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X-WR-CALDESC:Events for Manchester Walks
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BEGIN:VEVENT
DTSTART;TZID=UTC:20251203T170000
DTEND;TZID=UTC:20251203T190000
DTSTAMP:20260422T214702
CREATED:20251130T225623Z
LAST-MODIFIED:20251130T225623Z
UID:26530-1764781200-1764788400@www.newmanchesterwalks.com
SUMMARY:Political Manchester: private student tour
DESCRIPTION:
URL:https://www.newmanchesterwalks.com/event/political-manchester-private-student-tour/
END:VEVENT
BEGIN:VEVENT
DTSTART;TZID=UTC:20251203T110000
DTEND;TZID=UTC:20251203T130000
DTSTAMP:20260422T214702
CREATED:20251130T225402Z
LAST-MODIFIED:20251130T225402Z
UID:26528-1764759600-1764766800@www.newmanchesterwalks.com
SUMMARY:Marx & Engels: private student tour
DESCRIPTION:
URL:https://www.newmanchesterwalks.com/event/marx-engels-private-student-tour/
END:VEVENT
BEGIN:VEVENT
DTSTART;TZID=UTC:20251130T120000
DTEND;TZID=UTC:20251130T140000
DTSTAMP:20260422T214702
CREATED:20250704T205446Z
LAST-MODIFIED:20251017T181022Z
UID:26260-1764504000-1764511200@www.newmanchesterwalks.com
SUMMARY:On the Trail of Marx & Engels in Manchester
DESCRIPTION:Next tour: Sunday 30 November 2025\n(In honour of Friedrich Engels’s birthday) \nMeet: Friedrich Engels Statue\, outside HOME\, 2 Tony Wilson Place\, Gaythorn\, 12 noon.\nBooking: Please press here to book with Eventbrite. \n*** \nFollow in the footsteps of Karl Marx\, inventor of that phenomenally popular political system – communism – and Friedrich Engels\, the German cotton merchant and secret revolutionary who spent his working life in Manchester making capitalist money so that he could live the life of a bourgeois\, riding with the Cheshire Hunt at the weekends\, but researching social conditions in the Manchester slums to write one of the most influential political books ever written\, The Condition of the Working Class in England\, in 1845. \nHugely entertaining\, informative and intriguing\, this tour has been devised by Ed Glinert\, author of Penguin’s The Manchester Compendium and many other tomes published by the cream of British publishers\, who has been hacking away at the coal-face of local politics for 35 years\, including a stint at the heart of one of the most sinister Trotskyite cells Hulme ever witnessed.
URL:https://www.newmanchesterwalks.com/event/on-the-trail-of-marx-engels-in-manchester/
LOCATION:Engels Statue\, First Street\, Gaythorn\, Manchester\, M15 4GU\, United Kingdom
ATTACH;FMTTYPE=image/jpeg:https://www.newmanchesterwalks.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/07/Engels-drink.jpg
END:VEVENT
BEGIN:VEVENT
DTSTART;VALUE=DATE:20251111
DTEND;VALUE=DATE:20251112
DTSTAMP:20260422T214702
CREATED:20251103T120918Z
LAST-MODIFIED:20251103T120918Z
UID:26507-1762819200-1762905599@www.newmanchesterwalks.com
SUMMARY:Ed Glinert giving talk on Jack the Ripper
DESCRIPTION:
URL:https://www.newmanchesterwalks.com/event/ed-glinert-giving-talk-on-jack-the-ripper/
END:VEVENT
BEGIN:VEVENT
DTSTART;TZID=UTC:20251031T180000
DTEND;TZID=UTC:20251031T200000
DTSTAMP:20260422T214702
CREATED:20250918T094752Z
LAST-MODIFIED:20250918T094752Z
UID:26435-1761933600-1761940800@www.newmanchesterwalks.com
SUMMARY:Chilling Tales from the Manchester Graveyards (on Hallowe'en)
DESCRIPTION:Next walking tour: Friday 31 October 2025 (Hallowe’en).\nMeet: Victoria Station Wallmap\, 6pm.\nBooking: Please press here to book with Eventbrite. \nEnter\, if you dare\, a nether world of murder\, assassination\, hanging\, homicide\, regicide\, talking corpses and some really nasty stuff. \nThere are lot of unexplained deaths on this tour\, as well as the odd decapitation\, hanging and being buried alive. There are tragic deaths and accidental deaths. Hoax deaths and bloody deaths. Death by hanging\, death by shooting and sudden death. Instant death. Slow\, tortuous death. Those who didn’t die and those who should have died. \nThese are gruesome\, ghastly and ghostly stories\, especially when they involve those who weren’t supposed to be dead. Take the case of Manchester man John Beswick. He woke up some time in 1750 to find himself in a confined space\, and then realised it was his own coffin. He banged on the roof and was rather relieved to find a crowd of people on the other side ready to release him. They were the mourners at his funeral. He wasn’t dead\, just very tired. \nHis sister\, Hannah\, was so mortified of being similarly buried alive she asked a local doctor\, Charles White\, to check her corpse regularly once she had expired. In return she made a hefty donation to Dr White’s new infirmary\, what is now the MRI in Chorlton-on-Medlock. Once looked as if Hannah had expired the doctor made sure by pickling her in vinegar and stuffing the body into a grandfather clock in her own house in east Manchester where the servants could check on her every day. Hannah Beswick remains dead. \nThis is just one of many deathly stories we’ve dug up and revived for this chilling tour with the equally frightening Ed Glinert. \nIt’s a grave night out! \n \n 
URL:https://www.newmanchesterwalks.com/event/chilling-tales-from-the-manchester-graveyards-on-halloween/
LOCATION:Victoria Station Wallmap\, Victoria Station Approach\, Manchester\, M99 1ZW\, United Kingdom
END:VEVENT
BEGIN:VEVENT
DTSTART;TZID=UTC:20251029T111500
DTEND;TZID=UTC:20251029T130000
DTSTAMP:20260422T214702
CREATED:20251026T195624Z
LAST-MODIFIED:20251026T195624Z
UID:26497-1761736500-1761742800@www.newmanchesterwalks.com
SUMMARY:Manchester & the Pre-Raphaelites (private tour)
DESCRIPTION:
URL:https://www.newmanchesterwalks.com/event/manchester-the-pre-raphaelites-private-tour/
END:VEVENT
BEGIN:VEVENT
DTSTART;TZID=UTC:20251025T150000
DTEND;TZID=UTC:20251025T163000
DTSTAMP:20260422T214702
CREATED:20250923T155915Z
LAST-MODIFIED:20250923T155915Z
UID:26444-1761404400-1761409800@www.newmanchesterwalks.com
SUMMARY:Alan Turing's Manchester (in conjunction with HOME Theatre's Breaking the Code
DESCRIPTION:Next walking tour: Saturday\, the 25th of October 2025.\nMeeting Place: Manchester Museum entrance\, Oxford Road\, Chorlton-on-Medlock\, 3pm.