A Manchester miscellany

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Canal basin and fountain outside Bridgewater Hall

After seven Manchester posts, I’m itching to get on with something else, so I’m finishing with a sort of best of the rest summary. The header image was taken next to the Bridgewater Hall, opened in 1996 as the main venue for classical music concerts in Manchester. Outside stands a bronze bust of Sir John Barbirolli (1899-1970), renowned conductor of the city’s Hallé Orchestra.

Sir John Barbirolli
Bridgewater Hall

Sticking with cultural venues, we visited the Royal Exchange Theatre, but only to look round the exterior and use the café. The theatre sits like a space module inside the old Exchange building – it opened in 1976 and I remember attending some early performances there in my student days. Above our heads we could see the board preserving the trading position on the last day that the building housed the Stock Exchange, 31st December 1968.

The theatre sits below the dome
Final day of trading

We passed the Whitworth Art Gallery on our way to the Pankhurst Museum and meant to go back to visit but ran out of time. We stopped long enough to admire the reflections of Anya Gallaccio’s stainless steel tree in the café windows.

Whitworth Art Gallery
Anya Gallaccio’s tree

We did visit Manchester Art Gallery where we discovered half a day was not enough. I honed in on my usual themes. Decolonialism is represented here by two Empire Marketing Board posters from the 1930s and reflections on their meaning today. To represent women’s history I’ve chosen two plaster casts for bronze reliefs on the Pankhurst Museum in London. The streetscape is included because it depicts Oxford Road in 1910. The large building being constructed back left is the Refuge Assurance Group HQ, now the Clocktower Hotel where we stayed.

Nigeria’s exports
Empire Marketing Board posteres
Pankhurst plaster casts
Oxford Rd 1910 by Adolphe Valette

We strolled through the University grounds and found several plaques to interesting people, some of which have already appeared in my science and industry post. Here are Labour politician Ellen Wilkinson and writer Anthony Burgess.

University of Manchester
Ellen Wilkinson
Anthony Burgess

Manchester has a strong radical history. In August 1819 a peaceful protest of around 60,000 people took place at St. Peter’s Field. The crowd, demonstrating in favour of voting rights and political reform, was brutally dispersed by the authorities resulting in hundreds of injuries and several deaths, and becoming known as the Peterloo Massacre. A red plaque on the site, later occupied by the Free Trade Hall which is now a hotel, commemorates this.  In 2019, on the 200th anniversary of the massacre, Manchester City Council inaugurated a new Peterloo Memorial by the artist Jeremy Deller, featuring eleven concentric circles of local stone engraved with the names of the dead and the places from which the victims came.

Free Trade Hall with red plaque
Peterloo Massacre plaque
Peterloo memorial

The statues below are Abraham Lincoln and social reformer Robert Owen. There is a long explanation on the Lincoln plaque about the Lancashire Cotton Famine of 1861-1865. By supporting the Union under Lincoln, when there was an economic blockade of the Southern states, the Lancashire cotton workers were denied access to raw cotton causing unemployment throughout the industry. The statue was presented to the city by Mr and Mrs Phelps Taft of Cincinnati, Ohio, to commemorate the support that the working people of Manchester gave to their fight for the abolition of slavery.

Abraham Lincoln
Robert Owen

On a less serious note, pubs! Manchester has some very interesting pub buildings. I could have written a whole post about their history, but I will confine myself to saying that two of them are not all they seem. The Old Wellington and Sinclair’s Oyster Bar have been relocated brick by brick – Eunice can tell you all about that. I’ll also point out that the Britons Protection has another commemoration of Peterloo.

Plymouth Grove, now a Chinese restaurant.
The Old Wellington
Sinclair’s Oyster Bar
Peveril of the Peak
The Britons Protection
The Britons Protection
The Britons Protection
Former Commercial Hotel

To end on a really colourful note, here’s China Town at night. And for Manchester, that’s a wrap!

China Town at night
England, UK

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  1. Pingback: This week’s small pleasures #433 – Thistles and Kiwis

  2. Great shots. I’m yet to make it to Manchester but I’d like to. Something intriguing about the board with the last days trading captured on it. A moment, frozen in time.

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  6. Even though the working life of canals only lasted a short period, overtaken by railways, every city, village, and town has benefited from them immensely, as they would never have been constructed purely for leisure, or boat living, the main purpose now. They could easily have been filled in and lost forever during previous dormant decades. Instead they are one of the delightful aspects of the UK for tourists and locals that few would think of removing now, replaced by house building or car parks, as your first photo highlights. A real asset to any district lucky enough to have one. Bob. BSS.

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  9. All so familiar, Anabel. It’s been interesting to read your take on it all
    My first taste of Manchester was when I was a 6th former and used to go in for concerts – the first one was at the Free Trade Hall and I saw so many there. It was a sad day when they demolished it (except the facade) and turned it into a hotel.
    (One of your photos isn’t so far from my office – not that I go in there very often!)

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  10. Hi Anabel – a place I should obviously spend more time in … but there’s so much to explore now-a-days … you’ve given us lots to think about … thank you – and a great range of 7 blogposts – cheers Hilary

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  12. Love the variety of pubs you have photographed. We only had a day in Manchester when our flight was cancelled but it turned out to be one of the best days on our latest trip to England. Really enjoyed visiting some of the main touristy sites.

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  17. Shifting a building brick by brick what an achievement and hard work. Yes, like Jude mentioned my eyes have been opened regarding Manchester. We have extended family friends shift there in recent years and they love it.

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  19. The Whitworth especially, but also Manchester City Art Gallery were basically my second homes there. If Chinatown existed then, we didn’t know about it. And as to pubs, the only one I remember is The Grapes on Deansgate, which did a bowl of chilli con carne for 2/6, and was a great place to go after a morning slaving away at the John Rylands Library.

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  20. A very good idea to do this wrap-up post, covering things that might otherwise not have had an airing 🙂 Most of these are new to me although I have been to Chinatown (and eaten in an excellent restaurant there). You’ve shown through all these posts quite how much Manchester has to offer for a city break!

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  23. Somehow I don’t think a week in Manchester is long enough Anabel 😉😀 I like the stainless steel tree and the Pankhurst plaster casts, and that’s a lovely colourful shot of Chinatown at night.

    I was back at the Central Library on Saturday – I’m just now writing about it – and I thought about you. In the Reading Room there’s a display on the history of womens’ cycling with a quotation from an American Womens’ Rights activist.

    Thanks for the link by the way, I did finally manage to go into Sinclairs for lunch one day last March, it has lots of very small rooms and poky corners, also a policy of no mobiles, tablets or laptops 🙂

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