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…” (more…)