\nBooking: Please press here to book with Eventbrite. \nAlan Turing has gone down in history as the man who didn’t invent the computer! He should have\, in the 1940s\, but didn’t have the spare parts to do so. When he discovered to his chagrin that mathematicians at Manchester University had beaten him to it in the summer of 1948 into building the world’s first programmable computer he contacted the department and had little difficulty convincing them he should be hired; his reputation went before him. \nWe now know\, though it was a secret at the time\, that Alan Turing had had an excellent war\, heavily involved in cracking the supposedly uncrackable codes that the Nazis had encrypted into their Enigma machine. Turing had been a maths prodigy as a boy. At the age of 14 his first day at Sherborne school coincided with the 1926 General Strike. So determined was he to attend school\, he biked it 60 miles to the school\, stopping overnight at an inn. At Sherborne he developed an interest in the latest mathematical philosophies\, in particular Bertrand Russell’s paradox: “the set of all tea cups is not a member of itself\, but the set of all non-tea cups is”\, its beautiful and simple resonance so influential in the development of logic as a science. \nAt Cambridge University Turing developed the idea of a thinking electronic machine but lacked the parts to build one. Manchester had succeeded (find out more on our Oxford Road/University/Science walks) and Turing helped extend the department’s knowledge of primitive computer technology\, working in a small brick office on Coupland Street. \nIt all went wrong for Turing in the 1950s after he picked up a boy at the Regal Cinema on Oxford Street (now the Dancehouse Theatre) and took him home. The boy allegedly tried to blackmail Turing\, and the mathematician went to the police. When they discovered that there had been a (then illegal) homosexual relationship between the two men they turned the tables on Turing and prosecuted him for gross indecency. His conviction led to the removal of his security clearance at a time of public anxiety about spies and homosexual entrapment by Soviet agents. He was forced to take hormones to “cure” him of his sexual leanings which made him grow breasts\, and on 8 June 1954 Turing’s cleaner found him dead. The cause was established as cyanide poisoning. \nDid Alan Turing commit suicide\, depressed about his career and life being in ruins\, or was his death an accident brought on by failing to take care following one of his numerous chemical experiments? A further complication to the drama suggests that Turing was re-creating a scene from his favourite film\, Snow White\, and that he deliberately executed an ambiguous death to save his mother from too much embarrassment. \nAlan Turing was cremated at Woking; his life-size statue occupies pride of place in Sackville Park\, where we end the tour. \n***** \n• Many thanks to Jury’s Inn\, Manchester\, for supporting our tour. Here is their excellent tribute. \nAlan Turing of Manchester\, by Jurys Inn Manchester Hotel  \n \n \n 
URL:https://www.newmanchesterwalks.com/event/alan-turings-manchester-in-conjunction-with-home-theatres-breaking-the-code/
LOCATION:Manchester Museum\, Oxford Road\, Chorlton-on-Medlock\, Manchester\, M13 9PL\, United Kingdom
ATTACH;FMTTYPE=image/jpeg:https://www.newmanchesterwalks.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/09/Alan-Turing1.jpg
END:VEVENT
BEGIN:VEVENT
DTSTART;TZID=UTC:20251018T143000
DTEND;TZID=UTC:20251018T163000
DTSTAMP:20260422T214702
CREATED:20250911T132923Z
LAST-MODIFIED:20250911T133113Z
UID:26425-1760797800-1760805000@www.newmanchesterwalks.com
SUMMARY:Charles Dickens in Manchester. Official Literary Festival Tours
DESCRIPTION:Next tour: Saturday 18 October 2025\, during the Manchester Literature Festival.\nMeet: By the Queen Victoria statue\, Piccadilly Gardens\, 2.30pm.\nBooking: Please press here to book with Eventbrite.\nPrivate bookings: To book privately\, please phone Ed Glinert on 07769 29 8068. \nWhat a review on TripAdvisor! \nI booked myself and some Irish/Canadian visitors on a special Charles Dickens’s Manchester tour to coincide with the Manchester Literary Festival. It was a superb way to get new insights into some familiar parts of the city and to discover fascinating facts about places that I have often walked past without appreciating their historic and cultural significance. Ed Glinert\, our tour guide and author of “The Manchester Compendium” (also highly recommended\, available on amazon)\, was excellent. His selection of essential and quirky details\, delivered with dry wit in an east London accent\, were spot on. I was a student in Manchester in the 1980s and have family there so I now visit the city every month. The tour made me realise how much there is still to discover about the place and it was great to see how much my visitors\, on their first trip to the city\, enjoyed finding out about the place. I will definitely do more of New Manchester Walks tours and would highly recommend them. \n*** \nIt was the best of times; it was the worst of times. \nManchester in the early Victorian period was the commercial heart of the North-West\, the industrial heart of the world’s greatest empire\, a city of culture\, power and glory\, a city alive with the greatest figures of the age: Wellington and Peel\, Disraeli and Gladstone\, Tennyson and of course Charles Dickens. \n \nBritain’s most celebrated novelist came to the growing industrial metropolis of Manchester 19 times\, taking the platform at a fund-raiser in October 1843 for the Athenaeum alongside such reformers and notables as Benjamin Disraeli and Richard Cobden; partying with his pal and fellow novelist Harrison Ainsworth; and visiting his sister in then desirable Ardwick. \nHe based the character of the crippled Tiny Tim in A Christmas Carol on the son of a friend who owned an Ardwick cotton mill. Local industrialists the Grant Brothers\, William and Daniel\, were the prototypes for the Cheeryble brothers in Nicholas Nickleby. \nYet Dickens produced only one work on the Industrial Revolution – Hard Times (1854). The novel is set in a mythical Coketown\, possibly Manchester but also based on Preston. Though not one of his better works\, it is worth reading for its descriptions of working-class life. \nHe also spoke at and acted in the Free Trade Hall and was the guest of honour at the opening of the Free Library in 1852. \nWe will visit the haunts of those he met and knew\, stop by at the locations he might just recognise today\, and drop into the elegant Portico Library where the catalogue in the 1840s was organised by his friend James Crossley. \nUntil then\, sample this specimen from Hard Times: \nThe streets were hot and dusty on the summer day\, and the sun was so bright that it even shone through the heavy vapour drooping over Coketown\, and could not be looked at steadily.  Stokers emerged from low underground doorways into factory yards\, and sat on  steps\, and posts\, and palings\, wiping their swarthy visages\, and contemplating  coals. \nThe whole town seemed to be frying in oil. There was a stifling smell of hot oil everywhere. The steam-engines shone with it\, the dresses of the Hands were soiled with it\, the mills throughout their many stories oozed and trickled it. The atmosphere of those Fairy palaces was like the breath of the simoom: and their inhabitants\, wasting with heat\, toiled languidly in the desert. But no temperature made the melancholy mad elephants more mad or more sane. Their wearisome heads went up and down at the same rate\, in hot weather and cold\, wet weather and dry\, fair weather and foul. The measured motion of their shadows on the walls\, was the substitute Coketown had to show for the shadows of rustling woods; while\, for the summer hum of insects\, it could offer\, all the year round\, from the dawn of Monday to the night of Saturday\, the whirr of shafts and wheels.
