Manchester By The Sea 4k
Frederic Laureano
The history of Manchester began with the civilian settlement associated with the Roman fort (castra) of Mamucium or Mancunium, established in about AD 79 on a sandstone bluff near the confluence of the rivers Medlock and Irwell. Throughout the Middle Ages, Manchester remained a manorial township but began to expand "at an astonishing rate" around the turn of the 19th century. Manchester's unplanned urbanisation was brought on by a boom in textile manufacture during the Industrial Revolution[9] and resulted in it becoming the world's first industrialised city.[10] Historically part of Lancashire, areas of Cheshire south of the River Mersey were incorporated into Manchester in the 20th century, including Wythenshawe in 1931. Manchester achieved city status in 1853. The Manchester Ship Canal opened in 1894, creating the Port of Manchester and linking the city to the Irish Sea, 36 miles (58 km) to the west. The city's fortune declined after the Second World War, owing to deindustrialisation, and the IRA bombing in 1996 led to extensive investment and regeneration.[11] Following considerable redevelopment, Manchester was the host city for the 2002 Commonwealth Games.
The city is notable for its architecture, culture, musical exports, media links, scientific and engineering output, social impact, sports clubs and transport connections. Manchester Liverpool Road railway station is the world's oldest surviving inter-city passenger railway station.[12] At the University of Manchester, Ernest Rutherford first split the atom in 1917; Frederic C. Williams, Tom Kilburn and Geoff Tootill developed the world's first stored-program computer in 1948; and Andre Geim and Konstantin Novoselov first isolated graphene in 2004.
Manchester has a large urban sprawl, which forms from the city centre into the other neighbouring authorities; these include The Four Heatons, Failsworth, Prestwich, Stretford, Sale, Droylsden, Old Trafford and Reddish. The city is also contiguous with Salford and its borough but is separated from it by the River Irwell. This urban area is cut off by the M60, also known as the Manchester Outer Ring Road, which runs in a circular around the city and these areas. It joins the M62 to the north-east and the M602 to the west, as well as the East Lancashire Road and A6.
The Brigantes were the major Celtic tribe in what is now known as Northern England; they had a stronghold in the locality at a sandstone outcrop on which Manchester Cathedral now stands, opposite the bank of the River Irwell.[20] Their territory extended across the fertile lowland of what is now Salford and Stretford. Following the Roman conquest of Britain in the 1st century, General Agricola ordered the construction of a fort named Mamucium in the year 79 to ensure that Roman interests in Deva Victrix (Chester) and Eboracum (York) were protected from the Brigantes.[20] Central Manchester has been permanently settled since this time.[21] A stabilised fragment of foundations of the final version of the Roman fort is visible in Castlefield. The Roman habitation of Manchester probably ended around the 3rd century; its civilian settlement appears to have been abandoned by the mid-3rd century, although the fort may have supported a small garrison until the late 3rd or early 4th century.[22] After the Roman withdrawal and Saxon conquest, the focus of settlement shifted to the confluence of the Irwell and Irk sometime before the arrival of the Normans after 1066.[23] Much of the wider area was laid waste in the subsequent Harrying of the North.[24][25]
In the Domesday Book of 1086, Manchester is recorded as within the hundred of Salford and held as tenant in chief by a Norman named Roger of Poitou,[26] later being held by the family of Grelley, lord of the manor and residents of Manchester Castle until 1215 before a Manor House was built.[27] By 1421 Thomas de la Warre founded and constructed a collegiate church for the parish, now Manchester Cathedral; the domestic premises of the college house Chetham's School of Music and Chetham's Library.[23][28] The library, which opened in 1653 and is still open to the public, is the oldest free public reference library in the United Kingdom.[29]
Manchester is mentioned as having a market in 1282.[30] Around the 14th century, Manchester received an influx of Flemish weavers, sometimes credited as the foundation of the region's textile industry.[31] Manchester became an important centre for the manufacture and trade of woollens and linen, and by about 1540, had expanded to become, in John Leland's words, "The fairest, best builded, quickest, and most populous town of all Lancashire".[23] The cathedral and Chetham's buildings are the only significant survivors of Leland's Manchester.[24]
During the English Civil War Manchester strongly favoured the Parliamentary interest. Although not long-lasting, Cromwell granted it the right to elect its own MP. Charles Worsley, who sat for the city for only a year, was later appointed Major General for Lancashire, Cheshire and Staffordshire during the Rule of the Major Generals. He was a diligent puritan, turning out ale houses and banning the celebration of Christmas; he died in 1656.[32]
Significant quantities of cotton began to be used after about 1600, firstly in linen and cotton fustians, but by around 1750 pure cotton fabrics were being produced and cotton had overtaken wool in importance.[23] The Irwell and Mersey were made navigable by 1736, opening a route from Manchester to the sea docks on the Mersey. The Bridgewater Canal, Britain's first wholly artificial waterway, was opened in 1761, bringing coal from mines at Worsley to central Manchester. The canal was extended to the Mersey at Runcorn by 1776. The combination of competition and improved efficiency halved the cost of coal and halved the transport cost of raw cotton.[23][28] Manchester became the dominant marketplace for textiles produced in the surrounding towns.[23] A commodities exchange, opened in 1729,[24] and numerous large warehouses, aided commerce. In 1780, Richard Arkwright began construction of Manchester's first cotton mill.[24][28] In the early 1800s, John Dalton formulated his atomic theory in Manchester.
