequent retreat, some luckless Manchester recruits were left to garrison Carlisle, where they surrendered to the British Army.

Defoe described Manchester as the “greatest mere village” in the first decade of the eighteenth century. Nevertheless, it was the Industrial Revolution, particularly in the last quarter of the 18th century, that transformed a market town into a great city. Its damp climate was ideal for cotton processing, and with the development of steam-powered engines for spinning and weaving the cotton industry quickly developed throughout the region (for example, Quarry Bank Mill in Styal, Cheshire). It also became an important distribution centre, populated by increasingly important warehouses.

The construction of the Duke’s Canal, sometimes referred to as the Bridgewater Canal, Britain’s first true artificial inland waterway, spurred this development by the provision of abundant quantities of cheap coal. The opening of the Liverpool and Manchester Railway, the first main line passenger railway in the world, also contributed to the town’s rapid development.

Manchester quickly grew into the most important industrial centre in the world, and, significantly, the first industrial society. 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.”

Manchester’s population exploded as people moved into the city from the surrounding countryside - and from other parts of the British Isles - seeking new opportunities. Particularly large numbers came from Ireland, especially after the Potato Famine of the 1840s. The Irish influence continues to this day, and every March Manchester plays host to one of the world’s largest St Patrick’s Day parades. It is estimated that about 35% of the population of Manchester and Salford has at least some Irish ancestry. Large numbers of (mostly Jewish) immigrants came to Manchester from central and eastern Europe. The area, including Salford and Prestwich, now has a Jewish population of about 40,000. This is the largest Jewish community outside London by quite some way. To these groups may be added (in later years) Levantines (involved in the Egyptian cotton trade), Germans, and Italians. By the end of the nineteenth century, Manchester was a very cosmopolitan place.

Throughout the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, Manchester was an important seat of radical, reformist politics. A famous meeting, held in furtherance of parliamentary reform, took place in St Peter’s Field on 16 August 1819. It was to be addressed by Henry Hunt, a powerful speaker known as “Orator Hunt”. Local magistrates, fearful of a large crowd, ordered volunteer cavalry armed with sabres to clear a way through the crowd to arrest Hunt and the platform party. They lost control (some reports suggest that many were drunk) and started to lash out at members of the crowd. The officers of a troop of hussars of the British army were so appalled that they tried to restrain the volunteers. These events resulted in the (official) deaths of eleven people with over four hundred injured. The country was appalled. One of the dead had been present at the Battle of Waterloo, and it was said that “Waterloo were a battle, but Peterloo (as the proceedings were satirically called) were nowt but bloody murder”

The so-called Peterloo massacre became a cause celèbre for reformers. Manchester was a focus of the movement to reform the Corn Laws (the Anti Corn Law League (ACLL) was set up in 1836 by Cobden and Bright), and later the Free Trade movement known as “The Manchester School” or “Manchesterism” developed. Peterloo was a spur to obtaining municipal incorporation in 1838, when it became a municipal borough, soon after the Municipal Corporations Act 1835 allowed this. City status for the borough was conferred in 1853. The town obtained its first MPs after the passing of the First Reform Act.

The first Trades Union Congress was held in Manchester (at the Mechanics’ Institute, David Street), from 2 to 6 June 1868. 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 Halle Orchestra. In 1889, when county councils were created in England, the municipal borough became a county borough with even greater autonomy.

During this period, a deep canal (the Manchester Ship Canal) was dug, 36 miles long, from Salford to the River Mersey at the port of Liverpool. This enabled ocean going ships to sail right into the Port of Manchester Docks (technically in Salford). The docks functioned up until the 1970s, with their closure leading to a large increase in unemployment in the area.

Trafford Park in Stretford was the world’s first industrial estate and still exists today, though with a significant tourist and recreational presence.

Manchester suffered greatly from the inter-war depression and the underlying structural changes that began to supplant the old industries, including textile manufacture.

During the [World War II,] Manchester was involved in heavy industrial construction - it was home to Avro (now BAE Systems) which built countless aircraft for the RAF, the most famous being the Avro Lancaster bomber. 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.

In 1974, Manchester was split from the county of Lancashire, and the Metropolitan Borough of Manchester was created.

