MANCHESTER, a city and county of a city, municipal, county and parliamentary borough of Lancashire, England, 189 m. N.W. by N. of London, and 31 m. E. by N. of Liverpool. It stands for the most part on a level plain, the rising ground being chiefly on the north side. The rivers are the Irwell, the Medlock, the Irk, and the Tib, the last entirely overarched and covered by streets and warehouses. The Irwell, which separates Manchester from Salford, is crossed by a series of bridges and discharges itself into the Mersey, which is about 10 m. distant. The chief part of the district, before it was covered with the superficial drift of sand, gravel and clay, consisted of upper New Red Sandstone with slight portions of lower New Red Sandstone, magnesian marls and upper red marls, hard sandstone and limestone rock, and cold clays and shales of contiguous coal-fields. The city, as its thousands of brick-built houses show, has been for the most part dug out of its own clay-fields. The parliamentary and municipal boroughs of Manchester are not conterminous. The city boundaries, which in 1841 enclosed 4293 acres, have been successively enlarged and now enclose 19,914 acres.
There are four large stations for the Lancashire & Yorkshire, London & North-Western, the Midland, Cheshire lines, Great Northern, and Great Central railways, and many subsidiary stations for local traffic. Tramways, as well as railways, run from Manchester to Oldham, Ashton, Eccles, Stockport, &c., with which places the city is connected by continuous lines of street. The length of the streets in the city of Manchester is 758 m. (exclusive of those in the district of Withington, which joined the city in 1905). The tramway lines within the city boundaries extend to 111 m., and in addition there are 58 m. leased to the corporation by adjacent local authorities. As a matter of fact, the whole of south-east Lancashire and some portions of Cheshire are linked to Manchester by railways and tramways so as to form one great urban area, and the traveller passes from one town to another by lines of street which, for the most part, are continuous. Facility of communication is essential to the commercial prosperity of Manchester, and its need was recognized by the duke of Bridgewater, whose canal, constructed in 1761, has now been absorbed by the Manchester Ship Canal (q.v.). The making of this early waterway was an event only less important than the opening of the Manchester & Liverpool railway in 1830.
The township of Manchester, which forms the nucleus of the city, is comparatively small, and outlying hamlets having been added, its size has increased without regularity of plan. Roughly speaking, the city forms a square, with Market Street as its central thoroughfare. The tendency of recent development is to reduce the irregularities so that the other main streets may either run parallel to or intersect Market Street. Deansgate, which formerly ended in a narrow tangle of buildings, is now a broad road with many handsome buildings, and the same process of widening, enlarging and rebuilding is going on, more or less, all over Manchester. Market Street, which has not been widened since 1820, has been termed, and with some reason, “the most congested street in Europe”; but relief is anticipated from some of the other street improvements. The centre of the city is occupied by business premises; the factories and workshops are mainly on the eastern side. The most important of the public buildings are in the centre and the south. The latter is also the most favoured residential district, and at its extremity is semi-rural in character. Large masses of the population live beyond the city boundary and come to their daily avocations by train and tram. Such a population is rarely homogeneous and Manchester attracts citizens from every part of the globe; there are considerable numbers of German, Armenian and Jewish residents. The houses are for the most part of brick, the public buildings of stone, which is speedily blackened by the smoky atmosphere. Many of the warehouses are of considerable architectural merit, and in recent years the use of terra-cotta has become more common. It is only in the suburbs that gardens are possible; the air is laden with black dust, and the rivers, in spite of all efforts, are in the central part of the city mere dirty ditches. It is impossible to describe Manchester in general terms, for within the city boundaries the conditions vary from the most squalid of slums to suburban and almost rural beauty.
