Manchester
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Where is Manchester located?
Manchester is a city in the metropolitan county of Greater Manchester, in northwestern England. It is situated on a plain at 133 feet (40 metres) above sea level. The city is enclosed by the slopes of the Pennine range to the east and the upland spur of Rossendale to the north. Manchester lies on the east bank of the River Irwell and extends in a north-south direction. The city is adjoined by the metropolitan boroughs of Salford and Trafford to the west and southwest.
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What is Manchester known for?
Manchester is known for its pivotal role in the Industrial Revolution, becoming a hub for cotton processing and textile manufacturing. The Manchester Ship Canal (opened in 1894) enhanced its status as a major port.
Culturally, Manchester is known for its music scene, producing influential bands such as Joy Division, the Smiths, and Oasis. It is also home to the Hallé Orchestra, and the Manchester United football club. The city boasts architectural variety, from Greek classical to modern steel-and-glass structures.
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What role did Manchester play during the Industrial Revolution?
During the Industrial Revolution, Manchester played a pivotal role as a center for cotton manufacturing and trade. The weaving of fustian marked the beginning of Manchester's transformation in 1620, but the city's growth accelerated from the 1760s onward.
The Bridgewater Canal, reaching the town in 1762, facilitated the cheap movement of coal and served the import-export needs of the cotton industry. Manchester's first cotton mill was built in the early 1780s, and by 1830, there were 99 cotton-spinning mills. The world's first modern railway, the Liverpool and Manchester, opened in 1830, further enhancing its connectivity.
Manchester became the commercial and financial nucleus of the textile trade. The opening of the Manchester Ship Canal in 1894 further connected Manchester to global markets, making it the fourth busiest port in the country by 1910.
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What are some famous landmarks or attractions in Manchester?
Manchester offers a wealth of landmarks and attractions reflecting its rich history and culture. The city's architecture showcases its 19th-century wealth, featuring styles from Greek classical to early steel-framed structures.
Key attractions include:
- The Lowry: An architecturally innovative center for visual and performing arts.
- Manchester City Art Gallery: Contains collections of paintings, sculpture, silver, and pottery.
- Museum of Science and Industry: Highlights Manchesterâs industrial heritage. A complex of buildings at Castlefield, including the worldâs oldest railway station, has been developed as a regional museum of science and industry.
- Town Hall: Designed by Alfred Waterhouse, it is regarded as perhaps the ultimate in Victorian Gothic fantasies.
- John Ryland University Library: A notable library that is now part of the Victoria University of Manchester library.
- Chethamâs Library: One of the first free public libraries in Europe.
Manchester is also known for its music scene and football clubs, Manchester United and Manchester City.
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How is Manchester important in the world of sports?
Manchester is globally significant in sports, particularly known for its two Premier League football clubs: Manchester United and Manchester City. Manchester United, nicknamed "the Red Devils", boasts a record 20 English top-division league championships and 12 Football Association (FA) Cup wins. Manchester City has won the Football League First Division championship twice. These two clubs have raised the cityâs status worldwide. Additionally, test matches are played against overseas cricket teams at the Old Trafford Cricket Club.
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How has Manchester changed over time and what is it like today?
Manchester's transformation reflects its journey from a 16th-century market borough known for wool to a pivotal site in the Industrial Revolution, marked by the opening of its first cotton mill in the 1780s and a surge in steam mills by 1800. The city further solidified its industrial status with the world's first modern railway in 1830 and the Manchester Ship Canal in 1894, linking it to global markets.
Manchester evolved into a commercial and financial hub, especially noted for its Royal Exchange. By the late 20th century, Manchester faced redevelopment challenges, transitioning from a textile-dependent economy to a broader economic structure. Today, Manchester is a city in transition, marked by redevelopment and a move towards a postindustrial economy, with services becoming the primary employers. The city is known for its cultural revival, architecture, and music scene.
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News •
Manchester, city and metropolitan borough in the metropolitan county of Greater Manchester urban county, northwestern England. Most of the city, including the historic core, is in the historic county of Lancashire, but it includes an area south of the River Mersey in the historic county of Cheshire. Manchester is the nucleus of the largest metropolitan area in the north of England, and it remains an important regional city, but it has lost the extraordinary vitality and unique influence that put it at the forefront of the Industrial Revolution. The city is today famous worldwide for its two top Premier League football clubs, Manchester United and Manchester City.