URL:https://www.newmanchesterwalks.com/event/26425/
LOCATION:Queen Victoria Statue\, Piccadilly Gardens\, United Kingdom
END:VEVENT
BEGIN:VEVENT
DTSTART;TZID=UTC:20251018T110000
DTEND;TZID=UTC:20251018T130000
DTSTAMP:20260422T214702
CREATED:20250902T190356Z
LAST-MODIFIED:20250902T190356Z
UID:26410-1760785200-1760792400@www.newmanchesterwalks.com
SUMMARY:Manchester & Slavery (on International Anti-Slavery Day)
DESCRIPTION:Next tour: Saturday 18 October 2025 (International Anti-Slavery Day)\nStarts: 11am from Victoria Station wallmap.\nBooking: Please press here to book with Eventbrite. \n \n  \n  \n  \n  \nManchester has hit the news big style! Simon Hattenstone in the the Guardian has “discovered” that the ship on the City of Manchester coat of arms is a slave ship. According to Hattenstone\, not just the city but the local football clubs should drop this “symbol of slavery shame” from their crests. Hattenstone quoted Jonathan Schofield who with his usual inability to research properly told Hattenstone that it wasn’t a slave ship. \nWell the ship on the Manchester coat of arms IS a slave ship and Ed Glinert has discovered which ship it was\, chosen for the coat of arms in 1838 when Manchester became a borough\, able to run its own affairs for the first time as opposed to being at the whim of the absentee landlords\, the Mosley family. \n*** \nManchester might have prospered from the horrors of slavery for much of the 18th century\, but the growing town was soon leading the campaign for its abolition. \nThe turning point was a meeting held at the Manchester Collegiate Church (now Manchester Cathedral) on 28 October 1787 fronted by the abolitionist Thomas Clarkson. “When I went into the church\,” Clarkson recalled\, “it was so full that I could scarcely get to my place; for notice had been publicly given\, though I knew nothing of it\, that such a discourse would be delivered. I was surprised also to find a great crowd of black people standing round the pulpit. There might be forty or fifty of them. The text that I took\, as the best to be found in such a hurry\, was the following: ‘Thou shalt not oppress a stranger\, for ye know the heart of a stranger\, seeing ye were strangers in the land of Egypt’”. \nManchester amassed the biggest number of signatures for the petition against slavery that went before Parliament. Sadly the petition was destroyed when the Houses of Parliament burned down in 1834. \nWhile America continued to promote the system in the 19th century\, Manchester led the move for Stateside abolition even though most of the raw cotton that fuelled the Manchester economy was picked by slaves in the Deep South. \nThis tour cuts straight to the heart of one of the most controversial and disturbing social systems ever devised. We hear how Manchester families such as the Heywoods and Gregs who benefited from slavery became its biggest opponents. We explain how the “Slavery Triangle” (Lancashire-America-Africa-Lancashire…) kept the system going\, relate the stories of the escaped slaves such as Henry “Box” Brown\, who once posted himself in a box from Richmond\, Virginia\, to Philadelphia and who visited Manchester\, and discuss how leading 19th century local Liberals such as John Bright and Richard Cobden not only kept the anti-slavery campaign flourishing but were even in contact with Abraham Lincoln. \nAt the Town Hall we hear about the ground-breaking 5th Pan-African Congress of 1945 which catalysed the post-war push for independence. At the Free Trade Hall we hear about the visits of Paul Robeson and how he was barred from leaving America in the 1950s. We finish the tour at the Abraham Lincoln statue in Lincoln Square\, naturally.
URL:https://www.newmanchesterwalks.com/event/manchester-slavery-on-international-anti-slavery-day/
LOCATION:Victoria Station Wallmap\, Victoria Station Approach\, Manchester\, M99 1ZW\, United Kingdom
ATTACH;FMTTYPE=image/jpeg:https://www.newmanchesterwalks.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/09/Slavery-Black-Joke.jpg
END:VEVENT
BEGIN:VEVENT
DTSTART;TZID=UTC:20251016T110000
DTEND;TZID=UTC:20251016T133000
DTSTAMP:20260422T214702
CREATED:20250905T113751Z
LAST-MODIFIED:20250905T113751Z
UID:26417-1760612400-1760621400@www.newmanchesterwalks.com
SUMMARY:Manchester Literature Festival Tours – Elizabeth Gaskell
DESCRIPTION:Next Elizabeth Gaskell’s Manchester walking tour:\nManchester Literature Festival Official Tours\, Thursday 16 October 2025.\nMeet: St Ann’s Church\, St Ann’s Square\, 11am.\nBooking: Please press here to book with Eventbrite. \nJoin Ed Glinert\, Manchester’s leading historian and tour guide\, a Penguin Classics editor and much-published author\, on this tribute tour to one of Manchester’s greatest writers. \nHow this walk works\n* A simple walk around Gaskellian sights and sites in the city centre.\n* A trip up to the Portico Library where the Rev William Gaskell was chairman for 35 years.\n* A bus trip to Chorlton-on-Medlock and very interesting Dover Street\, once home to the Gaskells.\n* A short walk to the excellent museum that is the Elizabeth Gaskell House. \nThe story so far:\nElizabeth Gaskell was born Elizabeth Stevenson in Chelsea and raised in Knutsford. She worked in Manchester\, combating poverty and ignorance\, spreading the word about non-conformist Christianity and devising fiendish literary plots. \nGaskell wrote about love: “He could not forget the touch of her arms around his neck\, impatiently felt as it had been at the time; but now the recollection of her clinging defence of him\, seemed to thrill him through and through—to melt away every resolution\, all power of self-control\, as if it were wax before a fire.” \nShe wrote about Manchester cotton: “As they drove through the larger and wider streets\, from the station to the hotel\, they had to stop constantly; great loaded lorries blocked up the not over-wide thoroughfares… Every van\, every wagon and truck\, bore cotton\, either in the raw shape in bags\, or the woven shape in bales of calico.” \nShe also wrote about smoke and Manchester: “They had taken Franky there to show him Manchester\, far away in the blue plain against which the woodland foreground cut with a soft clear line. Far\, far away in the distance on that flat plain\, you might see the motionless cloud of smoke hanging over a great town\, and that was Manchester − ugly\, smoky Manchester\, dear\, busy\, earnest\, noble-working Manchester; where their children had been born\, and where\, perhaps\, some lay buried; where their homes were\, and where God had cast their lives; and told them to work out their destiny.” \n \nElizabeth Gaskell made her name with the novel Mary Barton: A Tale of Manchester Life even though it was published anonymously in 1848. It covered topics that shocked the shock city – Chartism\, murder\, hypocrisy\, corruption. Cranford (1853) and North & South (1855) cemented her reputation. \nMrs Gaskell was exasperated by the city: “How deep might be the romance in the lives of some of those who elbowed me daily in the busy streets of the town in which I resided\,” she sighed. “I had always felt a deep sympathy with the careworn men\, who looked as if doomed to struggle through their lives in strange alternations between work and want.” \nBut this was where she became a revered literary figure − more than just the wife of the minister at the Unitarian chapel; a scion of Dickens\, a chronicler supreme.