Churches.—Manchester is the seat of an Anglican bishopric, and the chief ecclesiastical building is the cathedral, which, however, was built simply as a parish church, and, although a fine specimen of the Perpendicular period, is by no means what might be expected as the cathedral of an important and wealthy diocese. In the course of restoration a piece of Saxon sculpture came to light. This “Angel stone” represents a winged figure with a scroll inscribed In manus tuas Domine in characters of the 8th century. The bulk of the building belongs to the early part of the 15th century. The first warden was John Huntington, rector of Ashton, who built the choir. The building, which was noticed for its hard stone by Leland when he visited the town, did not stand time and weather well, and by 1845 some portions of it were rapidly decaying. This led to its restoration by James P. Holden. By 1868 the tower was almost completely renovated in a more durable stone. Further restoration was carried out by J. S. Crowther, and the addition of a porch and vestries was executed by Basil Champneys. The total length is 220 ft. and the breadth 112 ft. There are several stained-glass windows, including one to the memory of “Chinese Gordon.” The recumbent statues of Bishop James Fraser and of Hugh Birley, M.P., should also be named. In the Ely chapel is the altar tomb of Bishop James Stanley. In the stalls there are some curious miserere carvings. The tower is 139 ft. high, and contains a peal of ten bells, chiefly from the foundry of the Rudhalls. There are two organs, one by Father Smith, and a modern one in an oak case designed by Sir G. Scott. The parish church was made collegiate in 1422, and when in 1847 the bishopric of Manchester was created the warden and fellows became dean and canons and the parish church became the cathedral. The first bishop was James Prince Lee, who died in 1869; the second was James Fraser, who died in 1885; the third was James Moorhouse, who resigned in 1903 and was succeeded by Edmund Arbuthnott Knox. The church endowments are considerable and have been the subject of a special act of parliament, known as the Manchester Rectory Division Act of 1845, which provides £1500 per annum for the dean and £600 to each of the four canons, and divides the residue among the incumbents of the new churches formed out of the old parish.
Of the Roman Catholic churches that of the Holy Name, which belongs to the Jesuits, is remarkable for its costly decoration. The Greek Church and most of the Nonconformist bodies have places of worship. There are twelve Jewish synagogues. The meeting-house of the Society of Friends is said to be the largest of the kind in the kingdom and will seat 1200 persons.
Public Buildings.—The Royal Infirmary, founded in 1752, having become inadequate for its purposes, a new building has been erected on the south side of the city near the university, from designs by Edwin T. Hall and John Brooke; it was opened in 1909 by king Edward VII. The central site in Piccadilly thus became available for other purposes, and the corporation gave instructions for plans to be made for a new library and art gallery. The art gallery already existing in 1909 was founded as the Royal Institution, but in 1882 passed under the control of the city council. The building was designed by Sir Charles Barry. The collection contains some fine paintings by Etty, Millais, Leighton and other artists. The sculpture includes casts of the Elgin marbles and a statue of Dr John Dalton by Chantrey. The most striking of the public buildings is the town hall, probably the largest municipal building in the country, but no longer entirely adequate to the increasing business of the city council. It was completed in 1877 from designs by Alfred Waterhouse, who selected as the style of architecture a form of Gothic, but treated it very freely as purposes of utility required. The edifice covers 8000 sq. yds., and includes more than two hundred and fifty rooms. The building consists of continuous lines of corridors surrounding a central courtyard and connected by bridges. The principal tower is 286 ft. high to the top of the ball, and affords a view which extends over a large part of south Lancashire and Cheshire and is bounded only by the hills of Derbyshire. The tower contains a remarkable peal of bells by Taylor of Loughborough, forming an almost perfect chromatic scale of twenty-one bells; each bell has on it a line from canto 105 of Tennyson’s In Memoriam. The great hall is 100 ft. long and 50 ft. wide, and contains a magnificent organ built by Cavaillé-Coll of Paris. The twelve panels of this room are filled with paintings by Ford Madox Brown, illustrating the history and progress of the city. The royal exchange is a fine specimen of Italian architecture and was erected in 1869; the great meeting-hall is one of the largest rooms in England, the ceiling having a clear area, without supports, of 120 ft. in width. The exchange is seen at its best on market days (Tuesday and Friday). The assize courts were built in 1864 from designs by Waterhouse. The style is a mixture of Early English and Decorative, and a large amount of decorative art has been expended on the building. The branch Bank of England is a Doric building designed by C. R. Cockerell. There are separate town-halls for the townships of Ardwick, Chorlton, Hulme, Cheetham, Broughton and Pendleton. The Free Trade hall is a fine structure in the Lombardo-Venetian style, and its great hall will accommodate about five thousand people. It is used for public meetings, concerts, &c., and was built by Edward Walters. The Athenaeum, designed by Barry, was founded by Richard Cobden and others associated with him for “the advancement and diffusion of knowledge.” The institution has, perhaps, not developed exactly on the lines contemplated by its promoters, but it has been very useful. The advantages enjoyed by members of social clubs, with the addition of facilities for educational classes and the use of an excellent news-room and a well-selected library, are offered in return for a payment which does not amount to a penny a day. The mechanics’ institution has developed into the school of Technology, which now forms a part of the university. The Portico is a good specimen of the older proprietary libraries and newsrooms. It dates from 1806, and has a library. The Memorial Hall was built to commemorate the memory of the ejected ministers of 1662; it is used for meetings, scientific, educational, musical and religious. The Whitworth Institute is governed by a corporate body originating from the liberal bequests of Sir Joseph Whitworth. The Institute contains a valuable collection of works of art and stands in the centre of a woodland park. In the park, which has been transferred to the corporation, is a sculpture group of “Christ and the Children,” executed by George Tinworth from the designs of R. D. Darbishire, by whom it was presented. The assize courts, built from designs by Waterhouse (1864), the post office (1887), and the police courts (1871) should also be named. Many fine structures suffer from being hemmed in by streets which prevent the proportions from being seen to advantage.
