PENDLETON, FROM THE CRESCENT (p. [246]).
The Ship Canal being a continuation of the Mersey, and the two blending in some places and in others running in close proximity, some of the engineering and other features of this the greatest of our English artificial waterways will be referred to as the further course of the Mersey is sketched. But as the canal has its headquarters in Manchester, it may be mentioned here that its total length from Eastham, where it runs into the estuary of the Mersey, to Pomona Docks at Manchester is 35½ miles, that its average water width at the level is 172 feet, and that its width at the bottom is 120 feet, except between Barton and Manchester, where the bottom width is as much as 170 feet, with 230 feet stretch at the level. As the minimum depth of the canal is 25 feet, it has, therefore, accommodation for the largest vessels; and as it is lit up with the electric light along its course, it is navigable by night as well as by day. The canal is in four stretches, divided by five sets of locks, that eventually raise its waters to a height of 60½ feet above the sea. There is a range of docks both on the Manchester and on the Salford side of the terminus of the canal, with a great open stretch of water for the movement of vessels. Mere figures give but a poor idea of the extent and character of the canal, but there are certain features which appeal strikingly to the least imaginative mind. Thus, in regard to the excavations, we have the startling statement that the quantity of earth removed to secure a channel for the canal could have made a wall round the globe 6 feet high and 2 feet thick, and that enough bricks were used to make a causeway 6 feet wide from one end of the kingdom to the other. Another point we have to remember is that but for improved machinery and the use of steam and of powerful explosives, the construction of the Manchester Ship Canal in all its parts, instead of being accomplished in seven years, could hardly have been finished in half a century.
MANCHESTER, FROM THE GRAMMAR SCHOOL, SHOWING THE CATHEDRAL,
THE EXCHANGE, THE TOWN HALL, ETC.
There are political as well as industrial features that cannot be overlooked in any reference to the great seat of the cotton trade. A statue of Cromwell in Victoria Street, standing on a rugged block of granite, may be taken as a memorial of the strong stand Manchester made for the Parliament in the Civil Wars of the seventeenth century. It was in Manchester that the first blow in that struggle is said to have been struck. Curiously enough, however, Manchester, in a moment of impulse, declared for the Stuarts in the rising a century later. Its inhabitants not only welcomed Prince Charlie in his march to the South, but went so far as to proclaim him king. They changed their minds, however, almost as quickly as they had made them up; and the Prince and his adherents received but scant courtesy from the Manchester folk some two weeks later while retreating northward. Agitation for Parliamentary reform ran to fever heat in Manchester almost from the inception of that movement, and had one lamentable incident—a charge by yeomanry at a mass meeting in St. Peter’s Field in 1819, when several persons were killed. While deplorable in itself, this event, which has passed into history as the “Peterloo massacre,” was not without potent influence in bringing in that better era for which the people of Manchester, in common with the inhabitants of other large towns, were clamouring. Where that memorable mass meeting took place now stands the Free Trade Hall—a suggestive reminder of the fact that in Manchester the Corn Law League, with Mr. Cobden, Mr. Bright, and Mr. Milner Gibson as leading spirits, had its headquarters. In 1832 Manchester obtained the right to send two members to Parliament, Salford getting one member. By the Reform Bill of 1867 both boroughs got an additional representative; and when, in 1885, the great towns were cut up into divisions, Manchester had its Parliamentary strength increased to six members, and Salford to three.
Long as it had to wait for Parliamentary recognition, it was still later before Manchester secured the municipal powers to which by its antiquity, its growth, and its business importance it was entitled. Its charter of incorporation as a borough was not obtained until 1838. Nine years later (1847) it was made a city, in the episcopal sense, its collegiate church—“the one Paroch Church” Leland speaks of in his “Itinerary”—ranking as the cathedral. It was six years later still (1853) before the civic charter was obtained confirming what had been done ecclesiastically. In 1893 another titular dignity came to Manchester, its chief magistrate being then created Lord Mayor. The cathedral, regarded as a parish church, dates from 1422, when it was founded by Thomas de la Warre, who was doubly qualified for the work he undertook, being not only lord of the manor but rector of the parish. He founded a church, it is said, “as well for the greater honour of the place as the better edification of the people”—hence its collegiate character. Much has been done, with marked success, to improve the appearance of the building since its elevation to the dignity of a cathedral, and, architecturally and otherwise, it is well entitled to the rank it now holds. Close to it is Chetham College, the original residence of the Warden and Fellows of the old collegiate body. Humphrey Chetham, the founder of this institution, was a dealer in fustians in Manchester early in the seventeenth century. Before his death he saw to the education and maintenance of a number of poor boys of the town and neighbourhood, and by his will he left money to continue and expand the good work he had begun.
A still earlier trust is the Grammar School, which goes back to 1515, when it had as its founder Hugh Oldham, Bishop of Exeter. The school drew revenues from the mills on the Irk in the days when that stream ran in limpid purity into the Irwell. It has a high reputation for scholarship. Educationally Manchester owes much also to a citizen of the present century—John Owens, who died in 1846, having left £100,000, to which an equal sum was added for the foundation of the college that bears his name. Manchester has thus been generously helped in the matter both of elementary and of secondary education. And she has had the further satisfaction of mounting the next step in the ladder of learning, having obtained in 1880 a Royal Charter for the founding of Victoria University, of which Owens is one of the colleges, others being the Yorkshire College at Leeds and the University College at Liverpool. Chetham College possesses a finely selected library of 30,000 volumes, housed in a picturesque range of old buildings. And in this connection it is interesting to note that Manchester was the first borough to take advantage of the Free Libraries Act. To-day she has free libraries and reading rooms in every part of the city where they seem needed, in addition to a great central reference library containing about 200,000 volumes. Salford is equally well equipped in this respect; and in both places technical training has kept pace with other forms of instruction.