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X-WR-CALDESC:Events for Manchester Walks
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BEGIN:VEVENT
DTSTART;TZID=UTC:20251031T180000
DTEND;TZID=UTC:20251031T200000
DTSTAMP:20260421T142536
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;VALUE=DATE:20251111
DTEND;VALUE=DATE:20251112
DTSTAMP:20260421T142536
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:20251130T120000
DTEND;TZID=UTC:20251130T140000
DTSTAMP:20260421T142536
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;TZID=UTC:20251203T110000
DTEND;TZID=UTC:20251203T130000
DTSTAMP:20260421T142536
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:20251203T170000
DTEND;TZID=UTC:20251203T190000
DTSTAMP:20260421T142536
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;VALUE=DATE:20251225
DTEND;VALUE=DATE:20251226
DTSTAMP:20260421T142536
CREATED:20251205T181803Z
LAST-MODIFIED:20251205T181803Z
UID:26548-1766620800-1766707199@www.newmanchesterwalks.com
SUMMARY:Christmas Day this year
DESCRIPTION:
URL:https://www.newmanchesterwalks.com/event/christmas-day-this-year/
END:VEVENT
BEGIN:VEVENT
DTSTART;TZID=UTC:20260211T110000
DTEND;TZID=UTC:20260211T130000
DTSTAMP:20260421T142536
CREATED:20260102T194413Z
LAST-MODIFIED:20260102T194413Z
UID:26570-1770807600-1770814800@www.newmanchesterwalks.com
SUMMARY:The Seven Wonders of Manchester
DESCRIPTION:What was the world’s biggest trading room\, masterpieces of religious art\, Europe’s oldest library\, the city’s cathedral and a celebration of Manchester’s greatest gift to the world – Work. \nThese are some of the wonders of Manchester\, the world’s first industrial city\, capital of the North. \n• Chetham’s\, the oldest library in Europe built into the 15th century Tudor buildings in the heart of mediaeval Manchester. \n• The Trinity painting inside Manchester Cathedral\, honouring the church’s three saints. \n• The Royal Exchange: once the world’s biggest trading floor\, now home to a futurist-looking and world-renowned theatre. \n• The stained glass inside St Ann’s Church with its Masonic and Kabbalist connections. \n• The extraordinary Stations of the Cross paintings in St Mary the Hidden Gem\, the oldest post-Reformation Catholic church in the country. \n• A glorious representation of the full city coat of arms\, complete with its religious symbolsim and slave ship. \n• Ford Madox Brown’s monumental painting Work inside Manchester Art Gallery. This is Manchester’s greatest work of art\, explained\, outlined\, resolved in wondrous detail. \n• The vintage Rolls Royce outside the Midland Hotel. What on earth is it doing there? \nAnd we will finish in an eighth wonder for much-needed refreshments.
URL:https://www.newmanchesterwalks.com/event/the-seven-wonders-of-manchester/
LOCATION:Victoria Station Wallmap\, Victoria Station Approach\, Manchester\, M99 1ZW\, United Kingdom
ATTACH;FMTTYPE=image/png:https://www.newmanchesterwalks.com/wp-content/uploads/2026/01/coat-of-arms.png
END:VEVENT
BEGIN:VEVENT
DTSTART;TZID=UTC:20260215T190000
DTEND;TZID=UTC:20260215T201500
DTSTAMP:20260421T142536
CREATED:20260101T121838Z
LAST-MODIFIED:20260101T121838Z
UID:26561-1771182000-1771186500@www.newmanchesterwalks.com
SUMMARY:Manchester Town Hall Tour on Zoom!