Manchester was one of the centres of textile manufacture during the Industrial Revolution. The great majority of cotton spinning took place in the towns of south Lancashire and north Cheshire, and Manchester was for a time the most productive centre of cotton processing.[33]
Manchester became known as the world's largest marketplace for cotton goods[23][34] and was dubbed "Cottonopolis" and "Warehouse City" during the Victorian era.[33] In Australia, New Zealand and South Africa, the term "manchester" is still used for household linen: sheets, pillow cases, towels, etc.[35] The industrial revolution brought about huge change in Manchester and was key to the increase in Manchester's population.
Manchester began expanding "at an astonishing rate" around the turn of the 19th century as people flocked to the city for work from Scotland, Wales, Ireland and other areas of England as part of a process of unplanned urbanisation brought on by the Industrial Revolution.[36][37][38] It developed a wide range of industries, so that by 1835 "Manchester was without challenge the first and greatest industrial city in the world".[34] Engineering firms initially made machines for the cotton trade, but diversified into general manufacture. Similarly, the chemical industry started by producing bleaches and dyes, but expanded into other areas. Commerce was supported by financial service industries such as banking and insurance.
The Manchester Ship Canal was built between 1888 and 1894, in some sections by canalisation of the Rivers Irwell and Mersey, running 36 miles (58 km)[40] from Salford to Eastham Locks on the tidal Mersey. This enabled oceangoing ships to sail right into the Port of Manchester. On the canal's banks, just outside the borough, the world's first industrial estate was created at Trafford Park.[23] Large quantities of machinery, including cotton processing plant, were exported around the world.
A centre of capitalism, Manchester was once the scene of bread and labour riots, as well as calls for greater political recognition by the city's working and non-titled classes. One such gathering ended with the Peterloo massacre of 16 August 1819. The economic school of Manchester Capitalism developed there, and Manchester was the centre of the Anti-Corn Law League from 1838 onward.[41]
Manchester has a notable place in the history of Marxism and left-wing politics; being the subject of Friedrich Engels' work The Condition of the Working Class in England in 1844; Engels spent much of his life in and around Manchester,[42] and when Karl Marx visited Manchester, they met at Chetham's Library. The economics books Marx was reading at the time can be seen in the library, as can the window seat where Marx and Engels would meet.[29] The first Trades Union Congress was held in Manchester (at the Mechanics' Institute, David Street), from 2 to 6 June 1868. Manchester was an important cradle of the Labour Party and the Suffragette Movement.[43]
Although the Industrial Revolution brought wealth to the city, it also brought poverty and squalor to a large part of the population. Historian Simon Schama noted that "Manchester was the very best and the very worst taken to terrifying extremes, a new kind of city in the world; the chimneys of industrial suburbs greeting you with columns of smoke". An American visitor taken to Manchester's blackspots saw "wretched, defrauded, oppressed, crushed human nature, lying and bleeding fragments".[46]
The number of cotton mills in Manchester itself reached a peak of 108 in 1853.[33] Thereafter the number began to decline and Manchester was surpassed as the largest centre of cotton spinning by Bolton in the 1850s and Oldham in the 1860s.[33] However, this period of decline coincided with the rise of the city as the financial centre of the region.[33] Manchester continued to process cotton, and in 1913, 65% of the world's cotton was processed in the area.[23] The First World War interrupted access to the export markets. Cotton processing in other parts of the world increased, often on machines produced in Manchester. Manchester suffered greatly from the Great Depression and the underlying structural changes that began to supplant the old industries, including textile manufacture.
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