Monuments.—In Piccadilly are bronze statues of Wellington, Watt, Dalton, Peel and Queen Victoria. Another statue of the Queen, by the Princess Louise, is placed on the new porch of the cathedral. A bronze statue of Cobden occupies a prominent position in St Ann’s Square. There also is the South African War Memorial of the Manchester Regiment. The marble statue of the Prince Consort, covered by a Gothic canopy of stone, is in front of the town hall, which dwarfs what would otherwise be a striking monument. In Albert Square there are also statues of Bishop Fraser, John Bright, Oliver Heywood and W. E. Gladstone. A statue of J. P. Joule is in the town hall, which also contains memorials of other worthies. The Queen’s Park has a statue of Benjamin Brierley, a well-known writer in the Lancashire dialect. The most picturesque is Matthew Noble’s bronze statue of Cromwell, placed on a huge block of rough granite as pedestal. It stands at the junction of Deansgate and Victoria Street, near the cathedral, and was presented to the town by Mrs E. S. Heywood.
Education.—There are many educational facilities. The oldest institution is the grammar school, which was founded in 1519 by Hugh Oldham, bishop of Exeter, a native of the town. The master and usher appointed by the bishop were to teach freely every child and scholar coming to the school, “without any money or reward taken”; and the bishop forbade the appointment of any member of the religious orders as head master. Some corn mills were devised for the maintenance of the school, which was further endowed at both the universities by Sarah, duchess of Somerset, in 1692. The school has now two hundred and fifty free scholars, whilst other pupils are received on payment of fees. Among those educated at the grammar school were Thomas De Quincey, Harrison Ainsworth and Samuel Bamford the Radical. After the grammar school the oldest educational foundation is that of Humphrey Chetham, whose bluecoat school, founded in 1653, is housed in the building formerly occupied by the college of clergy. This also contains the public library founded by Chetham, and is the most interesting relic of antiquity in the city. The educational charity of William Hulme (1631-1691) is administered under a scheme drawn up in 1881. Its income is nearly £10,000 a year, and it supports a grammar school and aids education in other ways. There are three high schools for girls. The Nicholls hospital was founded in 1881 for the education of orphan boys. Manchester was one of the first places to adopt the powers given by Forster’s Act of 1870, and on the abolition of school boards the educational supervision was transferred to a committee of the corporation strengthened by co-opted members. In addition to the elementary schools, the municipality provides a large and well-equipped school of technology, and a school of art to which is attached an arts and crafts museum. There are a pupil teachers’ college, a school of domestic economy, special schools for feeble-minded children, and a Royal College of Music. The schools for the deaf and dumb are situated at Old Trafford, in a contiguous building of the same Gothic design as the blind asylum, to which Thomas Henshaw left a bequest of £20,000. There is also an adult deaf and dumb institution, containing a news-room, lecture hall, chapel, &c., for the use of deaf mutes.
The Victoria University of Manchester has developed from the college founded by John Owens, who in 1846 bequeathed nearly £100,000 to trustees for an institution in which should be taught “such branches of learning and science as were then or might be hereafter usually taught in English universities.” It was opened in 1851 in a house which had formerly been the residence of Cobden. In 1872 a new college building was erected on the south side of the town from designs by Waterhouse. In 1880 a university charter was granted, excluding the faculties of theology and medicine, and providing for the incorporation of University College, Liverpool, and the College of Science, Leeds. The federal institution thus created lasted until 1903, when the desire of Liverpool for a separate university of its own led to a reconstruction. Manchester University consists of one college—Owens College—in its greatly enlarged form. The buildings include the Whitworth Hall (the gift of the legatees of Sir Joseph Whitworth), the Manchester Museum and the Christie Library, which is a building for the university library given by R. C. Christie, who also bequeathed his own collection. Dr Lee, the first bishop of Manchester, left his library to Owens College, and the legatees of Sir Joseph Whitworth bought and presented E. A. Freeman’s books. The library has received other important special collections. The benefactions to the university of Thomas Ashton are estimated at £80,000. There are in Manchester a number of denominational colleges, Wesleyan, Primitive Methodist, Unitarian, Baptist, &c., and many of the students preparing for the ministry receive their arts training at the university, the theological degrees of which are open to students irrespective of creed.