DESCRIPTION:Next Zoom tour & exploration: Sunday 15 February 2026\, 7pm.\nBooking: Please press here to book with Eventbrite.\nMeet: On your computer!\nCost: £7.77. No booking fee. \n*** \nManchester Town Hall – the full tour on Zoom! \nYes\, while England’s greatest town hall is closed for renovations (reopening 2027)\, come with us on this ingenious alternative. \nEd Glinert\, who has conducted more actual tours of Manchester Town Hall than any other guide and is about to publish a detailed book on the building\, will be hosting this virtual Zoom tour. \nThe format means we can enter every grand reception room\, take in the awesomeness of the Great Hall\, peruse the Ford Madox Brown murals\, descend to the cobbled undercroft\, marvel at the Gothic architecture\, explain the religious symbolism\, identify the statues\, monitor the political set-up\, recall the fascinating history…and without having to miss out key stops because a meeting room has been booked out. \nThis offers so much more than was covered in the old tours – and all from the comfort of your own laptop! \n* Soon you’ll be able to buy Ed Glinert’s wonderful new book\, “Manchester Town Hall: The First 150 Glorious Years”. \n*** \nWant to know more?\nManchester’s municipal palace\, in all its grand Gothic glory\, comes alive with a tour devised by Ed Glinert\, author of Penguin’s The Manchester Compendium. \nThis is the de-luxe tour – from the towering spires on the skyline to the mosaics on the foyer floor; from the flowing cotton tendrils in the state rooms to the ouroborus snake at the entrance; from the missing statue in the empty niche of the Great Hall to the tale of John Wycliffe’s bones defining the fifth Ford Madox Brown mural. \n \n*** \n\nManchester Town Hall is the crowning glory of the world’s greatest industrial city\, a Gothic Gormenghast of stone statues\, soaring spires and religious symbolism crowned with the famous Ford Madox Brown murals. \n\nOur tour takes in everything – the architecture\, the portraits\, the pictures\, the politics\, the Order of the Garter crest\, the strange animal that guards the entrance\, the legend about the Nazis’ love of the building…right up to the thankfully abandoned plans to demolish it. \n\nOur guides are brilliantly informed\, wonderfully entertaining and great fun to listen to. We constantly discover new things and unearth unusual angles about the building. We do more than just point out the bleedin’ obvious; we reveal\, unveil\, cross-reference. We talk about the sacrilegious placing of a cotton boll on top of the church-like tower; the masonic symbolism to show the “true time” on the clock; the coup within the Labour Party that abolished the post of Lord Mayor. \n\nFor a fully detailed\, definitive\, de-luxe Manchester Town Hall tour\, this is the only option. Please read to the end for a full and frank preview! \n\nThe tour has been devised by Ed Glinert\, author of “The Manchester Compendium”\, and no one knows the building better than Glinert\, the only Manchester tour guide who has been there during all the great Town Hall events of the last 35 years…from the palace coup of 1984\, when the position of Lord Mayor was abolished\, to the carving of some of the last Freeman of Manchester awards on the council chamber wall. \nIf you want to understand Manchester Town Hall\, be guided around by New Manchester Walks. Yes\, this is the de-luxe tour.  \nA Really Great Review\n“Please thank the guide today for a most enjoyable tour.” \n\nIt’s wonderful when a customer sends an e-mail with the above praise. And that’s exactly what happened after Sue Grimditch’s Town Hall tour. \n\n“Good Morning. Just letting you know how much I enjoyed the Town Hall Tour yesterday with Sue.  It was fabulous – a wonderful experience.  Sue was professional\, friendly and entertaining – she made the Town Hall come to life and her knowledge was endless.  She went beyond what I expected and I can’t wait to go on another one.  I have wanted to look round the Town Hall for years but didn’t know there was a guided tour and I couldn’t have wished for a better guide than Sue. \nEveryone on the tour was impressed with her knowledge\, not only of the Town Hall\, but the historic\, architectural and political history of Manchester – it was worth every penny. \nWell done Sue – and thank you for a most interesting\, informative and fun day out.  I’m looking at your brochure and already planning my next adventure.” \n*** \nYou’d like to know more?\nEd Glinert\, author of Penguin’s Manchester Compendium and editor of Penguin Classics’ Sherlock Holmes stories\, sums up the essence of the building and its history. \nFittingly for a city that prides itself as a municipal power on a scale rivalling the great city-states in European history\, Manchester Town Hall is the grandest\, greatest and most imposing building in the region. \nIt was built from 1868-77 to the Gothic designs of Alfred Waterhouse whose plan\, one of 136 entries\, while not the most handsome and not even the winning entry initially\, was the one the judges felt made the best use of light\, ventilation and the awkward triangular site available. \nThe Corporation had given no preference for the building’s architectural style\, but to emphasise Manchester’s newly found wealth from textiles Waterhouse chose as his model the 13th century Gothic cloth halls of Flanders. He built in brick faced