Recent history

At 11.20 am on Saturday 15 June 1996, the PIRA detonated a large bomb in the city centre. Whilst this bomb caused over 200 injuries, it caused no deaths, and the principal damage was to the physical infrastructure of nearby buildings. The consequent reconstruction spurred a massive regeneration of the city centre, with complexes such as the Printworks and the Triangle creating new city focal points for both shopping and entertainment. The following regeneration took almost a decade to complete, with the latest part of the renovated Arndale centre opening in April 2006 and the remainder to follow in the winter.

In 2002, the city successfully hosted the XVII Commonwealth Games, earning praise from many sources. Manchester has twice failed in its bid to host the Olympic Games, losing to Atlanta in 1996 and Sydney in 2000.

Rapidly developing institutions attract crime and disorder; see main article crime and policing in Manchester.

Since the regeneration after the 1996 PIRA attack, and aided by the XVII Commonwealth Games, Manchester’s city centre has changed significantly. 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; a good example of this transformation is the Arndale Centre. Many old mills have been converted into apartments, helping to give the city a much more modern, upmarket look and feel. Some areas, like Hulme, have undergone extensive regeneration programmes and many million-pound lofthouse apartments have since been developed to cater for its growing business community.

Medieval growth

Manchester is mentioned in the Domesday Book. It is recorded as a former royal manor, held by Edward the Confessor, and that there was a church dedicated to the Virgin Mary. There is a great deal of argument as to where this church was, but the modern consensus suggests that it was situated near the junction of Market Street and Deansgate, approached by what is still called St. Mary’s Gate.

A large part of whatever existed in Saxon times was probably destroyed in the Harrowing of the North by William the Conqueror. The ‘Honour of Manchester’ was probably given to the De Grelle or De Greley family by Roger the Poitevan, who held most of the land between the Ribble and Mersey. The ‘Honour’ was a collection of manors of which Manchester was the administrative centre. There was a fortified manor house on the site of Chetham’s School of Music. The De Grelles, and their successors as lords of the manor were mostly absentees throughout this period, though they used Manchester as a hunting lodge at times -Hunts Bank still recalls the location of their kennels.

Manchester was originally part of the Hundred of Salford. (The Saxon Royal Hall may have been located across the river in Salford) However, the slip of a medieval clerk’s pen resulted in dividing Manchester and Salford, for two separate charters were issued. As Manchester had the church and the market, it developed as the most important place.

In 1223 Manchester gained the right to hold an annual fair. 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.

Thomas de la Warre was a Lord of the Manor who also happened to be a priest. He obtained licences from the Pope and King Henry V to enable him to found and endow a collegiate church, dedicated to the Blessed Virgin, St. George, and St. Denys or St. Denis, the latter being the patron saints of England and France respectively. Construction began around 1422, and continued until the first quarter of the sixteenth century. The ‘merchant princes’ of the town endowed a number of chantry chapels, reflecting an increasing prosperity based on wool. This church later became Manchester Cathedral.

Thomas also gave the site of the old manor house as a residence for the priests. It remains as one of the finest examples of a medieval secular religious building in Britain, and is now the home of Chetham’s School of Music.

A stone bridge (incorporating a chapel) across the Irwell was constructed at an unspecified date. Thomas rebuilt the bridge across a ravine that had acted as a moat for the manor house, and some remains still survives as the Hanging Bridge.

Growth of the textile trade

By the sixteenth century, the wool trade had made Manchester a flourishing market town. The collegiate church, nowadays the Cathedral, was finally completed in 1500-1510. The magnificent carved choir stalls date from this period, and a chapel was built by the Earl of Derby as a thank offering for a safe return from the battle of Flodden Field.

The English Reformation resulted in the collegiate church being refounded as a Protestant institution. One of the more famous Wardens of this institution at the time was Dr. John Dee, known as “Queen Elizabeth’s Merlin”.

The town’s growth was given further impetus in 1620 with the start of fustian weaving.

In the course of the seventeenth century, thanks to the development of the textile industry, and contacts with the City of London, Manchester became a noted centre of puritanism. Consequently, it sided with parliament in the quarrel with King Charles I. Indeed, it might be said that the English Civil War started here. In 1642, Lord Strange, the son of the Earl of Derby attempted to seize the militia magazine stored in the old College building. In the ensuing scuffle, Richard Percival, a linen weaver, was killed. He is reckoned by some as the first casualty in the English Civil War.

