Jewish Manchester: Guided Tour
“The Old Jewish Ghetto of Manchester”
Next tour: Sun 22 March 2026.
Meet: Victoria Station wallmap, 1.45pm.
Ends: At the Jewish museum.
Booking: Please press here to book with Eventbrite.
***
Here’s the full S.P.
The Manchester area is home to Britain’s second biggest Jewish community. Yet it was not until 1788, just over a hundred years after Oliver Cromwell allowed the Jews to return to the country, that the first recorded Jewish presence appeared in Manchester: Hamilton Levi, a flower dealer of Long Millgate, listed in that year’s trade directory.
Ironically, Manchester’s first Jewish community settled around the parish church (what is now Manchester Cathedral), for that was where the old town was located.
Like the Germans and Irish who were settling locally at the same time, the Jews saw in Manchester, cradle of the industrial revolution, opportunities for trade. They opened their first synagogue in 1794 in a warehouse on Garden Street, a barely noticeable alley at the side of what is now the Printworks, the building long gone, near their burial ground. It was paid for by Samuel Solomon, a well-known quack doctor, responsible for the supposed cure-all “Balm of Gilead” which could allegedly cure all ills.
The 19th century saw a battle for acceptance. The upwardly mobile Manchester Jews adopted many tenets of established gentile Manchester society – cricket, similar mufti, Gilbert & Sullivan’s light operas – until the peace was shattered by the arrival of refugees fleeing persecution in eastern Europe following the assassination of the Russian Czar, Alexander II in 1881. The new arrival spoke only Yiddish, wore their hair and clothes in a strange wild manner and most certainly didn’t want to fit in.
The established Jews were frightened and believed their hard-fought battle for acceptance would be threatened by these strange figures, and so did everything they could to anglicise them.
The pattern of Jewish migration went north, this way: town (18th century), Red Bank and Strangeways (19th century), Hightown, Crumpsall (early 20th century), Broughton, Prestwich (mid 20th century), Whitefield (post war), And that’s it. No Jew has crossed the Irwell into Radcliffe, like Moses failed to cross the Jordan into the Holy Land. Prosaically there was a huge migration to affluent parts of south Manchester and the suburbs: Didsbury, Bowdon, Hale.
Manchester area Jews have made significant contributions to Manchester society:
* Benjamin Hyam was one of the first tailors to sell ready-to-wear clothes and had a shop on Market Street mid-19th century.
* Chaim Weizmann came to Manchester as a chemist in 1904, spent his time pushing the new creed of Zionism, and convinced the British government to lend their support in what was a remarkable coup, expertly told on the tour.
* Israel Sieff who made Marks & Spencer into one of the country’s most successful retail companies.
* Louis Golding wrote the best novel of Manchester Jewry: Magnolia Street (1932)
* Graham Gouldman ranks as one of the greatest songwriters of the rock era, responsible for the Hollies’ “Bus Stop”, Herman’s Hermits’ “No Milk Today” and the Yardbirds’ “Heart Full of Soul”, before forming 10cc and opening Strawberry Studios in Stockport.
On the tour we also reveal the less-celebrated side of well-known Jewish figures who made a significant contribution to the city, such as Robert Maxwell and Karl Marx. (Ah, but was the latter really Jewish?).