with stone from the West Yorkshire Spinkwell quarries for the exterior\, ashlar for the interior\, and placed above the main entrance a 386-foot high clock tower. He also included much statuary on the façade. General Agricola\, the Roman who founded Manchester in AD 79\, is honoured with a statue over the main doorway. Above him are Henry III and Elizabeth I\, and there are also statues of Thomas de la Warre\, founder of what is now the Cathedral\, and Humphrey Chetham who founded what is now Europe’s oldest library a mile away. Inside the ground floor entrance are busts of the scientists John Dalton\, with glassware at his feet\, and James Prescott Joule\, cross-legged\, leaning on an elbow. \nInside the building Waterhouse’s skill becomes apparent. Seven staircases lead up from the ground floor; some grand and imposing\, others spiralling mysteriously at the corners of the building. On the first floor are the Lord Mayor’s rooms\, the Conference Hall\, which contains the original council chamber and contains a huge Gothic chimney-piece\, oak screen and wrought-iron galleries where the press and public sat\, and the Great Hall\, the building’s tour de force\, which John Ruskin called “the most truly magnificent Gothic apartment in Europe”. In the panels of the Great Hall’s hammerbeam roof are gilded costs of arms of the nations with which Manchester traded\, and on the walls are Ford Madox Brown’s 12 murals which illustrate episodes in Manchester’s history. \nThe internal courtyard in the basement is often used as a Victorian setting in TV dramas\, while throughout the profusion of cloister-like corridors\, spiral staircases\, bridges and stairwells creates a wonderful sense of drama. \nThe Town Hall was officially opened on 13 September 1877 with a grand ceremony marred only by the refusal of Queen Victoria to attend. Benjamin Disraeli\, the prime minister had to notify the city cryptically that it was “out of the power of Her Majesty to be present on this interesting occasion”. The reasons\, undisclosed at the time\, were that the Queen was unhappy that the Manchester Corporation had commissioned a statue of the regicide Oliver Cromwell. She was also wary of being seen on the same platform as the one time fiercely radical Manchester mayor\, Abel Heywood\, who had once been imprisoned for distributing publications which argued for abolishing the monarchy. \nSuch was Manchester’s penchant for empire building\, by the 1920s it considered the Town Hall too small. E. Vincent Harris was duly commissioned to build an extension on an adjacent site to the south\, and it is there that the council now meets. Yet ironically when the Corporation commissioned chief surveyor Rowland Nicholas to draw up the Manchester Plan of 1945 in rebuilding the city after the Second World War\, he decided the main Town Hall was now too big\, and suggested it be replaced at excessive cost with a streamlined modernist replacement. Fortunately for Manchester his proposals were shelved. 
URL:https://www.newmanchesterwalks.com/event/manchester-town-hall-tour-on-zoom/
END:VEVENT
BEGIN:VEVENT
DTSTART;TZID=UTC:20260310T140000
DTEND;TZID=UTC:20260310T154500
DTSTAMP:20260421T142536
CREATED:20260208T103146Z
LAST-MODIFIED:20260208T103146Z
UID:26587-1773151200-1773157500@www.newmanchesterwalks.com
SUMMARY:Formidable Women of Manchester (Tour during International Women's Week)
DESCRIPTION:Next tour: Tuesday 10 March 2026 (International Women’s Week).\nMeet: outside Manchester Art Gallery\, 2pm.\nBooking: Please press here to book with Eventbrite. \nThese women and more… \n* Annie Horniman\, who established Britain’s first repertory theatre company.\n* Elizabeth Gaskell\, who wrote Mary Barton\, one of the classic “condition of England” novels in 1848.\n* Hannah Mitchell\, who challenged Churchill at St John’s School during the Suffragette era.\n* Shelagh Delaney who pioneered modernist theatre with her groundbreaking A Taste of Honey.\n* Ellen Wilkinson – “Red Ellen” who accompanied the Jarrow miners to London.\n* Kathleen Ollerenshaw\, who overcame deafness to become Lord Mayor\, a leading educationalist\, mathematician and advisor to Margaret Thatcher (now what sort of job is that for a Mancunian?!).\n* Sylvia Pankhurst\, Britain’s greatest political campaigner. \nThese are just some of the heroic Manchester women we will be celebrating.
URL:https://www.newmanchesterwalks.com/event/formidable-women-of-manchester-tour-during-international-womens-week/
END:VEVENT
BEGIN:VEVENT
DTSTART;TZID=UTC:20260311T143000
DTEND;TZID=UTC:20260311T161500
DTSTAMP:20260421T142536
CREATED:20260208T215252Z
LAST-MODIFIED:20260208T215252Z
UID:26597-1773239400-1773245700@www.newmanchesterwalks.com
SUMMARY:Southern Cemetery
DESCRIPTION:Next tour: Wednesday 11 March 2026\, 2.30 p.m.\nMeet: Cemetery Gates (opposite James Hilton Memorials of 245 Barlow Moor Road).(Barlow Moor Road Metrolink stop\, 10 minutes walk away).\nPlease don’t go to: The Crematorium\, Nell Lane…\nBooking: Please press here to book with Eventbrite. \n*** \nNew Manchester Walks will take you around Southern Cemetery\, final resting place of some of the greats of Manchester history\, with Ed Glinert\, author of “London’s Dead” (published by HarperCollins). \nWe will see the graves and memories of Matt Busby\, John Rylands\, Joe Sunlight\, Daniel Adamson\, Tony Wilson and L. S. Lowry\, as we explore Britain’s second biggest cemetery.