Lord Strange returned and attempted to besiege the town, which had no permanent fortifications. With the help of John Rosworm, a German mercenary, the town was vigorously defended. Captain Bradshaw and his musketeers resolutely manned the bridge to Salford. Eventually, Strange realised that his force was ill-prepared, and after hearing that his father had died, withdrew to claim his title.

On the English Restoration in 1660, as a reprisal for its defence of the Parliamentarian cause, Manchester was deprived of its recently granted Members of Parliament. No MP was to sit for Manchester until 1832. The consequences of the restoration led to a great deal of soul searching. One clergyman, Henry Newcombe, could not remain in the remodeled Anglican Church, and was instrumental in the establishment of the Cross Street Chapel in 1694. This later passed into Unitarian hands, and a new chapel on the original site can be visited.

Humphrey Chetham purchased the old College buildings after the Civil War, and endowed it as a bluecoat school. Chetham’s Hospital, as it was known , later became Chetham’s School of Music. The endowment included a collection of books, resulting in the first free public library in Britain. It can still be visited and used.

Despite the political setbacks, the town continued to prosper. A number of inhabitants supported the Glorious Revolution in 1688. They became discontented with the Tory clergy at the collegiate church, and a separate church, more to their tastes, was founded by Lady Ann Bland. St Ann’s Church is a fine example if an early georgian church, and was consecrated in 1712. The surroundings were in imitation of a London square.

About this time, Defoe described the place as “the greatest mere village in England”, by which he meant that a place the size of a populous market town had no form of local government to speak of, and was still subject to the whims of a lord of the manor.

In 1745, Charles Edward Stuart and his army entered Manchester en route to London. Despite its previous radicalism, the town offered no resistance, and the Jacobites obtained enough recruits to form an erstwhile ‘Manchester Regiment’. It is suggested that this was because the town had no local government to speak of, and the magistrates, who could have organised resistance, were mostly conservative landowners. Moreover, these Tory landowners had taken to apprenticing their sons to Manchester merchants, so the political complexion of the town’s elite had changed. The Jacobite army got no further than Derby, and then retreated. On their way back through Manchester, the stragglers were pelted by the mob. The luckless ‘Manchester regiment’ were left behind to garrison Carlisle, where they quickly surrendered to the pursuing British Army.

The Industrial Revolution

Manchester remained a small market town until the late 18th Century, and the beginning of the Industrial Revolution. The myriad small valleys in the Pennine Hills to the north and east of the town, combined with the damp climate, proved ideal for the construction of water-powered Cotton mills such as Quarry Bank Mill, which industrialised the spinning and weaving of cloth.

Indeed, it was the importation of cotton, which began towards the end of the eighteenth century, that revolutionised the textile industry in the area. This new commodity was imported through the port of Liverpool, which was connected with Manchester by the Mersey and Irwell Navigation - the two rivers had been made navigable from the 1720s onwards.

Manchester now developed as the natural distribution centre for raw cotton and spun yarn, and a marketplace and distribution centre for the products of this growing textile industry. Richard Arkwright is credited as the first to erect a cotton mill in the city. His first experiment, installing a Newcomen steam engine to pump water for a waterwheel failed, but he next adapted a Watt steam engine to directly operate the machinery. The result was the rapid spread of cotton mills throughout Manchester itself and in the surrounding towns. To these must be added bleach works, textile print works, and the engineering workshops and foundries, all serving the cotton industry. Manchester was truly “cottonopolis”, and a branch of the Bank of England was established in (1826).

The growth of the city was matched by expansion of its transport links. The growth of steam power meant that demand for coal rocketed. To meet this demand, the first canal of the industrial era, the Duke’s Canal, often referred to as the Bridgewater Canal, was opened in 1761, linking Manchester to the coal mines at Worsley. This was soon extended to the Mersey Estuary. Soon an extensive network of canals was constructed, linking Manchester to all parts of England.

In 1830, Manchester was again at the forefront of transport technology with the opening of the Liverpool and Manchester Railway, the world’s first steam passenger railway. This provided faster transport of raw materials and finished goods between the port of Liverpool and mills of Manchester. By 1838, Manchester was connected by rail with Birmingham and London, and by 1841 with Hull.

