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X-WR-CALDESC:Events for Manchester Walks
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BEGIN:VEVENT
DTSTART;TZID=UTC:20250709T110000
DTEND;TZID=UTC:20250709T130000
DTSTAMP:20260421T135820
CREATED:20250708T224927Z
LAST-MODIFIED:20250708T224927Z
UID:26295-1752058800-1752066000@www.newmanchesterwalks.com
SUMMARY:Manchester Music (private tour)
DESCRIPTION:
URL:https://www.newmanchesterwalks.com/event/manchester-music-private-tour/
LOCATION:HOME\, 2 Tony Wilson Place\, Manchester\, Select a State:\, M15 4GU\, United Kingdom
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BEGIN:VEVENT
DTSTART;TZID=UTC:20250704T080000
DTEND;TZID=UTC:20250704T170000
DTSTAMP:20260421T135820
CREATED:20250704T182810Z
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SUMMARY:MIF Tours – The Glories of Manchester Architecture
DESCRIPTION:NEXT TOUR \n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\nThe Glories of Manchester Architecture: Tuesday 8 July 2025. \nGuide: RIBA judge Ed Glinert.\nStarts: Outside the Midland Hotel\, Peter Street\, 12 noon.\nBooking: Please press here to book with Eventbrite. \n*** \n\n\n\n\n\n\nThe Builder magazine once declared “one can scarcely walk about Manchester without coming across frequent examples of the grand in architecture. There is nothing to equal it since the building of Venice.” \n\n\n\n\n\n\nOkay\, that was written in the 1850s\, but for 19th century grandeur Manchester is hard to beat. There are Classical meeting halls and clubs\, Italianate cotton palaces\, Gothic towers and spires\, and Baroque banks – and all of it is stolen\, stolen from grand European creations which hopeful architects had sketched on their Grand Tour and then reproduced across the city. \nThe Gran Guardia Vecchia in Verona provided Edward Walters with a model for the Free Trade Hall; the St Mark’s Campanile in Venice was adapted by Thomas Worthington for the Police Courts on Minshull Street; Ypres Cloth Hall became Manchester Town Hall. \nRead on\, for the 20th century and beyond…\nIn the 20th century the new architects adopted a similar approach\, but this time it was the gleaming skyscrapers of Chicago and New York that enthused them. However those in charge of Manchester refused to let progressive architects such as Harry S. Fairhurst and Joe Sunlight fill the skyline with granite and glass\, and so Manchester missed out on one of the most exciting periods in building history. Restrictions on height eased after the Second World War but Manchester was nervous of reaching for the stars until recently\, and it is true to say our towers are poor cousins of the glories that Adrian Smith\, Chris Wilkinson and Renzo Piano have been creating across the globe. \nWe examine the city’s building legacy as we twist in and out of the city centre streets\, straining our necks for a glimpse of a glorious Gaudi-like gable\, a Venetian vista\, a Greek giant order or a stroke of sacred geometry. \n \n\n \n  \n  \n  \n  \n  \n*** \nWant to read more?\nHere’s the piece New Manchester Walks’ Ed Glinert wrote for the Manchester International Festival 2011 brochure. \nThe best view of Manchester’s architecture is from Salford. Stand on isolated\, lonely Oldfield Road\, off Salford Crescent\, by the dried up route of the Manchester\, Bolton and Bury Canal\, and look west\, and there it is: Manchester\, caught in a perspective of triumphant towers and soaring skyscrapers. Marvel at the sticking-out “drawers” of the Civil Justice Centre aside its formidable aluminium composite bulk and suspended glass wall\, the largest in Europe. Look in awe at the Art Deco fortress of Sunlight House\, and take in an intoxicating vision of the Beetham\, the subtlety of its shape now suitably sensed when removed by the long gap. \nWalk from here into Manchester and the finer detailing of these facades becomes sharper. Central Manchester is dominated by 19th century architects’ desperation to re-create the traditional styles of Europe – Greek\, Gothic\, Italianate\, Baroque – on uncharted territory. Manchester has few original buildings\, just brilliant copies. The Memorial Hall on the corner of Albert Square and Southmill Street by Thomas Worthington is pure 15th century Venice. What’s left of the Free Trade Hall on nearby Peter Street is Edward Walters’ take on the Gran Guardia Vecchia in Verona. You want more Italy on the streets of Manchester? Head for the Athenaeum on Princess Street\, now part of the art gallery\, and behold a Florentine Palace that’s pure Palazzo Pandolfini by Raphael\, while inside ironically is a large collection of Pre-Raphaelite paintings himself. \nOn the way\, you might head past Friends Meeting House on Mount Street. It’s Greek. Ancient Greek. The façade is based on the Temple on the Ilissus because Richard Lane\, designing in the 1820s\, believed that as Manchester had no cultural legacy the city should pay homage to the territory where modern ideas of aesthetics\, art and architecture were shaped. Not that everybody was impressed with the slew of Classical revival buildings he created. The Builder magazine for instance derided his work (Chorlton-on-Medlock Town Hall\, St Thomas’s Pendleton) as looking like a factories with the front of temples stuck on. \nAt least in modern times Manchester has begun to originate. The Bruntwood-owned Bank Chambers/Bank House on Faulkner Street\, between Piccadilly Gardens and Chinatown\, is a magnificent segue of big tower and little tower on a concrete podium. It was designed by Fitzroy\, Robinson in 1971 and appropriately is home to Fairhurst’s\, the most prolific architects in Manchester history. Pity it will need another hundred years before its brutalist beauty and granite-and-glass glamour are fully appreciated.