URL:https://www.newmanchesterwalks.com/event/southern-cemetery/
LOCATION:Southern Cemtery\, 212 Barlow Moor Road\, Chorlton-cum-Hardy\, Manchester\, M21 7GL\, United Kingdom
END:VEVENT
BEGIN:VEVENT
DTSTART;TZID=UTC:20260317T143000
DTEND;TZID=UTC:20260317T163000
DTSTAMP:20260421T142536
CREATED:20260209T112241Z
LAST-MODIFIED:20260209T112329Z
UID:26602-1773757800-1773765000@www.newmanchesterwalks.com
SUMMARY:The Little Ireland Explorer (Manchester) on St Patrick's Day
DESCRIPTION:Next tour: The Little Ireland Explorer (Manchester) on St Patrick’s Day\nTuesday 17 March 2026.\nMeet: Outside HOME\, 2.30 p.m.\nBooking: Please press here to book with Eventbrite. \n \nFor 2026\, we’re doing it a little differently\, exploring Little Ireland as well as focusing on great Irishmen and women who have made their mark on Manchester. \nLittle Ireland was the ghetto/slum/rookery around the railway viaduct that stretched from London Road station (now Piccadilly) to Gaythorn (where HOME now stands). \nThis is a little-known\, seldom-heard side of Manchester history. The working-class community around St Augustine’s Catholic church was bombed in the 1940s and redeveloped out in the 1950s. Of the church\, there’s nothing left\, apart from the pictures\, the memories and the great stories. UMIST replaced it. A new church was built in Grosvenor Square\, half a mile away. \nThe best known story around here is Friedrich Engels’s description of Little Ireland from Condition of the Working Class\, but you’ll have to come on the tour to hear that! \nAs for those great Irish men. There’s Brendan Behan: genius writer or terrorist? In 1939 Behan spent a night inside Bootle Street police station in 1939 after entering Britain illegally. He had been banned from the country under the Prevention of Violence Act after shooting at three policemen. But on being released\, during an amnesty\, he came to Manchester at the invitation of the local IRA cell\, thereby reneging on the deal. \nIn Manchester\, Behan was arrested by Robert Mark\, then a detective constable in the Special Branch\, who went on to become Commissionaire of the Metropolitan Police. In court Behan was given an extra four months on his jail sentence\, despite or perhaps because of the pleas of his lawyer who kept referring to the writer as a “love choild of the Oirish revolution”. \nNo wonder Karl Marx urged Britain to solve the Irish question before choosing socialism. \nBut don’t worry\, we won’t get too political. We’ll also talk about George Best\, Phil Lynott\, Little Ireland\, Irish Town and find some time for a chorus or two of the Waxie’s Dargle.