URL:https://www.newmanchesterwalks.com/event/manchester-literature-festival-tours-elizabeth-gaskell/
LOCATION:Outside St Ann’s Church\, St Ann Street\, Manchester\, United Kingdom
ATTACH;FMTTYPE=image/jpeg:https://www.newmanchesterwalks.com/wp-content/uploads/2009/10/Elizabeth-Gaskell.jpg
END:VEVENT
BEGIN:VEVENT
DTSTART;TZID=UTC:20251002T183000
DTEND;TZID=UTC:20251002T200000
DTSTAMP:20260422T214702
CREATED:20250831T093656Z
LAST-MODIFIED:20250831T093656Z
UID:26405-1759429800-1759435200@www.newmanchesterwalks.com
SUMMARY:Manchester Architecture at Night
DESCRIPTION:The Glories of Manchester Architecture\nNext tour (Manchester Buildings at Night): Thursday 2 October 2025.\nGuide: RIBA judge Ed Glinert.\nStarts: Outside the Midland Hotel\, Peter Street\, 6.30pm.\nBooking: Please press here to book with Eventbrite. \n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\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/manchester-architecture-at-night/
LOCATION:Midland Hotel\, 16 Peter Street\, Manchester\, M60 2DS\, United Kingdom
END:VEVENT
BEGIN:VEVENT
DTSTART;TZID=UTC:20250925T180000
DTEND;TZID=UTC:20250925T200000
DTSTAMP:20260422T214702
CREATED:20250923T160241Z
LAST-MODIFIED:20250923T160308Z
UID:26447-1758823200-1758830400@www.newmanchesterwalks.com
SUMMARY:Literary & Philosophical Manchester (private tour for the Lit &  Phil)
DESCRIPTION:
URL:https://www.newmanchesterwalks.com/event/literary-philosophical-manchester-private-tour-for-the-lit-phil/
END:VEVENT
BEGIN:VEVENT
DTSTART;TZID=UTC:20250925T140000
DTEND;TZID=UTC:20250925T160000
DTSTAMP:20260422T214702
CREATED:20250821T191619Z
LAST-MODIFIED:20250821T191619Z
UID:26392-1758808800-1758816000@www.newmanchesterwalks.com
SUMMARY:10 Manchester Inventions That Shook the World. Expert Tour
DESCRIPTION:Next tour\, Thursday 25 September 2025\, 2pm.\nMeet: Outside the Science & Industry Museum on Lower Byrom Street\, Campfield.\nBooking: Please press here to book with Eventbrite. \nManchester invented the modern world\, for this was the first city of the industrial revolution\, and its inhabitants have given society some of its greatest creations. These are the ones we detail on this most inventive of walks (in chronological order). \n1. John Kay’s Fly Shuttle\, 1733\nCrucial to the development of the cotton industry\, in which Manchester led the world from the late 18th century until the Second World War\, was this simple machine. \nBefore John Kay’s Fly Shuttle\, workers threw the shuttle with their hands. A couple of weavers were needed at the loom\, throwing the shuttle\, one to the other. Now it could be done by one person. Those thrown out of work often joined the machine-breakers – the infamous Luddites – as depicted in the 10th Mural inside the Town Hall.\n• Kay fought for copyright in the courts but wasn’t successful. He died in France ruined.\n \n2. Britain’s 1st canal – the Bridgewater\, 1761\nBritain’s first man-made waterway\, with a route independent of rivers\, was financed by Francis Egerton\, 3rd Duke of Bridgewater\, who needed to find a way of reducing flooding in his Worsley mine. The Duke’s engineer\, James Brindley\, and his land agent\, John Gilbert\, proposed letting the water be channeled and the coal taken out along with it. The Duke soon realised he had enough coal to supply the needs of local towns\, and the most important local town was Manchester. He then built a canal across the land so that his supply could reach the growing town. \n3. Atomic Theory\, 1803\nJohn Dalton presented a paper to the Manchester Literary & Philosophical Society on 21 October 1803 which proposed that all matter is composed of atoms\, that chemical reactions occur when atoms are rearranged and that compounds are formed from atoms of the constituent elements. Atomic Theory changed the face of science and ranks as the first instance of a Manchester event having worldwide conclusions. \n4. Vegetarianism\, 1809\nWilliam Cowherd\, a curate at St John’s off Deansgate in the 1790s left to set up a church in Salford where he preached that people should “eat no more meat till the world endeth”\, citing Genesis 9:3 as proof that God wanted man to refrain from eating meat. It catalysed a new world-wide movement in abstaining from meat. \n5. First Passenger Railway\, 1830\nThe Manchester-Liverpool Railway was the first passenger line in the world as well as the first with two tracks\, timetables and stations. The Manchester terminus\, Liverpool Road\, survives as part of the Museum of Science & Industry. \n \n6. The First Submarine\, 1878\nThe Rev George Garrett\, a Moss Side vicar\, founded the Submarine Navigation and Pneumataphore company at 56 Deansgate in 1878. His vessel\, Resurgam\, the first ever military submarine\, was devised in his office in 1878. Not being too near the sea\, Garrett’s team went to the Wirral to test his invention. Resurgam I was a 14ft\, one-man vessel nicknamed “the curate’s egg”. Resurgam II\, built in Birkenhead in 1879 sunk near Rhyl. The wreck was discovered in 1995. \n7. Competitive Football\, 1888\nWilliam McGregor\, a Scottish draper\, devised an ingenious new means of testing the best football teams in 1888. Each club would play each other twice\, home and away\, during one year. Thus was born the Football League\, the game’s first real test of a competition\, the forerunner of today’s multi-million pound Premiership\, at a meeting at the Royal Hotel\, Manchester\, on 17 April 1888. \n8. Rolls Royce\, 1904\nFrederick Henry Royce\, a local engineer\, met Charles Stewart Rolls\, a wealthy London playboy\, in Manchester\, but NOT at the Midland Hotel in 1904. Rolls had broken the world speed record in 1903\, going an astonishing 93 mph only a few years after the police had warned him not to drive at more than 4mph! They soon formed Rolls-Royce\, making luxury cars in Hulme\, two miles away. \n9. The 1st Programmable Computer\, 1948\nTom Kilburn and Fred Williams built a machine out of war surplus materials that could perform calculations from a stored program – what is now recognised as the first computer\, “Baby”. They first used it on 21 June 1948\, running a program written by Tom Kilburn\, the world’s first computer programme and the only one he ever wrote. \n \n10. Graphene\, 2004\nThe world’s thinnest material\, one atom thick\, soon to revolutionise computer screens and electronic technology\, was created by two Manchester University scientists\, Konstantin Novoselov and Andre Geim\, in 2004. \n\nJust the latest of a series of Manchester inventions that shook the world! \n 
URL:https://www.newmanchesterwalks.com/event/10-manchester-inventions-that-shook-the-world-expert-tour/
LOCATION:Science & Industry Museum\, Lower Byrom Street\, Campfield\, Manchester
END:VEVENT
BEGIN:VEVENT
DTSTART;TZID=UTC:20250915T113000
DTEND;TZID=UTC:20250915T133000
DTSTAMP:20260422T214702
CREATED:20250808T150526Z
LAST-MODIFIED:20250821T191754Z
UID:26373-1757935800-1757943000@www.newmanchesterwalks.com
SUMMARY:Stand Up To Racism Manchester! Guided Tour CANCELLED. NO INTEREST
DESCRIPTION:Date: Monday 15 September 2025.\nMeet: Victoria Station wallmap\, 11.30am.\nBooking: Please press here to book with Eventbrite. \nManchester has long been one of the world’s most welcoming cities\, accepting and assimilating those from Ireland\, Italy\, Russia\, the West Indies and more over the centuries. But it hasn’t alaways been a smooth journey. Many have faced hostility and discrimination before finding status. \nEd Glinert\, Manchester’s leading historian and tour guide\, author of the forthcoming “Manchester: The Biography” with Great Northern Books\, leads this tour into one of the city’s most fascinating set of stories…featuring Gandhi\, Abraham Lincoln\, Thomas Clarkson\, Paul Robeson\, George Fox\, Sylvia Pankhurst and Jomo Kenyatta\, in opposition to John Gladstone\, Nick Griffin and James Anderton.