URL:https://www.newmanchesterwalks.com/event/mif-tours-the-glories-of-manchester-architecture/
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BEGIN:VEVENT
DTSTART;TZID=UTC:20250621T143000
DTEND;TZID=UTC:20250621T160000
DTSTAMP:20260421T135820
CREATED:20250618T093425Z
LAST-MODIFIED:20250618T093425Z
UID:26213-1750516200-1750521600@www.newmanchesterwalks.com
SUMMARY:L. S\, Lowry: Expert Tour with Pictures
DESCRIPTION:Next Walking tour: Saturday 21 June 2025\nMeet: Outside the Mercure Hotel\, Portland Street.\nBooking: Please press here to book with Eventbrite.  \nSpurned\, snubbed and sniggered at\, Laurence Stephen Lowry became Britain’s most famous and best-loved 20th century painter\, whose works now sell for millions. \nHe called himself a “simple man”\, but he was the strangest of fellows. He never left the British Isles\, enjoyed no sexual relations\, and made his will over to a much younger woman\, whom he befriended simply because she shared his surname. \nLowry’s day job was not as an artist but a rent collector in the slum areas of the city\, and as we explore the man behind the paintings we take you through the haunts he visited and depicted.
URL:https://www.newmanchesterwalks.com/event/l-s-lowry-expert-tour-with-pictures/
LOCATION:Mercure Hotel (outside)\, Portland Street\, Manchester\, M1 4PH\, United Kingdom
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BEGIN:VEVENT
DTSTART;TZID=UTC:20250615T111500
DTEND;TZID=UTC:20250615T123000
DTSTAMP:20260421T135820
CREATED:20250609T144412Z
LAST-MODIFIED:20250609T144412Z
UID:26197-1749986100-1749990600@www.newmanchesterwalks.com
SUMMARY:The 1996 Manchester Bomb. Expert tour
DESCRIPTION:This tour: Sunday 15 June 2025\, 11.15am.\nMeet: Outside Selfridge’s\, Exchange Square.\nBooking: Please press here to book with Eventbrite. \nOne myth we will shatter is that the pillar box that stands on the site now is the same pillar box! \nAnother myth is that the bomb was definitely the work of the IRA. \nThe morning of Saturday the 15th of June 1996. A man with an Irish accent phones the Manchester media to say that a bomb is set to go off in the city centre. Because he gives the correct code word\, the authorities realise this is serious. The bomb is in a van on Corporation Street by a pillar box outside Marks & Spencer. \nThe police begin the onerous task of clearing thousands of people from the area. The bomb disposable unit arrives and sets up base on Back Pool Fold\, off Cross Street\, a hundred yards away. Will they be able to defuse the device in time? \nAt nearly a quarter past eleven the army people send their remotely-controlled robotic device – the pigstick disrupter – along Cross Street and Corporation Street to defuse the bomb. It arrives at 11.17am\, one second too late. \n*** \nThe bomb exploded\, sending 3\,300 pounds of Semtex and ammonium nitrate fertiliser into the sky. It was the biggest ever bomb detonated on the British mainland in “peacetime” and destroyed much of the city centre. \nBut why Manchester? Join us on a tour tainted with trauma and tension\, which reaches into the very depths of the city’s rarely told history.