Manchester quickly grew into the most important industrial centre in the world, the world’s first industrial city, and the model for industrial development. 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.” Benjamin Disraeli, at that time a young novelist, had one of his characters express such sentiments. “The age of ruins is past….Have you seen Manchester? Manchester is as great a human exploit as Athens…”

Manchester’s population exploded as people moved from the surrounding countryside, and from other parts of the British Isles, into the city seeking new opportunities. Particularly large numbers came from Ireland , especially after the Potato Famine of the 1840’s. The Irish influence continues to this day and, every March Manchester plays host to one of the world’s largest St Patricks Day parades. It is estimated that about 35% of the population of Manchester and Salford has at least some Irish ancestry.

Large numbers of ( mostly Jewish ) immigrants later came to Manchester from central and eastern Europe. The area, including Salford and Prestwich, today has a Jewish population of about 40,000. This is the largest Jewish community outside London by quite some way. To these groups may be added (in later years) Levantines (involved in the Egyptian cotton trade), Germans, and Italians. By the end of the nineteenth century, Manchester was a very cosmopolitan place.

This unconventional background stimulated the intellectual and artistic life of the place. The Manchester Academy, for example, opened in Mosely Street in 1786, having enjoyed an earlier incarnation as the Warrington Academy. It was originally run by presbyterians being one of the few dissenting academies that provided religious nonconformists, who were excluded from Oxford and Cambridge Universities, with education. It taught classics, radical theology, science, modern languages, language and history. In the arts, one only has to mention the Halle Orchestra, patronised, in its early years, by the German community.

Reform

Manchester was still governed by a court leet on the medieval model, and a Boroughreeve was reponsible for law and order in the daylight hours. In the early nineeenth century, this was the infamous Joseph Nadin, who seemed to spend more time spying on suspected political reformers than catching thieves. The first step towards democracy was taken by the Manchester and Salford Police Act of 1792. It created Police Commissioners, elected by a restricted franchise of ratepayers, who were responsible for providing night watchmen. But it also assumed responsibility for cleansing, street lighting, water supply, and highway improvement.

The end of the eighteenth century saw the first serious recession in the textile trade following its dramatic growth. There were food riots in 1797 and soup kitchens were established in 1799. Manchester was the scene of the Blanketeer agitation in 1817. Popular unrest was parallelled by discontent with Manchester’s lack of representation at Westminster and the town quickly became a centre of radical agitationto this end.

Protest turned to bloodshed with the Peterloo Massacre of 1819. A famous meeting, held in furtherance of parliamentary reform, took place in St Peter’s Field on 16 August. It was to be addressed by Henry Hunt, a powerful speaker known as ‘Orator Hunt’. Local magistrates, fearful of a large crowd, ordered volunteer cavalry armed with sabres to clear a way through the crowd to arrest Hunt and the platform party. They lost control (some reports suggest that many were drunk) and started to lash out at members of the crowd. The officers of a troop of hussars of the British army were so appalled that they tried to restrain the volunters. These events resulted in the (official) deaths of eleven people with over four hundred injured. The country was appalled. One of the dead had been present at the Battle of Waterloo, and it was said that “Waterloo were a battle, but Peterloo (as the proceedings were satirically called, “were nowt but bloody murder”

The Manchester Guardian, a famous paper with a radical agenda, was established shortly afterwards..

In 1832, following the Great Reform Act, Manchester elected its first MPs since the election of 1656. Five candidates, including William Cobbett stood and Liberals Charles Poulett Thomson and Mark Philips were elected.

The Great Reform Act led to to conditions favourable to municipal incorporation. Manchester became a Municipal Borough in 1837, and what remained of the manorial rights were later purchaced by the town council.

This flowering of radicalism and reform took place within the context of a ferment in Manchester’s cultural and intellectual life. John Dalton lectured on his atomic theory at the Literary and Philosophical Society in 1803. The establishment of the Portico Library in1806, the Royal Manchester Institution (later the Art Gallery) in 1823), and the Manchester Botanical and Horticultural Society in 1827 are evidences of this.