URL:https://www.newmanchesterwalks.com/event/stand-up-to-racism-manchester-guided-tour/
LOCATION:Victoria Station Wallmap\, Victoria Station Approach\, Manchester\, M99 1ZW\, United Kingdom
END:VEVENT
BEGIN:VEVENT
DTSTART;TZID=UTC:20250911T193000
DTEND;TZID=UTC:20250911T203000
DTSTAMP:20260422T214702
CREATED:20250808T212937Z
LAST-MODIFIED:20250808T212937Z
UID:26380-1757619000-1757622600@www.newmanchesterwalks.com
SUMMARY:Ed Glinert speaking on Liverpool Architecture for Wilmslow Arts Society
DESCRIPTION:
URL:https://www.newmanchesterwalks.com/event/ed-glinert-speaking-on-liverpool-architecture-for-wilmslow-arts-society/
END:VEVENT
BEGIN:VEVENT
DTSTART;TZID=UTC:20250903T111500
DTEND;TZID=UTC:20250903T130000
DTSTAMP:20260422T214702
CREATED:20250808T212317Z
LAST-MODIFIED:20250902T191443Z
UID:26378-1756898100-1756904400@www.newmanchesterwalks.com
SUMMARY:The Great Art Treasures of Manchester POSTPONED
DESCRIPTION:Next tour: Wednesday 3 September 2025\nMeet: outside St Ann’s Church\, St Ann’s Square.\nBooking: Please press here to book with Eventbrite. \nManchester Art Gallery is home to Britain’s greatest collection of Pre-Raphaelite works\, and in the streets beyond L. S. Lowry\, Adolphe Valette and even William Morris have left their signature. Join us as we unearth the masterpieces of Manchester art. \n \n 
URL:https://www.newmanchesterwalks.com/event/the-great-art-treasures-of-manchester/
LOCATION:Outside St Ann’s Church\, St Ann Street\, Manchester\, United Kingdom
ATTACH;FMTTYPE=image/jpeg:https://www.newmanchesterwalks.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/03/light-of-the-world.jpg
END:VEVENT
BEGIN:VEVENT
DTSTART;VALUE=DATE:20250817
DTEND;VALUE=DATE:20250828
DTSTAMP:20260422T214702
CREATED:20250718T181749Z
LAST-MODIFIED:20250718T181921Z
UID:26328-1755388800-1756339199@www.newmanchesterwalks.com
SUMMARY:Ed Glinert researching\, and no other guide wants to do any tours!
DESCRIPTION:
URL:https://www.newmanchesterwalks.com/event/ed-glinert-researching/
END:VEVENT
BEGIN:VEVENT
DTSTART;TZID=UTC:20250816T143000
DTEND;TZID=UTC:20250816T161500
DTSTAMP:20260422T214702
CREATED:20250727T143456Z
LAST-MODIFIED:20250814T095727Z
UID:26351-1755354600-1755360900@www.newmanchesterwalks.com
SUMMARY:"Fame Is the Spur". Tour Manchester's Greatest Novel
DESCRIPTION:* This annual tour takes place on Peterloo Day: 16 August.\nNOT 2025 \n* Tour led by Ed Glinert\, a Penguin Classics editor\, and Manchester’s leading historian and tour guide. \n* Meet outside Manchester Central Library\, St Peter’s Square\, 2.30pm. \n* Must be booked on Eventbrite by pressing here. \n*** \nHoward Spring’s Fame Is The Spur is the great Manchester novel. It is also the great Peterloo novel and the great Suffragette novel. An astonishing achievement. \nJohn Hamer Shawcross grows up\, illegitimate\, in poverty in Victorian Ancoats. At the start of the novel the elderly lodger in his house shows the young Hamer a sabre he wrenched from a soldier who had used it to kill his girlfriend at Peterloo. Hamer inherits the sword. \nBookish and inquisitive\, he is destined not to go to work in a mill. He goes abroad to find himself\, in classic bildungsroman fashion\, and comes back bursting with braggadocio and a heightened sense of burning injustice. He becomes a firebrand orator within the burgeoning labour movement\, brandishing the sabre to cut his way through politics. As he climbs the slippery pole so he sells out his principles\, Kinnock style\, or actually in the manner of the contemporaneous Ramsay MacDonald\, the first Labour prime minister\, back in the 1920s. Spring had to wait until MacDonald had died before the novel could be published\, otherwise the ex-PM would have sued his ass. \nFame Is The Spur is just one of a series of entertaining Manchester-based novels Howard Spring he wrote once he had left the Manchester Guardian to become a London journalist. \nEd Glinert uses his metaphorical sabre to cut a path through Howard Spring’s Manchester.
