Manchester

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Ed Glinert’s tour of Manchester

If you’ve ever wandered around Manchester looking at the buildings and wondered what stories went on behind each doorway then a new publication by Chorlton author Ed Glinert could be for you. The Manchester Compendium gives readers a street-by-street history of the city, revealing many of its fascinating histories. If you’ve always meant to tag along on a guided city tour but never had the time, then this is the book for you. We asked Ed to pick five of his favourite places from the city and give us the stories behind them

1) First Church of Christ Scientist, Daisy Bank Road, Victoria Park, M14
This is one of the most remarkable buildings in Manchester, if not in the UK. The problem in Manchester is that to a large extent the city has been dominated by revivalist architecture for so long, they mostly missed the excitement of the modern period. Consequently, there’s very little of that kind of architecture in Manchester, so where there is a bit, like the First Church of Christ Scientist, it really stands out. It’s a really striking building but it’s tucked away like a forgotten masterpiece in Victoria Park. It’s a maverick design from the architect Edgar Wood, who was never allowed to have a major commission in the centre because the authorities were too embarrassed to have this bold new experimental look in the city, which is a shame really.

2) Richard Cobden’s Offices, Harvest House, 14-16, Mosley Street, M2.
Manchester was made on trade and the ingenuity of the nineteenth-century merchants – the most important of whom was Richard Cobden. He was a vociferous opponent of the Corn Laws and he led the way in getting them repealed. He also paved the way for Manchester to have its own representation. Before Cobden, Manchester wasn’t even a city, it was a town. Cobden pioneered the idea of a modern-style council, something that we take for granted now but it wasn’t until the 1830s that we actually had one. There are plenty of statues to Cobden in the area but he had his office on Mosley Street in a very dull building but it’s worth seeing where all of this important work was done, so have a look.

3) Chetham’s School of Music, Long Millgate, M31
There are not many cities the size of Manchester that boast an almost intact medieval manor house at the centre. Chetham's is quite hard to find and I remember feeling quite shocked when I finally discovered it a good ten years after coming to Manchester. The building was originally the manor house for the whole area and it’s not necessarily great architecture, it’s just the sort of medieval Tudor houses that have disappeared as our towns have developed. It’s been many different things over the years and it’s got a library attached which could well be the oldest library in continuous use in all of Europe – although there’s a number of places that claim that, but it’s certainly one of the oldest having been in use since the 1600s. Of course these days the building is a school, which is what it’s been used for, for hundreds of years but it’s a specialist music college now.

4) Free Trade Hall, Peter Street, M2
I think the most important building in Manchester’s history has to be the Free Trade Hall. There’s still a building there these days but it’s now the site of the Radisson Edwardian hotel. People like me argue that it shouldn’t have been turned into a hotel in the first place, but we have to remind ourselves that the original building was mostly destroyed during the Second World War. For decades after the façade remained intact but the whole of the interior was destroyed. So the fact that it was turned into a hotel is just another change to the original. The site itself is important to the city because it was around there that the Peterloo Massacre took place. The hall was built to commemorate the fact that Manchester had managed to convince the government to change its mind on the Corn Laws and to introduce Free Trade. It became a public hall, hosting many public debates and Winston Churchill was once famously interrupted by the suffragettes. The Hallé orchestra played there for many years and there have been loads of momentous rock gigs over the years. Famously, The Sex Pistols played in the Lesser Free Trade Hall – it’s a venue with loads of history.

5) Market Street
The most-used street in Manchester. There are very few buildings on it that have much historical interest but there’s an amazing amount of things that have happened on that street. The Manchester Guardian started there but that building’s gone now. The Anti-Corn Law League had their offices there but that building is gone as well. The world’s first tailors' where you could go in and buy a ready-made suit opened there. Perhaps most incredibly Market Street is where the stage coaches used to leave for London. If you wanted to go to London in the 1800s then Sherman’s Telegraph would leave Market Street for London and it took 18 hours. It left three times a week at 5am, so if you wanted to go to London you had to be up early. You stopped for breakfast at Macclesfield, lunch at Derby and supper at Leicester and the horses were changed 18 times in all. It’s amazing how much that’s changed in a relatively short time.

'The Manchester Compendium' is out now priced £20 and published by Allen Lane

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