Industrial and cultural growth

The prosperity from the textile industry lead to an expansion of Manchester and the surrounding conurbation. Many institutions were established including Belle Vue leisure gardens and zoo (founded by John Jennison in 1836), the Manchester Athenaeum (1836-1837) and the Corn Exchange (1837).

This wealth fuelled the development of science and education in Manchester. The Manchester Academy had relocated to York in 1803 and, though it returned in 1840, in 1853 it moved again to London, eventually becoming Harris Manchester College, Oxford. However, a Mechanics’ Institute, later to become UMIST, was founded in 1824 by among others, John Dalton the “father of atomic theory”. In 1851 John Owens, a textile merchant left a bequest to found Owens College. This was to become the Victoria University of Manchester and was granted its Royal Charter in 1880.

The growth of city government continued with Manchester finally being incorporated as a borough in 1838, covering what is now the city centre, along with Cheetham, Beswick, Ardwick, Chorlton upon Medlock and Hulme.

The manorial rights were purchased by the Borough from the Mosley family in 1846 and incorporation as a city followed in 1853. The Manchester diocese of the Church of England was established in 1847. In 1851, the borough became the first local authority to seek water supplies beyond its boundaries.

Manchester continued to be a nexus of political radicalism. From 1842-1844, the German social philosopher Friedrich Engels lived there and wrote his influential book Condition of the Working Class in England (1845). He met with Karl Marx in an alcove at Chetham’s Library. The Cooperative Wholesale Society was formed in 1862. In 1841, Robert Angus Smith took up work as an analytical chemist at the Royal Manchester Institution and started to research the unprecedented environmental problems. Smith went on to become the first director of the Alkali Inspectorate and to characterise, and coin the term, acid rain.

The outbreak of the American Civil War in 1861 saw an immediate shortage of cotton and the ensuing cotton famine brought enormous distress to the area until the war’s end in 1865. During the late 19th century Manchester began to suffer an economic decline, partly exacerbated by its reliance on the Port of Liverpool; championed by local industrialist Daniel Adamson, the Manchester Ship Canal was built as a way to reverse this. It gave the city direct access to the sea allowing it to export its manufactured goods directly. This meant that it no longer had to rely on the railways and Liverpool’s ports. When completed in 1894 it allowed Manchester to become Britain’s third busiest port, despite being 40 miles (64 km) inland.

Further expansion

Expansion of the city limits was constrained westwards (with the borough of Salford immediately to the west, having been given a charter in 1844). 1885 saw an expansion into Harpurhey, Bradford, and Rusholme, whilst in 1890, Crumpsall, Blackley and Moston, Newton Heath, Clayton, Openshaw and West Gorton were brought into the city limits. Heaton Park was annexed in 1903. So far most expansion had been northerly and easterly. In 1904 the areas of Moss Side, Chorlton-cum-Hardy, Withington, Burnage and Didsbury, all to the south, were annexed, to be followed by Gorton and Levenshulme in 1909.

The last substantial change to the City of Manchester’s borders was in 1931, when Wythenshaw became part of the City, although the Local Government Act saw Ringway and Manchester Airport become part of the city in 1974.

Twentieth century reds and blues

In the early 20th century Manchester’s economy diversified into engineering chemical and electrical industries. The stimulus of the Ship Canal saw the establishment of Trafford Park, the world’s first industrial park, in 1910 and the arrival of the Ford Motor Company and Westinghouse Electric Corporation from the USA. The influence is still visible in Westinghouse Road and the grid layout of numbered streets and avenues.

In the Second World War Manchester played a key role as an industrial manufacturing city, including the Avro aircraft factory. As a consequence of its war efforts the city suffered heavily from bombing during The Blitz in 1940-1941.

In 1931 the population of Manchester reached an all time peak of 766,311. However the period from the 1930s onwards saw continuous decline in population. During this period, textile manufacture, Manchester’s traditional staple industry went into steep decline, largely due to the Great Depression of the 1930s, and foreign competition. The Royal Exchange ceased trading in 1968.

The diversification of the city’s economy helped to cushion the blow of this decline. However as with many inner-city areas, the growth of car ownership and commuting meant that many people moved from the inner-city and into surrounding suburbs. By 1971 the population of Manchester had declined to 543,868, and by 2001 422,302.