URL:https://www.newmanchesterwalks.com/event/the-little-ireland-explorer-manchester-on-st-patricks-day/
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/2026/02/Irish-bee.jpg
END:VEVENT
BEGIN:VEVENT
DTSTART;TZID=UTC:20260321T141500
DTEND;TZID=UTC:20260321T160000
DTSTAMP:20260421T142536
CREATED:20250708T225041Z
LAST-MODIFIED:20260224T143722Z
UID:26297-1774102500-1774108800@www.newmanchesterwalks.com
SUMMARY:Secret Manchester (The Official Tour)
DESCRIPTION:Next tour: Sat 21 March 2026\, 2.15 p.m.\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/secret-manchester-private-tour/
LOCATION:Mercure Hotel (outside)\, Portland Street\, Manchester\, M1 4PH\, United Kingdom
END:VEVENT
BEGIN:VEVENT
DTSTART;TZID=UTC:20260331T143000
DTEND;TZID=UTC:20260331T161500
DTSTAMP:20260421T142536
CREATED:20251021T111716Z
LAST-MODIFIED:20260227T114854Z
UID:26483-1774967400-1774973700@www.newmanchesterwalks.com
SUMMARY:The Pre-Raphaelites in Manchester. Expert Tour
DESCRIPTION:Next tour: Tuesday 31 March 2026\, 2.30 p.m.\nMeet: Outside Manchester Art Gallery.\nBooking: Please press here to book with Eventbrite. \nEd Glinert\, official Manchester tour guide and author of Penguin’s Manchester Compendium\, leads this fascinating fact-filled tour around the gallery’s best-loved Victorian paintings. \nThe Pre-Raphaelites were Britain’s most important art school. They were aesthetes and zealots determined to bring honesty\, drama and colourful vitality to staid Victorian painting. \nThey were formed in 1848\, the year of revolution across Europe. But this was no political coup. This was art terrorism\, powered by Dante Gabriel Rossetti\, William Holman Hunt and John Everett Millais. \nReacting against the reactionary nature of Joshua Reynolds and the Royal Academy\, the Pre-Raphaelites wished to create a body of work similar in brightness of colour\, attention to detail\, and honest simplicity to the period of Italian painting prior to Raphael Sanzio (1483-1520). \nRossetti wanted the group’s name to include the then fashionable term “Early Christian”\, but when Hunt objected he proposed “Pre-Raphaelite”. Rossetti then added the word “Brotherhood”\, as he wanted the society to be secret\, in line with the Italian political group the Carbonaris in that year of revolution across Europe. When the artists staged their first exhibition Dante Gabriel Rossetti’s The Girlhood of Mary Virgin was signed “PRB” to maintain the society’s air of mystery. \nManchester has an unrivalled collection of the PRB’s works\, dominated by William Holman Hunt’s spiritual Light of the World\, his daring Shadow of Death and the eerie Scapegoat. This is art which benefits from intense scrutiny; from unravelling and demystifying the religious connotations and human dramas involved. \n. \nOnly Ed Glinert\, official Manchester tour guide and Arts Society lecturer\, can reveal the mysteries and symbolism of the gallery’s best loved Victorian paintings. \n \n \nThe Pre-Raphaelites were Britain’s most important art school. They were aesthetes and zealots determined to bring honesty\, drama and colourful vitality to staid Victorian painting. \nThey were formed in 1848\, the year of revolution across Europe. But this was no political coup. This was art terrorism\, powered by Dante Gabriel Rossetti\, William Holman Hunt and John Everett Millais. \nReacting against the reactionary nature of Joshua Reynolds and the Royal Academy\, they wished to create a body of work similar in brightness of colour\, attention to detail\, and honest simplicity to the period of Italian painting prior to Raphael Sanzio (1483-1520). \nRossetti wanted the group’s name to include the then fashionable term “Early Christian”\, but when Hunt objected he proposed “Pre-Raphaelite”. Rossetti then added the word “Brotherhood”\, as he wanted the society to be secret\, in line with the Italian political group the Carbonaris in that year of revolution across Europe. When the artists staged their first exhibition Dante Gabriel Rossetti’s The Girlhood of Mary Virgin was signed “PRB” to maintain the society’s air of mystery. \nManchester has an unrivalled collection of the PRB’s works\, dominated by William Holman Hunt’s spiritual Light of the World\, his daring Shadow of Death and the eerie Scapegoat. This is art which benefits from intense scrutiny; from unravelling and demystifying the religious connotations and human dramas involved.
URL:https://www.newmanchesterwalks.com/event/the-pre-raphaelites-in-manchester-expert-tour/
LOCATION:Outside St Ann’s Church\, St Ann Street\, Manchester\, United Kingdom
END:VEVENT
BEGIN:VEVENT
DTSTART;TZID=UTC:20260402T110000
DTEND;TZID=UTC:20260402T130000
DTSTAMP:20260421T142536
CREATED:20260301T225130Z
LAST-MODIFIED:20260301T225244Z
UID:26637-1775127600-1775134800@www.newmanchesterwalks.com
SUMMARY:The Great Treasures of Manchester
DESCRIPTION:This tour: Thu 2 April 2026\, 2.30pm.\nMeet: Victoria station wallmap.\nBooking: Please press here to book with Eventbrite. \nJoin Ed Glinert\, author of the city’s definitive history\, “Manchester: The Biography”\, on this tribute to the great treasures of Manchester. \n\nChetham’s – Europe’s oldest library.\nThe Trinity painting inside Manchester Cathedral.\nThe glorious stained Glass inside St Ann’s Church\nThe Stations of the Cross in the Hidden Gem.\nThe secrets of the Albert Memorial\nThe meaning behind the city’s coat of arms.\nManchester Art Gallery’s greatest painting\n… and more.
