Walk - Details
(A) Manchester Town Hall (1868-77)- Manchester Town Hall was designed by Alfred Waterhouse (1830 - 1905) to meet the ceremonial and workday requirements of an expanding city. When built, it had to provide a large hall, a suite of reception rooms and living quarters for the Lord Mayor, as well as offices for all the Corporation departments and a chamber for Council meetings, all within an awkward triangular site. It cost a million pounds to build.
Today the Town Hall complex, which includes the Town Hall and extension, is the seat of local government in Manchester and an emblem of civic pride. Around 3,500 city staff work there offering services to the public.
Generally open to the public, the highly decorated porch features mosaics of olive-leaf designs, and pillars with carved eagles, dragons, and foliage. There are two important statues, one of the famous chemist and philosopher, John Dalton (1766-1844) by Chantrey and one of the great physicists, James Joule (1818-1889) by Alfred Gilbert. To the right on the ground floor is a collection of busts and other statuary, some modern, but mostly 19th Century.
(B) Peace Garden, St Peter’s Square - Manchester became the world’s first nuclear-free city in 1980. The council called on the government "to refrain from the manufacture or positioning of any nuclear weapons of any kind within the boundaries of our city". This was later updated to oppose nuclear power and support renewable energy and to add a further ‘peace policy’, which talks of "promoting social inclusion, social justice, good citizenship and peace between the peoples, cultures and faith communities." The city also created the Peace Gardens off Princess Street, to the rear of the Town Hall, which, includes, Barbara Pearson’s sculpture, Messenger of Peace (1985).
(C) Manchester Art Gallery - this free-to-view municipally-owned public art gallery houses the important civic art collection of Manchester, which includes many works specifically related to Manchester (especially in the CIS-sponsored Manchester Room). It occupies three buildings including the old Manchester Athenaeum building (Sir Charles Barry 1826). And the old Grade I listed Royal Manchester Institution (Barry 1824).
(D) Chinatown is one of the busiest and most colourful areas of the city centre. Although the first Chinese restaurants arrived in the city shortly after World War Two, Manchester's Chinatown owes its present origins to the 1970s when several Chinese restaurants gradually began to open in the old cotton warehouses around Nicholas Street, Faulkner Street and George Street. Now, in addition to Cantonese and Pekingese, there are many other ethnicities represented in Chinatown, including Thai, Malaysian, Singaporean, Nepalese, Italian, French and Japanese shops and restaurants.
Every year Chinatown and the city join together in celebration of Chinese New Year when thousands of spectators and performers come together to make up one huge party led by the biggest dancing dragon in Europe.
(D1) The Imperial Chinese Archway dominates the area. It is the only one in Europe, and even more decorative than that found in San Francisco. It was a gift to the City in 1987 from the Chinese people and designed and built by a team of engineers from Peking. It is decorated with ceramics, lacquer, paint and gold leaf. Next to the arch are two pavilions set amongst ornamental gardens.
(E) Minshull Street Crown Court: One of two Crown Courts in the centre of Manchester. The building was erected in 1867-73 by Thomas Worthington who was guided by John Ruskin's principles for architecture and design. Heavily influenced by European Gothic. It has extremely interesting architecture and outside decor.
(F) Canal Street: A pedestrianised street running along the west side of the Rochdale Canal, is the centre of the Manchester Gay Village. The street was built when the Rochdale Canal was constructed and included pubs to service the users of the canal, especially people stopping at the lock nearby.
(G) Rochdale Canal runs for 32 miles (51 km) across the Pennines from the Bridgewater Canal at Castlefield Basin in Manchester to join the Calder and Hebble Navigation at Sowerby Bridge in West Yorkshire. It is designated as a "broad" canal because its bridges and locks are wide enough to allow vessels of 14 ft width. When it opened through to Manchester in 1804 it was the first trans-Pennine canal route.
Because of its width, it became the main highway of commerce between Lancashire & Yorkshire, transporting cotton, wool, coal, limestone, timber, salt and general merchandise. In 1890, despite competition from the railways, the canal company had 2,000 barges and traffic reached 700,000 tons/year, the equivalent of 50 barges a day. However, by the start of the 20th century it was in financial trouble and by 1952 most of the length was closed. By the mid 1960s the remainder was almost unusable and the M62 motorway simply cut it in two in the late 1960s.
The Rochdale Canal Society was formed to promote the restoration of the canal and in the 1980s and 1990s small scale work began to re-open stretches of the canal. In 2000 the canal was transferred to the Waterways Trust. In 2002, with funding of £23 million, the whole canal became navigable once again, almost 200 years after its original opening.
(H) The Bridgewater Hall (1996) an international concert venue, home to the Hallé Orchestra, the Hallé Choir and the Manchester Boys Choir and a regular venue for concerts of the BBC Philharmonic and Manchester Camerata.
The hall is named after the Third Duke of Bridgewater who was a pioneer of canal building and commissioned the Bridgewater Canal which joins with the Rochdale Canal in Manchester.
Unusually, the Bridgewater Hall is mostly built from solid, reinforced concrete, moulded and cast like a vast sculpture. The entire structure floats free of the ground on almost three hundred, earthquake-proof isolation bearings or giant springs, so there is no rigid connection between the 22,500 ton building and its foundations which ensures the hall’s carefully designed acoustic is protected from all outside noise and vibration (the 1996 Manchester bombing went unheard inside despite the explosion being only around half a mile away). Inside, the central focal point of the auditorium is the hall’s Marcussen organ with 5,500 pipes.
(I) Manchester Central Convention Complex, an award-winning conference and exhibition venue, in the heart of the city which opened in 1986. It is built in and around the former Manchester Central railway.
The building was granted Grade I listed building status in 1963, but has since been downgraded to Grade II status. The station's large arched roof - a huge wrought-iron single-span arched roof, spanning 210 feet (64 m), 550 feet (168 m) long and 90 feet (27 m) high - was a noted piece of railway engineering and is said to be the widest unsupported iron arch in Britain after London St. Pancras. The former train shed now provides a large multi-purpose exhibition space.
In the late 1800s Manchester was served by two mainline railway stations, Hunt’s Bank (now Victoria) and Store Street (now Piccadilly) but during the 1860s, there was a demand for a third passenger station so Central Station was opened in 1880 and served as the terminus for Midland Railway express trains to London St Pancras. At its peak it boasted around 400 arrivals and departures per day. The station hosted the early Pullman trains, considered to be the height of luxurious transportation, including the famous Blue Pullman.
The station was closed to passengers in 1969 as a result of the Beeching cuts. The building was sold in 1972 and for some time was used for car parking but in 1978 it was bought by Greater Manchester County Council and in 1986 the G-Mex (Greater Manchester Exhibition Centre) opened, preserving the vaulted arches and the iconic clock