URL:https://www.newmanchesterwalks.com/event/fame-is-the-spur-tour-manchesters-greatest-novel/
LOCATION:Central Library\, St Peter's Square\, Manchester
ATTACH;FMTTYPE=image/jpeg:https://www.newmanchesterwalks.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/07/Fame-is-the-Spur.jpg
END:VEVENT
BEGIN:VEVENT
DTSTART;TZID=UTC:20250816T110000
DTEND;TZID=UTC:20250816T124500
DTSTAMP:20260422T214702
CREATED:20250706T150556Z
LAST-MODIFIED:20250706T150648Z
UID:26289-1755342000-1755348300@www.newmanchesterwalks.com
SUMMARY:Peterloo Massacre: Official Tour on the Day
DESCRIPTION:Peterloo tours on the day: \nSaturday 16 August (Peterloo Day) 2025\, 11am.\nMeet: outside Central Library\, St Peter’s Square.\nBooking: Please press here to book with Eventbrite. \nThese unique Peterloo tours have been devised by Ed Glinert\, Penguin author and compiler of the forthcoming epic work\, Manchester: The Biography\, who has conducted enormous amounts of recent research into the entire Peterloo story (with many thanks to Mike Herbert’s and Robert Poole’s invaluable expertise). \nManchester tour guide Ed Glinert has worked with both the campaigning journalist extraordinaire Paul Foot (author of Red Shelley) and Mike Leigh\, director of the Peterloo film. \n* Read on: \n  \n \nThe Peterloo Massacre of 16 August 1819 is the most dramatic incident in English political history. Sabre-wielding troops charged 60\,000 Mancunians at a rally called to lower the price of bread and demand the vote. More than a dozen people died and some 650 were injured. \nThe first few decades of the 19th century\, enshrined in public imagination as the elegant age of the Regency\, were a time of severe political repression in England. The Tory government\, led by Lord Liverpool\, feared that the kind of revolutionary activity recently witnessed in France would break out in England – probably in Manchester\, where social conditions were so desperate – and chose decided to stamp out all dissent and free speech. \nThe government was at war with France\, which saw Wellington triumph over Napoleon’s forces at Waterloo in 1815. \nBut as Paul Foot once wrote\, the British government was also waging war against its own people. \nThis guided tour\, visiting the site of St Peter’s Field in Manchester city centre where the Peterloo Massacre took place\, has been devised by Ed Glinert\, political commentator with 40 years’ experience for various leading newspapers\, magazines and publishers\, who worked with legendary left-wing political journalist Paul Foot at Private Eye combating injustice. \nGlinert\, who has researched the story for decades\, brings his unique touch to this chilling story\, going into extraordinary detail\, explaining the build-up to the events\, the violence of the day\, 16 August 1819\, and the dreadful aftermath\, introducing related events\, themes and people: Shelley’s powerful poem\, The Masque of Anarchy; the birth of the Manchester Guardian; the Cato Street Conspiracy; the Six Acts; Tom Paine and his bones – even Anthony Burgess.
URL:https://www.newmanchesterwalks.com/event/26289/
LOCATION:Central Library\, St Peter's Square\, Manchester
END:VEVENT
BEGIN:VEVENT
DTSTART;TZID=UTC:20250810T120000
DTEND;TZID=UTC:20250810T140000
DTSTAMP:20260422T214702
CREATED:20250706T115848Z
LAST-MODIFIED:20250706T120230Z
UID:26270-1754827200-1754834400@www.newmanchesterwalks.com
SUMMARY:Tony Wilson's Manchester
DESCRIPTION:Tony Wilson’s Manchester: Sunday 10 August 2025.\nAnniversary of the day he died in 2007.\n\nMeet: outside HOME\, 12 noon.\n\nBooking: Please press here to book with Eventbrite. \n*** \nTony Wilson never wrote a song\, sang one or played an instrument. Yet he created the modern Manchester music scene. He made things happen; he cajoled people into doing important things. He harried\, encouraged\, pushed\, promoted. It might be fair to say without him Manchester’s music history might have stopped with Sad Café. \nOn the day Wilson died\, 10 August (2007)\, we honour one of the most popular figures in recent Manchester history: a vainglorious\, proud\, arrogant\, infuriating but genius impresario. \nWe will visit the Hacienda\, which he swore “must be built”; Rafter’s (now Tesco’s – fab!)\, where he met Ian Curtis (imagine a universe without Unknown Pleasures and Closer…no!); the Hidden Gem where he made his last confession to an astonished priest; and the site of Granada Television\, now revamped into the Factory arts centre\, named after his record label\, where he preened and pontificated. \nThe Hacienda went bust. Factory Records went bust. Granada TV has been abolished\, but as Wilson was fond of saying “we made history\, not money.” Factory Records’ designer Peter Saville explained: “Tony created a new understanding of Manchester; the resonance of Factory goes way beyond the music. Young people often dream of going to another place to achieve their goals. Tony provided the catalyst and context for Mancunians to do that without having to go anywhere.”
URL:https://www.newmanchesterwalks.com/event/tony-wilsons-manchester/
LOCATION:HOME\, 2 Tony Wilson Place\, Manchester\, Select a State:\, M15 4GU\, United Kingdom
ATTACH;FMTTYPE=image/jpeg:https://www.newmanchesterwalks.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/07/Tony-Willson-1.jpg
END:VEVENT
BEGIN:VEVENT
DTSTART;TZID=UTC:20250807T111500
DTEND;TZID=UTC:20250807T130000
DTSTAMP:20260422T214702
CREATED:20250706T144758Z
LAST-MODIFIED:20250706T144900Z
UID:26283-1754565300-1754571600@www.newmanchesterwalks.com
SUMMARY:John Rylands Library and More...
DESCRIPTION:This tour: Thursday 7 August\, 11.15 a.m.\nMeet: Outside St Ann’s Church\, St Ann Street.\nBooking: Please press here to book with Eventbrite. \nThe John Rylands Library has been closed for nearly a year. Now it’s back – and with our tours! \n*** \nThe only way to truly understand the magic of what is the No. 1 Manchester Attraction on Trip Advisor is on our regular tour.   \nThis is more than a tour of one of the world’s greatest libraries. This is a trip through the industrial and religious history of Manchester linked with the 19th century’s most successful cotton merchant whose legacy survives in the magnificent library named after him. \nTours start with an introduction to the city’s cotton past (at the Royal Exchange) and John Rylands’ religious background (at St Ann’s Church) before we make our way to Deansgate. We then hear: \n* An outline of John Rylands Library’s Gothic architecture.\n* The story of John and Enriqueta Rylands.\n* How the Rylands company became the most successful Manchester cotton merchants of the 19th century.\n* An outline of the library’s riches.\n* Remarkable pictures of the library’s and the John Rylands firm’s history.\n* A look at the oldest piece of the New Testament ever found.\n* A close inspection of the exquisite Reading Room.\n* An explanation of the key statues\, particularly Francis Bacon\, who paved the way for the Industrial Revolution during which Manchester thrived\, and John Wycliffe and William Tyndale who led a revolution in religion. \n***** \nThe John Rylands Library is often described as “the Taj Mahal of the North-West”\, for it is a palace built out of love; a widow’s love for her late husband\, a family’s love of religious literature; a city’s love of Gothic architecture. The building looks like a mini-cathedral\, a religious icon\, a divine presence on Deansgate\, but it is one of the world’s greatest libraries\, for out of the bequest of John Rylands\, Manchester’s richest 19th century cotton magnate\, his widow Enriqueta created an unrivalled collection: Dickens’s novels in their original wrappers; a first edition of Shakespeare’s Sonnets; the second largest collection of works by the pioneering printer William Caxton; the personal papers of John Wesley\, John Dalton and Elizabeth Gaskell; later complemented\, most remarkably of all\, by the 2nd Century St John Fragment – the oldest existing remnant of the New Testament. \nThe library was built during the 1890s and deliberately placed on Deansgate next to what was then a violent slum (but is now entirely commercialised) to show Manchester’s underclass that there was an alternative. For them and for all users it was and remains free\, a haven of man’s pursuit of intellectual brilliance in a harsh industrial climate. \nThe architect was Basil Champneys whose ecclesiastical touches were toned down by Enriqueta Rylands\, a non-conformist. Nevertheless it remains powerfully Gothic – the last Gothic revival building erected in Manchester\, which opened on 1 Jan 1900 and was the first Manchester building to be lit by electricity. It was recently restored at great cost with a new grand entrance constructed on the south side. \nHighlights of the tour include the St John Fragment and the reading room\, a grand galleried Gothic extravaganza filled with stained glass and statuary. The St John Fragment is just that – a fragment – found in Egypt at Oxyrhynchus (Behnesa)\, the ruined city where some of the most startling and successful excavations in the history of archaeology were carried out. It was donated to the library in 1920 but not identified until 1935 when the papyrus collections were catalogued. The Reading Room is awe-inspiring and overpowering\, but the statues come alive when their significance is explained\, for here are representations of some of the most formidable figures in British history – Newton\, Dalton\, Bacon – the links between religion and science\, unfashionable at the moment\, crucial to the development of civilisation. This is primarily a religious building\, a building devoted to religion rather than for worshipping God. Pride of place goes to those figures found here who made Britain the centre of Christian tolerance: John Wycliffe\, William Tyndale and John Rainolds. \nTours of the library start with an introduction to the city’s cotton past and John Rylands’ religious background outside St Ann’s Church.
