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MANCHESTER - ENGLAND
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 early in 2004, the first time in recent memory that Birmingham had
lost this.
The term "Manchester" is often loosely used to refer to the Greater
Manchester conurbation, rather than the City of Manchester which is a
metropolitan borough .
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
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.
Fortunately 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:
The Lowry in Salford Quays, which houses works by the Salford painter L.S.
Lowry
Manchester Art Gallery
The Whitworth Art Gallery
The Chinese Arts Centre
Cornerhouse
The Castlefield Gallery.
Museums
Museums in Manchester include:
Greater Manchester Police Museum
Imperial War Museum North
Manchester Jewish Museum
Manchester Museum
Museum of Science and Industry
Pankhurst Centre
People's History Museum
Urbis, a museum of city life
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 The Bee Gees (one of the biggest selling popular
music artists) during their formative years. Other notable bands of this era
from Manchester included The Hollies and 10CC.
Manchester has played a significant role in British youth and counterculture
throughout the 1980s and 1990s, coining the phrase Madchester. The rock
bands Oasis, New Order, Inspiral Carpets, Stone Roses, Happy Mondays and The
Smiths came from Manchester, as did New Wave outfits such as Joy Division,
Buzzcocks, Magazine and electronic music outfits such as 808 State, the
Chemical Brothers and A Guy Called Gerald.
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 told 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 it's 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
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:
B of the Bang, Britain's tallest sculpture
The Corn Exchange (now the Triangle)
The G-Mex Centre
Imperial War Museum North by Daniel Libeskind and Lowry Footbridge
John Rylands Library, Deansgate
Manchester Central Library, St Peter's Square, by Vincent Harris
Manchester Town Hall by Alfred Waterhouse
Midland Bank building (now HSBC), King Street by Sir Edwin Lutyens
The Midland Hotel
Piccadilly Gardens by Tadao Ando
The Royal Exchange
Trinity Bridge over River Irwell by Santiago Calatrava
The Victoria Baths
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 is just outside the city, 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.
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.
Rail
The city has two major stations, Manchester Victoria and Manchester
Piccadilly linking Manchester to the rest of the England. There are
also many smaller local stations, such as Manchester Oxford Road.
Metrolink
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.
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 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:
Ardwick
Burnage
Clayton
Chorlton-cum-Hardy
Crumpsall
Didsbury
Fallowfield
Gorton
Hulme
Levenshulme
Miles Platting, Moston
Newton Heath
Rusholme
Withington
Whalley Range
Moss Side
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