URL:https://www.newmanchesterwalks.com/event/the-1996-manchester-bomb-expert-tour/
LOCATION:Selfridge’s\, Exchange Square\, Manchester\, M3 1BD\, United Kingdom
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BEGIN:VEVENT
DTSTART;TZID=UTC:20250610T130000
DTEND;TZID=UTC:20250610T140000
DTSTAMP:20260421T135820
CREATED:20250609T144657Z
LAST-MODIFIED:20250609T144815Z
UID:26200-1749560400-1749564000@www.newmanchesterwalks.com
SUMMARY:Ed Glinert talk to Halifax Arts Society\, Liverpool Architecture
DESCRIPTION:
URL:https://www.newmanchesterwalks.com/event/ed-glinert-giving-talk-to-halifax-arts-society-on-liverpool-architecture/
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BEGIN:VEVENT
DTSTART;TZID=UTC:20250322T134500
DTEND;TZID=UTC:20250322T151500
DTSTAMP:20260421T135820
CREATED:20250611T115158Z
LAST-MODIFIED:20260318T185027Z
UID:26203-1742651100-1742656500@www.newmanchesterwalks.com
SUMMARY:Jewish Manchester: Guided Tour
DESCRIPTION:“The Old Jewish Ghetto of Manchester” \nNext tour: To be re-arranged\nMeet: Victoria Station wallmap. \nEnds: At the Jewish museum.\nBooking: \n*** \nHere’s the full S.P.\nThe 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. \nIronically\, Manchester’s first Jewish community settled around the parish church (what is now Manchester Cathedral)\, for that was where the old town was located. \nLike 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. \nThe 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. \nThe 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. \nThe 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. \nManchester area Jews have made significant contributions to Manchester society: \n* Benjamin Hyam was one of the first tailors to sell ready-to-wear clothes and had a shop on Market Street mid-19th century. \n* 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. \n* Israel Sieff who made Marks & Spencer into one of the country’s most successful retail companies. \n* Louis Golding wrote the best novel of Manchester Jewry: Magnolia Street (1932) \n* 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. \nOn 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?).
URL:https://www.newmanchesterwalks.com/event/mif-tours-jewish-manchester/
LOCATION:Victoria Station Wallmap\, Victoria Station Approach\, Manchester\, M99 1ZW\, United Kingdom
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BEGIN:VEVENT
DTSTART;TZID=UTC:20250320T143000
DTEND;TZID=UTC:20250320T161500
DTSTAMP:20260421T135820
CREATED:20260212T161323Z
LAST-MODIFIED:20260318T185230Z
UID:26610-1742481000-1742487300@www.newmanchesterwalks.com
SUMMARY:The Ancoats Explorer
DESCRIPTION:Next tour: \nMeet: Band on the Wall\, Swan Street.\nBooking:\nCost: Free to register. Pay at the end if you think it was worth it.\nLarge groups: Please contact us to book a separate tour. \nWelcome to Ancoats\, the cradle of the industrial revolution\, a factory hoot from Manchester city centre\, now one of the most successfully regenerated areas in Britain. In 1700 the area was a semi-rural enclave by the river Medlock\, with Ancoats Hall home to the lords of the Manchester manor. By 1800 it was a teeming\, squalid suburb\, blackened with soot\, the smell of belching smoke hanging in the air. \nThe conditions were shocking: the noise of thundering machinery\, suffocating air\, high accident rates and notorious employment practices at the expense of an emaciated\, underpaid workforce slave-driven for unsustainably long hours amidst disease\, darkness\, damp and desperate heat\, living in dingy streets of tiny workers’ houses\, jerry-built two-up two down brick boxes standing back-to-back so that as many properties as possible could be squeezed into the smallest of spaces. \nChild labour was rife. \nAs one Ancoats mill owner explained to the early 19th century poet laureate Robert Southey\, when he visited Manchester in 1808\, “You see these children\, sir. By the time they are seven or eight years old they are bringing in the money. They come at five in the morning\, they leave at six and another set relieves them for the night; the wheels never stand still.” \nThis was never a pleasant area\, yet some of the mid 19th century buildings\, such as the Ice Palace\, which we will visit on the walk\, were exquisitely detailed with Italianate effects\, perfect for the large influx of Italian immigrants\, while the earlier mill buildings by the Rochdale Canal\, though functional and formal\, were palaces of Mammon\, monuments to mercantilism\, magnificent in their might and mass. \nLater experiments in social planning saw some wonderful additions to the locale: the vast Victoria Square\, Manchester’s oldest surviving municipal estate\, is still an astonishing site. Even more striking is the jazzy Daily Express building on Great Ancoats Street\, its gorgeous curves of glass and vitrolite the perfect coating for what was then a quality mass market newspaper owned by the formidable Lord Beaverbrook. \nThe late 20th century saw Ancoats die. The mills shut\, the workshops wound down\, the canal almost dried up. Now it’s all cleaned up. The mills are modern workshops; the factories smart apartments\, while new developments such as the much lauded New Islington project with its funkily named Chips Building and Dutch-styled houses are attracting huge investment.
URL:https://www.newmanchesterwalks.com/event/the-ancoats-explorer/
LOCATION:Band on the Wall\, 25 Swan Street\, Manchester\, M4 5JZ\, United Kingdom
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