URL:https://www.newmanchesterwalks.com/event/26283/
LOCATION:Outside St Ann’s Church\, St Ann Street\, Manchester\, United Kingdom
END:VEVENT
BEGIN:VEVENT
DTSTART;TZID=UTC:20250727T120000
DTEND;TZID=UTC:20250727T140000
DTSTAMP:20260422T214702
CREATED:20250622T150915Z
LAST-MODIFIED:20250623T120656Z
UID:26228-1753617600-1753624800@www.newmanchesterwalks.com
SUMMARY:The Castlefield Explorer
DESCRIPTION:Next tour: The Castlefield Explorer\, Sunday 27 July 2025\, 12 noon.\nMeet: Beetham Tower Entrance on Deansgate.\nBooking: Please press here to book with Eventbrite. \nCastlefield is not only the Roman birthplace of Manchester\, it was also the industrial birthplace of the city in the 18th century\, and one of the most important historical sites in the world as it is the home of the world’s oldest railway station and Britain’s first canal. \nThe lesser known history is also eye-opening. Here can be found Manchester’s last authentic Roman relic (below)\, a surviving Victorian hut from where people could emigrate to America\, stupendous railway viaducts\, secluded waterways\, quaint cobbles\, the most sprawling of museums and a graveyard full of surprises. \n \n \n 
URL:https://www.newmanchesterwalks.com/event/the-castlefield-explorer/
LOCATION:Beetham Tower\, 301 Deansgate\, Manchester\, M3 4LQ\, United Kingdom
END:VEVENT
BEGIN:VEVENT
DTSTART;TZID=UTC:20250726T143000
DTEND;TZID=UTC:20250726T143000
DTSTAMP:20260422T214702
CREATED:20250609T114419Z
LAST-MODIFIED:20250719T093245Z
UID:26191-1753540200-1753540200@www.newmanchesterwalks.com
SUMMARY:Bridgewater Canal – Annual Celebration Tour
DESCRIPTION:Next tour: Saturday 26 July 2025.\nMeet: entrance Beetham Tower\, Deansgate\, 2.30pm.\nBooking: Please press here to book with Evenbrite. \nAbout the tour\nJoin Ed Glinert\, Manchester’s leading canal historian\, to explore the waters\, banks and history of the Bridgewater Canal\, Britain’s first man-made waterway\, which saw Manchester launch the industrial revolution in the 1760s. \nThe tour begins in Manchester city centre\, near the canal’s terminus\, so that we can traverse in detail the delta-like tributaries that weave through Castlefield\, such as Potato Wharf and the Staffordshire Basin. We can also visit the ingenious Giant’s Basin weir and watch how the canal links with the River Medlock it subjugated. From the remarkable crossroads of waterways at the Castlefield Canal Basin we head off to Hulme Locks\, which allowed the Bridgewater Canal to link to the River Irwell. At Cornbrook there are traces of the original Corn Brook in a magnificent drain and at Pomona the modern lock that connects to the Manchester Ship Canal. We finish the tour with a visual surprise. \nHistory of the Bridgewater Canal\nThe canal opened on the 17th of July 1761. It was devised by Francis Egerton\, 3rd Duke of Bridgewater\, who in looking for a way of reducing flooding in his Worsley mines turned to his engineer\, James Brindley. They developed a way of channeling the water so that the coal could be taken out on boats. When the Duke realised he had enough coal to supply the needs of Manchester and Salford he decided to build a canal across the land so that his supply could reach those towns. \nWork on the new canal began in 1758. There were no locks. Once the canal opened\, it became much cheaper to transport coal to Manchester. The price of coal dropped and new industries using that coal began to flourish alongside the water. The original 1761 route went from the Duke of Bridgewater’s Worsley coal mines to the River Irwell at Barton. There it crossed the waterway\, now the Manchester Ship Canal\, on an aqueduct that was one of the wonders of the age\, but has since been replaced with an equally ingenious structure. By the end of 1761 the canal had been extended to Cornbrook\, and in 1765 it reached Castlefield where Brindley culverted the river Medlock. \nOnce a year in celebration we walk along the canal (not the entire route\, that would take weeks!) to relate the great stories about the canal. And what stories! When Brindley first announced he intended taking the canal 38 feet over the river on an aqueduct held up by three sandstone arches he was greeted with incredulity. The Duke himself muttered: “I have often heard of castles in the air\, but never before saw where any of them was to be erected”. \nTo prove how the aqueduct would work at the parliamentary hearing Brindley unwrapped a large cheese which he carved out till it resembled his planned design. He then explained that he would make the aqueduct watertight using clay-puddling – placing several layers of clay\, sand and water on the floor of the waterway – demonstrating the idea in front of MPs with buckets of water and wet clay. Indeed so fond was Brindley of the system\, his dying words were “puddle it\, puddle it”.
URL:https://www.newmanchesterwalks.com/event/bridgewater-canal-annual-celebration-expert-tour/
LOCATION:Beetham Tower\, 301 Deansgate\, Manchester\, M3 4LQ\, United Kingdom
ATTACH;FMTTYPE=image/jpeg:https://www.newmanchesterwalks.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/06/Bridgewater-Canal-basin.jpg
END:VEVENT
BEGIN:VEVENT
DTSTART;TZID=UTC:20250716T111500
DTEND;TZID=UTC:20250716T124500
DTSTAMP:20260422T214702
CREATED:20250625T130601Z
LAST-MODIFIED:20250625T130601Z
UID:26237-1752664500-1752669900@www.newmanchesterwalks.com
SUMMARY:John Rylands Library and more...it's back!