Manchester’s key role in the industrial revolution was repeated and the city became a centre of research and development. Manchester made important contributions the computer revolution. The father of modern computing Alan Turing was based at Manchester University and it was his idea of the stored program concept that lead in 1948 to The Manchester Small-Scale Experimental Machine, nicknamed Baby, which was the first stored-program computer to run a program. This was developed by Frederic C. Williams and Tom Kilburn at the University of Manchester. This was followed by The Manchester Mark I, in 1949. These inventions were commercialized in the Ferranti Star, one of the first commercially available computers.

The 1950s saw the start of Manchester’s rise as a football superpower. Despite the Munich air disaster, Manchester United F.C. went on to become one of the world’s most famous clubs, rising to a dominance of the English game in the 1990s.

As with many British cities during the period. The 1950s and 1960s saw extensive re-development of the city, with old and overcrowded housing cleared to make way for high-rise blocks of flats. This changed the appearance of Manchester considerably, although the high-rise experiment later proved unpopular and unsuccessful. The city-centre also saw major re-development, with developments such as the Arndale Centre.

Mancunian Films had been established by John E. Blakeley in the 1930s as a vehicle for northern comedians such as George Formby and Frank Randle. The company opened its own studios in Manchester in 1947 and produced a successful sequence of films until Blakeley’s retirement six years later. The studio was sold to the BBC in 1954, the same year that saw the advent of commercial television in the UK. The establishment of Granada Television based in the city attracted much of the production talent from the studios and continued Manchester’s tradition of cultural innovation, often with its trademark social radicalism in its programming.

The same period saw the rise to national celebrity of local stars from the Granada TV soap opera Coronation Street and footballers such as George Best.

Fin de siecle

During the 1980s, with the demise of many traditional industries under the radical economic restructuring often known as Thatcherism, the city and region experienced some decline. Revival started towards the end of the decade, catalysed, not only by a wider growing prosperity in the UK, but by a creative music industry. New institutions such as Factory Records and Fac 51 Hacienda earned the city the sobriquet Madchester.

On 15 June 1996 Manchester was struck by one of the largest IRA bombs ever detonated in Great Britain. Fortunately warnings given in the previous hour had allowed the evacuation of the immediate area, but over 200 people were injured, and many buildings suffered extensive damage. Since then the city centre has undergone extensive rejuvenation alongside the more general efforts to regenerate previously run-down 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 carrying 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 rejuvenate the area. In 2004 anti-social behaviour orders were widely used to combat minor crime.

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”.

During the 1980s, the Victoria University of Manchester had somewhat complacently exploited its reputation as one of the leading red brick universities. During the same period, many of those universities established post-war vigorously pursued policies of growth and innovation. The university consequently saw its standing decline and only in the 1990s did it embark on a catch-up programme. In October 2004 the Victoria University of Manchester and UMIST merged to form the University of Manchester, the largest University in the UK with ambitious plans to be one of the world’s leading research intensive universities.

Greater Manchester

Before 1974 the area of Greater Manchester was split between Cheshire and Lancashire with numerous parts being independent county boroughs. The area was informally known as “SELNEC”, for “South East Lancashire North East Cheshire”. Also small parts of the West Riding of Yorkshire (around Saddleworth) and Derbyshire were covered.

SELNEC had been proposed by the Redcliffe-Maud Report of 1969 as a “metropolitan area”. This had roughly the same northern boundary as today’s Greater Manchester, but covered much more territory in north-east Cheshire - including Macclesfield and Warrington. It also covered Glossop in Derbyshire.

In 1969 a SELNEC Passenger Transport Authority was set up, which covered an area smaller than the proposed SELNEC, but different from the eventual Greater Manchester.

Although the Redcliffe-Maud report was rejected by the Conservative Party government after it won the 1970 general election, it was committed to local government reform, and accepted the need for a county based on Manchester. Its original proposal was much smaller than the Redcliffe-Maud Report’s SELNEC, but further fringe areas such as Wilmslow, Warrington and Glossop were trimmed from the edges and included instead in the shire counties. The metropolitan county of Greater Manchester was eventually established in 1974.

Greater Manchester’s representative county council was abolished in 1986, following the Local Government Act 1985. However, Greater Manchester is still a metropolitan county and ceremonial county.