Next tour: Tue 1 May 2012.

Meeting point: Visitor Centre, Piccadilly Plaza, 11am.

As Manchester grew in the 19th century, so the population of the city centre contracted, leaving the grand graceful Georgian churches – St Mary Parsonage, St James’s (in what is now Chinatown), St John’s (by what is now ITV Granada) – looking increasingly forlorn without worshippers. Most of these churches were demolished in the 20th century but many of the spaces remain; as car parks, gardens, open spaces.

This is one of the most extraordinary walks in the NMW canon, unearthing a buried city, a lost Georgian town, brutally destroyed by the industrial and commercial revolutions.

Starting from the Visitor Centre in that most modern of settings, we head to nearby Chinatown looking for signs of St James’s. An office block stands on the site by St James’s Street. Nothing remains of the church. Thoughts of Shelley’s Ozymandias came to the group last time. One walker last time sighed for this lost Manchester when the guide showed her the picture.

We then search for other hidden gems. St Peter’s, where there’s a cross and a garden to mark the site; St Matthew’s Campfield (by Charles Barry, no less); St John’s (above, where pleasant gardens mark the site), St  Mary Parsonage (another glorious garden).

Some were never churches but just graveyards. Walker’s Croft under Victoria Station hides some awful stories. The weirdest spot is the car park off Queen Street, Greengate, where close inspection reveals a large number of tombstones. This was the Bible Christian Church dedicated to vegetarianism on religious grounds.  This is the Manchester and Salford that has all but gone; towns dedicated to mystics, misinterpretations of the Bible, mysterious secret spaces.