DESCRIPTION:Next tour: Wednesday 16 July\, 11.15 a.m.\nMeet: Outside St Ann’s Church\, St Ann Street.\nBooking: Please press here to book with Eventbrite. \nThe John Rylands Library has been closed for nearly a year. Now it’s back – and with our tours! \n*** \nThe only way to truly understand the magic of what is the No. 1 Manchester Attraction on Trip Advisor is on our regular tour.   \nThis is more than a tour of one of the world’s greatest libraries. This is a trip through the industrial and religious history of Manchester linked with the 19th century’s most successful cotton merchant whose legacy survives in the magnificent library named after him. \nTours start with an introduction to the city’s cotton past (at the Royal Exchange) and John Rylands’ religious background (at St Ann’s Church) before we make our way to Deansgate. We then hear: \n* An outline of John Rylands Library’s Gothic architecture.\n* The story of John and Enriqueta Rylands.\n* How the Rylands company became the most successful Manchester cotton merchants of the 19th century.\n* An outline of the library’s riches.\n* Remarkable pictures of the library’s and the John Rylands firm’s history.\n* A look at the oldest piece of the New Testament ever found.\n* A close inspection of the exquisite Reading Room.\n* An explanation of the key statues\, particularly Francis Bacon\, who paved the way for the Industrial Revolution during which Manchester thrived\, and John Wycliffe and William Tyndale who led a revolution in religion. \n***** \nThe John Rylands Library is often described as “the Taj Mahal of the North-West”\, for it is a palace built out of love; a widow’s love for her late husband\, a family’s love of religious literature; a city’s love of Gothic architecture. The building looks like a mini-cathedral\, a religious icon\, a divine presence on Deansgate\, but it is one of the world’s greatest libraries\, for out of the bequest of John Rylands\, Manchester’s richest 19th century cotton magnate\, his widow Enriqueta created an unrivalled collection: Dickens’s novels in their original wrappers; a first edition of Shakespeare’s Sonnets; the second largest collection of works by the pioneering printer William Caxton; the personal papers of John Wesley\, John Dalton and Elizabeth Gaskell; later complemented\, most remarkably of all\, by the 2nd Century St John Fragment – the oldest existing remnant of the New Testament. \nThe library was built during the 1890s and deliberately placed on Deansgate next to what was then a violent slum (but is now entirely commercialised) to show Manchester’s underclass that there was an alternative. For them and for all users it was and remains free\, a haven of man’s pursuit of intellectual brilliance in a harsh industrial climate. \nThe architect was Basil Champneys whose ecclesiastical touches were toned down by Enriqueta Rylands\, a non-conformist. Nevertheless it remains powerfully Gothic – the last Gothic revival building erected in Manchester\, which opened on 1 Jan 1900 and was the first Manchester building to be lit by electricity. It was recently restored at great cost with a new grand entrance constructed on the south side. \nHighlights of the tour include the St John Fragment and the reading room\, a grand galleried Gothic extravaganza filled with stained glass and statuary. The St John Fragment is just that – a fragment – found in Egypt at Oxyrhynchus (Behnesa)\, the ruined city where some of the most startling and successful excavations in the history of archaeology were carried out. It was donated to the library in 1920 but not identified until 1935 when the papyrus collections were catalogued. The Reading Room is awe-inspiring and overpowering\, but the statues come alive when their significance is explained\, for here are representations of some of the most formidable figures in British history – Newton\, Dalton\, Bacon – the links between religion and science\, unfashionable at the moment\, crucial to the development of civilisation. This is primarily a religious building\, a building devoted to religion rather than for worshipping God. Pride of place goes to those figures found here who made Britain the centre of Christian tolerance: John Wycliffe\, William Tyndale and John Rainolds. \nTours of the library start with an introduction to the city’s cotton past and John Rylands’ religious background outside St Ann’s Church.
URL:https://www.newmanchesterwalks.com/event/john-rylands-library-and-more-its-back/
END:VEVENT
BEGIN:VEVENT
DTSTART;TZID=UTC:20250713T120000
DTEND;TZID=UTC:20250713T140000
DTSTAMP:20260422T214702
CREATED:20250618T133743Z
LAST-MODIFIED:20250618T133743Z
UID:26222-1752408000-1752415200@www.newmanchesterwalks.com
SUMMARY:MIF Tours - Secret Manchester
DESCRIPTION:Next tour: Sunday the 13th of June 2025\, 12 noon.\nMeet: Outside the Mercure Hotel\, Portland Street.\nBooking: Please press here to book with Evenbrite. \n*** \nYou think you know Manchester? Well\, no one knows it like Ed Glinert\, who has spent 45 years unturning every last (Gothic) stone in the city\, uncovering layer upon layer of other histories\, lesser-known stories\, the secret side of the city to create the ultimate “believe it or not”. \n* Did you know there is an atomic bunker under Piccadilly Gardens and Chinatown with a branch leading to the Town Hall?\n* That L. S. Lowry was a secret sadist.\n* Did you know there were race riots in the city during the Second World War thanks to the presence of an invading army.\n* Did you know that the pillar box on Corporation Street is NOT the one that survived the 1996 IRA bomb?\n* Did you know the council voted to demolish the Town Hall?\n* Do you know how many secret service agents are in the Midland Hotel right now planting bugs? \nIt’s the Manchester that nobody knows…apart from Glinert and you after you’ve been on this tour! \n  \n \n \nHere’s something else you didn’t know (we hope). During the Second World War the Government requisitioned a well-known building in Manchester city centre to be a secret regional HQ\, to take over the running of not just Manchester but the entire North-West should Nazi invasion look imminent. \nIt was kitted out with the most sophisticated communications equipment\, food and beds. Winston Churchill\, prime minister\, even kipped there one night to show how safe it was. But of course it was never needed. Where is it? Ah… \nThis is a trip into the deepest historical secrets of Manchester. Sites\, streets\, spaces that you’ve walked past a thousand times will never look the same again. The tour is conducted by Ed Glinert\, who knows Manchester better than anyone and knows the things that nobody else (apart from the people who told him) knows.
URL:https://www.newmanchesterwalks.com/event/mif-tours-secret-manchester/
LOCATION:Mercure Hotel (outside)\, Portland Street\, Manchester\, M1 4PH\, United Kingdom
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DTSTART;TZID=UTC:20250709T110000
DTEND;TZID=UTC:20250709T130000
DTSTAMP:20260422T214702
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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DTSTART;TZID=UTC:20250704T080000
DTEND;TZID=UTC:20250704T170000
DTSTAMP:20260422T214702
CREATED:20250704T182810Z
LAST-MODIFIED:20250704T182852Z
UID:26251-1751616000-1751648400@www.newmanchesterwalks.com
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:20260422T214702
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:20260422T214702
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:20260422T214702
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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