URL:https://www.newmanchesterwalks.com/event/the-great-treasures-of-manchester/
LOCATION:Victoria Station Wallmap\, Victoria Station Approach\, Manchester\, M99 1ZW\, United Kingdom
END:VEVENT
BEGIN:VEVENT
DTSTART;TZID=UTC:20260410T143000
DTEND;TZID=UTC:20260410T161500
DTSTAMP:20260421T142536
CREATED:20250611T145736Z
LAST-MODIFIED:20260311T110144Z
UID:26207-1775831400-1775837700@www.newmanchesterwalks.com
SUMMARY:The Evil Corners of Strangeways (Ed Glinert's Criminal Tour)
DESCRIPTION:Next tour: Fri 10 April 2026.\nMeet: Victoria Station wallmap for a 2.30pm start.\nBooking: If you’d like to go to Strangeways\, the law will help you.\nAlternatively\, just follow the orders from the guv’nor below.\nOh\, alright: Please press here to book with Eventbrite.\nBring: Bucket for slopping out.\n End: Somewhere near the guv’nor’s office. \n*** \nStrangeways. The very name enough to send a frisson of fear down the spine of the most hardened felons. \nStrangeways has been home to the most evil elements in existence – Ian Brady and Harold Shipman – and temporary refuge of political prisoners such as Christabel Pankhurst and Austin Stack\, the Irish Republican who was one of the few to escape from its clutches. \nEven Ian Brown\, ex-Stone Roses\, was briefly incarcerated within in 1998. No\, not for inflicting his tuneless drone and inane lyrics on humanity but for getting into a strop on an aeroplane. 60 days. So what was it like in Strangeways\, Ian? “Dirty. The food was like dog food.” He’s out now. \nIan Brady was sent here for stealing from Smithfield Market\, where he worked in the late 1950s. John Robson Walby (alias Gwynne Owen Evans)\, was hanged at Strangeways on August 13\, 1964 – the last person in England to suffer this punishment. (No\, it wasn’t Ruth Ellis). \n1 April 1990 three hundred prisoners filed into the chapel to attend the church service. During the sermon a prisoner\, later identified as Paul Taylor\, stood up and shouted: “I would just like to say\, right\, that this man has just talked about the blessing of the heart and how a hardened heart can be delivered. No it cannot\, not with resentment\, anger and bitterness and hatred being instilled in people.” \nIt all kicked off. Riot! \nPrisoners took to the roof and began to dismantle the prison for 25 days. 147 staff and 47 prisoners were injured. One prisoner and one prison officer died. Your NMW guide\, Ed Glinert\, was ordered by his editor at the Sun to doorstep home secretary David Waddington. He never made it. \nLater\, Paul Taylor and Alan Lord faced a five-month trial as its ringleaders. Both were acquitted of murder. The riot resulted in the Woolfe Inquiry which ended the practice of slopping out and saw the jail rebuilt and euphemistically renamed as Her Majesty’s Prison\, Manchester. But to everyone else it’s still good old Strangeways\, or in Jim McDonald’s words: “The Big Hoise.”
URL:https://www.newmanchesterwalks.com/event/mif-tours-strangeways/
LOCATION:Victoria Station Wallmap\, Victoria Station Approach\, Manchester\, M99 1ZW\, United Kingdom
ATTACH;FMTTYPE=image/jpeg:https://www.newmanchesterwalks.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/04/Strangeways-1.jpg
END:VEVENT
BEGIN:VEVENT
DTSTART;TZID=UTC:20260415T113000
DTEND;TZID=UTC:20260415T131000
DTSTAMP:20260421T142536
CREATED:20260208T105836Z
LAST-MODIFIED:20260330T160534Z
UID:26591-1776252600-1776258600@www.newmanchesterwalks.com
SUMMARY:Celebrating Salford's Centenary (Salford Quays Tour)
DESCRIPTION:Next tour: Wednesday 15 April 2026.\nMeet: Salford Quays Metrolink stop\, 11.30 a.m. \nBooking: Please press here to book with Eventbrite. \nHuge docks which once harboured the world’s ocean-going liners. Gleaming museums of the modern age. A world famous canal\, as deep as Suez\, as powerful as the Panama. \n \nHere a new city has risen; a city of glass\, steel and burnished metal\, bold and brilliant. On one side of the water the silver shards of the Imperial War Museum North. On the other the Lowry Centre\, a matchless theatre for the matchstick figure artist. And they have now been joined by Media City\, the futuristic home of the BBC. \nAlongside\, stretches the water\, filling the old Manchester Docks\, cleaned and spruced for leisure and pleasure. \nWe explore the new city on the old canal\, switching to and from the hi-tech world of today to the days when the Port of Manchester thrived as the 4th largest in the country.