Manchester was an urban prototype: in many respects it could claim to be the first of the new generation of huge industrial cities created in the Western world during the past 250 years. In 1717 it was merely a market town of 10,000 people, but by 1851 its textile (chiefly cotton) industries had so prospered that it had become a manufacturing and commercial city of more than 300,000 inhabitants, already spilling out its suburbs and absorbing its industrial satellites. By the beginning of the 20th century, salients of urban growth linked Manchester to the ring of cotton-manufacturing townsâBolton, Rochdale, and Oldham, for exampleâthat almost surround the city, and a new form of urban development, a conurbation, or metropolitan area, was evolving. By 1911 it had a population of 2,350,000. In the following years, however, the pace of growth slowed dramatically. If the 19th century was Manchesterâs golden age, when it was indisputably Britainâs second city, the 20th century was marked by increasing industrial problems associated with the decline of the textile trades (the result of foreign competition and technological obsolescence). Area city, 45 square miles (116 square km); Greater Manchester metropolitan county, 493 square miles (1,276 square km). Pop. (2001) city, 392,419; Greater Manchester metropolitan county, 2,482,328; (2011) city, 503,127; Greater Manchester metropolitan county, 2,682,528.
Physical and human geography
The landscape
The city site
Manchester occupies a featureless plain made up of river gravels and the glacially transported debris known as drift. It lies at a height of 133 feet (40 metres) above sea level, enclosed by the slopes of the Pennine range on the east and the upland spur of Rossendale on the north. Much of the plain is underlain by coal measures; mining was once widespread but had ceased by the end of the 20th century. Within this physical unit, known as the Manchester embayment, the cityâs metropolitan area evolved. Manchester, the central city, is situated on the east bank of the River Irwell and has an elongated north-south extent, the result of late 19th- and early 20th-century territorial expansion. In 1930 the city extended its boundaries far to the south beyond the River Mersey, to annex 9 square miles (23 square km) of the northern portion of the former administrative county of Cheshire. Two large metropolitan boroughs adjoin the city of Manchester on the west and southwest: Salford and Trafford. Together these three administrative units form the chief concentration of commercial employment. From this core, suburbs have spread far to the west and south, chiefly within the unitary authority of Cheshire East. To the north and east of Manchester, smaller industrial towns and villages, mixed with suburban development, merge into one another and extend as a continuous urban area to the foot of the encircling upland. Close to the upland margin lies a ring of large towns, which were traditionally the major centres of the cotton-spinning industryâBolton, Bury, and Rochdale to the north and Oldham, Ashton-under-Lyne, and Stockport to the east.
The urban structure of metropolitan Manchester is determined largely by its industrial zones. By far the most important of these is the one bisecting it from east to west. This contains most of the heavier industryâpetrochemicals on the Ship Canal near Irlam, electrical engineering in Trafford Park and Salford, and machine tools and metal fabrication in eastern Manchester. Industry in the south is confined to a few compact, largely planned factory estates, notably at Altrincham and Wythenshawe. North and east of Manchester, ribbons of long-established industry follow every railway, river valley, and abandoned canal. The electrochemical industries of the Irwell valley, the dyestuffs of the Irk, and, everywhere, the old textile mills (many converted to new industrial uses) are the dominant features.
Climate
Manchesterâs climate is most kindly described as mild, moist, and misty. The temperate climate is without extremes: winters are mild, with a January mean temperature in the high 30s F (about 4 °C), and summers are cool, with a July mean temperature in the high 50s F (about 15 °C). Occasional high-pressure systems produce cold, clear spells in winter or hot droughts in summer, but these rarely persist. Winds from the west and south prevail, and these bathe the city in frequent gentle rain derived from the almost constant succession of Atlantic weather systems. The annual rainfall, 32 inches (818 mm), is not notably high by the standards of western Britain, but it occurs on no less than half of the days in an average year. There is little reliable seasonal variation, but the months of March through May offer the best chance of prolonged dry spells.
The wet Atlantic air banked against the Pennine slopes to the east of the city produces extreme cloudiness; on about 70 percent of the days of the year, the afternoon sky is at least half covered by cloud. This limits sunshine, which was further reduced by air pollution during the decades of the cityâs industrial prosperity. Up to about 1960 the city centre recorded the abnormally low total of only 970 sunshine hours annually. Foul fogs were another problem of the man-made industrial climate. Manchester then had an average of 55 days of serious fog in a typical year, and the death rate from respiratory diseases surged following these fog episodes. But the cityâs peculiarly sunless and fog-bound winter climate was transformed by effective air-pollution control. Annual hours of bright sunshine have risen to about 1,300, and serious fogs have been reduced to about 20 days each year. This has been a major factor in reducing the incidence of two formerly endemic diseases, bronchitis and tuberculosis, which had given the city an unenviably high death rate.