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X-WR-CALDESC:Events for Manchester Walks
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BEGIN:VEVENT
DTSTART;TZID=UTC:20260626T110000
DTEND;TZID=UTC:20260626T124000
DTSTAMP:20260610T190017
CREATED:20250704T183406Z
LAST-MODIFIED:20260524T134241Z
UID:26254-1782471600-1782477600@www.newmanchesterwalks.com
SUMMARY:The Glories of Manchester Architecture
DESCRIPTION:The Glories of Manchester Architecture.\nNext tour: Friday 26 June 2026\, 11 a.m.\nGuide: RIBA judge Ed Glinert\, author of “Manchester: The Biography”.\nStarts: Outside the Midland Hotel\, Peter Street.\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/mif-tours-the-glories-of-manchester-architecture-2/
LOCATION:Midland Hotel\, 16 Peter Street\, Manchester\, M60 2DS\, United Kingdom
ATTACH;FMTTYPE=image/jpeg:https://www.newmanchesterwalks.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/07/Central-Library-from-the-air.jpg
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BEGIN:VEVENT
DTSTART;TZID=UTC:20260627T110000
DTEND;TZID=UTC:20260627T130000
DTSTAMP:20260610T190017
CREATED:20250706T112633Z
LAST-MODIFIED:20260526T075441Z
UID:26264-1782558000-1782565200@www.newmanchesterwalks.com
SUMMARY:The Grand Canals of Manchester
DESCRIPTION:  \n  \n  \n  \n  \n* Next tour: Saturday 27 June 2026\, 11 a.m.\n* Meet: outside the Malmaison Hotel\, 1-3 Piccadilly. NOT THE DEANSGATE ONE!\n* Booking: Please press here to book with Eventbrite. \n“Streets full of water. Please advise.” \nSurely Mark Twain was reporting back from Manchester\, not Venice\, for the city is a font of watery ways and walks? Built during the early days of the Industrial Revolution\, the Rochdale Canal\, the Ashton Canal and their tributaries brought coal and cotton to central Manchester\, and took away manufactured goods to be sent around the world. Then the work stopped and the canals silted up\, but over the last fifty years the canals have been wonderfully restored. \nJoin Ed Glinert\, Manchester’s leading historian\, for a celebratory saunter along the great waterways. \nThis is a spectacular stroll along the waterways of Manchester\, invoking a host of stories industrial and architectural\, anecdotal and incidental\, as we head west from Piccadilly\, along the canals under the city streets towards Britain’s grand canal junction at Castlefield where four waterways cross. \nWe’ve changed the route for this tour to take in the city centre and Ancoats.\n\nUsual Route: Malmaison – the Venetian-styled Crown Court – Canal Street – the Gay Village – Alan Turing – Bloom Street power station – under Oxford Street – Lee House – the Ritz – Manchester & Salford Junction Canal detour – the Hacienda – Roman fort – Castlefield Canal Basin – Duke’s 92.  \n 
URL:https://www.newmanchesterwalks.com/event/celebrating-manchester-history-along-the-canals/
LOCATION:Outside the Malmaison Hotel\, 3 Piccadilly\, Manchester\, Select a State:\, M1 3AQ\, United Kingdom
ATTACH;FMTTYPE=image/jpeg:https://www.newmanchesterwalks.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/07/Canals.jpg
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BEGIN:VEVENT
DTSTART;TZID=UTC:20260701T111500
DTEND;TZID=UTC:20260701T130000
DTSTAMP:20260610T190017
CREATED:20250719T092817Z
LAST-MODIFIED:20260529T191127Z
UID:26333-1782904500-1782910800@www.newmanchesterwalks.com
SUMMARY:John Rylands Library...And More
DESCRIPTION:Next tour: Wednesday 1 July 2026.\nMeet: Outside St Ann’s Church\, St Ann Street\, 11.15 a.m.\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/
LOCATION:Outside St Ann’s Church\, St Ann Street\, Manchester\, United Kingdom
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