URL:https://www.newmanchesterwalks.com/event/26591/
LOCATION:Salford Quays Metrolink Stop\, Trafford Road\, Salford\, M50 3WL\, United Kingdom
END:VEVENT
BEGIN:VEVENT
DTSTART;TZID=UTC:20260415T143000
DTEND;TZID=UTC:20260415T160000
DTSTAMP:20260421T142536
CREATED:20250618T111229Z
LAST-MODIFIED:20260330T154721Z
UID:26216-1776263400-1776268800@www.newmanchesterwalks.com
SUMMARY:Alan Turing's Manchester: Expert Tour
DESCRIPTION:Next walking tour: Wednesday 15 April 2026\, 2.30 p.m.\nMeeting Place: Manchester Museum entrance\, Oxford Road\, Chorlton-on-Medlock.\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-expert-tour/
LOCATION:Manchester Museum\, Oxford Road\, Chorlton-on-Medlock\, Manchester\, M13 9PL\, United Kingdom
ATTACH;FMTTYPE=image/jpeg:https://www.newmanchesterwalks.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/06/alan-turing-and-turing-machine.jpg
END:VEVENT
BEGIN:VEVENT
DTSTART;TZID=UTC:20260423T113000
DTEND;TZID=UTC:20260423T130000
DTSTAMP:20260421T142536
CREATED:20250704T183406Z
LAST-MODIFIED:20260407T213715Z
UID:26254-1776943800-1776949200@www.newmanchesterwalks.com
SUMMARY:The Glories of Manchester Architecture
DESCRIPTION:The Glories of Manchester Architecture.\nNext tour: Thursday 23 April 2026\, 11.30 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
END:VEVENT
BEGIN:VEVENT
DTSTART;TZID=UTC:20260423T143000
DTEND;TZID=UTC:20260423T160000
DTSTAMP:20260421T142536
CREATED:20250704T171300Z
LAST-MODIFIED:20260408T084709Z
UID:26244-1776954600-1776960000@www.newmanchesterwalks.com
SUMMARY:The Horrors of Angel Meadow. A Tour into the Centre of the Victorian Hell-Hole
DESCRIPTION:Next tour: Thursday 23 April 2026.\nMeet: Victoria Station wallmap\, 2.30 p.m.\nBooking: Please press here to book with Eventbrite. \n“The lowest\, most filthy\, most unhealthy\, and most wicked locality in Manchester…full of cellars and inhabited by prostitutes\, their bullies\, thieves\, cadgers\, vagrants and tramps.” \nWas this yesterday? No\, journalist Angus Bethune Reach was writing in the 19th century when Angel Meadow was one of a number of notorious Manchester slums; probably the worst. \nThis is what proto-communist Friedrich Engels had to say about the locale in 1844. “The landlords are not ashamed to let dwellings like the six or seven cellars on the quay directly below Scotland Bridge\, the floors of which stand at least two feet below the low water level of the Irk … utterly uninhabitable\, [it] stands deprived of all fittings for doors and windows\, a case by no means rare in this region\, when an open ground-floor is used as a privy by the whole neighbourhood for want of other facilities. . . .” \nA hundred yards on\, at the end of Millow Street\, stood “Gibraltar”. This was once described by the social commentator James Phillips Kay as the haunt of the “lowest” of the population. “The stranger\, if he dare venture to explore its intricacies and recesses is sure to be watched with suspicion\, on every side is heard the sound of the axe or knife…” \nOkay\, both those revered social commentators were writing many years ago\, but go there now and it’s pretty grim\, which is why we guide you around these atmospheric areas\, converting the squalor and sordidness into scintillating stories. And we’ve not even entered Angel Meadow proper yet. \nHave things improved? Yes\, with much thanks to the Friends of Angel Meadow. When we’ve finished with all the terrible tales we deserve an ale or two at the Marble pub with its gorgeous tiles\, magnificent ales and friendly atmosphere.
URL:https://www.newmanchesterwalks.com/event/angel-meadow-a-tour-into-the-centre-of-the-victorian-hell-hole/
LOCATION:Victoria Station Wallmap\, Victoria Station Approach\, Manchester\, M99 1ZW\, United Kingdom
ATTACH;FMTTYPE=image/jpeg:https://www.newmanchesterwalks.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/07/Angel-Meadow-Gibraltar.jpg
END:VEVENT
BEGIN:VEVENT
DTSTART;TZID=UTC:20260521T110000
DTEND;TZID=UTC:20260521T130000
DTSTAMP:20260421T142536
CREATED:20250724T221755Z
LAST-MODIFIED:20260417T124034Z
UID:26349-1779361200-1779368400@www.newmanchesterwalks.com
SUMMARY:Tour the Old Jewish Ghetto of Manchester
DESCRIPTION:“The Old Jewish Ghetto of Manchester” \nThis tour: Thursday 21 May 2026.\nMeet: Victoria Station wallmap\, 11 am. \nBooking: Please press here to book with Eventbrite. \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.
URL:https://www.newmanchesterwalks.com/event/tour-the-old-jewish-ghetto-of-manchester/
LOCATION:Victoria Station Wallmap\, Victoria Station Approach\, Manchester\, M99 1ZW\, United Kingdom
ATTACH;FMTTYPE=image/jpeg:https://www.newmanchesterwalks.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/02/Jewish-Museum-outside.jpg
END:VEVENT
BEGIN:VEVENT
DTSTART;TZID=UTC:20260523T110000
DTEND;TZID=UTC:20260523T130000
DTSTAMP:20260421T142536
CREATED:20250706T112633Z
LAST-MODIFIED:20260418T083546Z
UID:26264-1779534000-1779541200@www.newmanchesterwalks.com
SUMMARY:The Grand Canals of Manchester
DESCRIPTION:  \n  \n  \n  \n  \n* Next tour: Saturday\, the 23rd of May 2026\, 11 a.m.\n* Meet: outside the Malmaison Hotel\, 1-3 Piccadilly.\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\, 1-3 Piccadilly\, Manchester
ATTACH;FMTTYPE=image/jpeg:https://www.newmanchesterwalks.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/07/Canals.jpg
END:VEVENT
BEGIN:VEVENT
DTSTART;TZID=UTC:20260526T140000
DTEND;TZID=UTC:20260526T154000
DTSTAMP:20260421T142536
CREATED:20250623T121109Z
LAST-MODIFIED:20260419T202114Z
UID:26233-1779804000-1779810000@www.newmanchesterwalks.com
SUMMARY:Emmeline Pankhurst’s Manchester
DESCRIPTION:Next Tour: Tue 26 May 2026\, 2pm.\nMeet: At the Emmeline Pankhurst Statue\, St Peter’s Square.\nBooking: Please press here to book with Evenbrite. \nIt is now more than a hundred and five years (1 December 1919) since a woman entered the British Parliament for the first time. American socialite Nancy Astor won a by-election for the Unionists in Plymouth Sutton\, ironically replacing her husband\, Waldorf Astor\, who had just been ennobled. \nThe campaign to win women the vote and the right to enter the Commons had been raging ever since more than a dozen people were killed and hundreds injured at the Peterloo Massacre in Manchester in 1819. Henry Hunt\, the main speaker at the Peterloo rally that never happened\, later became the first MP to put forward a bill to allow women to vote in general elections. But that was back in the 1830s. Two generations later the Pankhurst family took over the campaign\, leading one of the most bitter and brutal political battles in British history\, for many years from Manchester. \nPartial victory was celebrated in 1918 when (some) women were at last allowed to vote and stand. One woman was elected\, but never took her seat. A year later Nancy Astor made up for it. \nHear the full story on this eye-opening guided tour. \n \n!!STOP PRESS!!\nThis is the only Pankhurst tour which goes to the Pankhursts’ shop (yes\, I bet you didn’t know they had a shop in Manchester city centre!) and gives the accurate political background to the infamous Free Trade Hall rally in October 1905. \nWe have made a forensic and in-depth study of this extraordinary story. Discover Manchester’s cataclysmic connections… \n…read on below. \n  \nFurther study\nIn August 1819 at least a dozen people were killed demonstrating for the right to vote at St Peter’s Fields\, Manchester. Nearly a hundred years later\, in 1903\, the Pankhurst family\, disgusted with the Independent Labour Party’s refusal to allow women to use the newly-opened Pankhurst Hall in north Manchester\, founded the Women’s Social and Political Union to step up the campaign for the right of women to have the vote in parliamentary elections. \nWhat had been a sedate pressure group\, willing to stay within the law to change the law\, soon became militant. The women suffrage supporters (“suffragettes\,” the Daily Mail called them) disrupted a Liberal Party rally in the Free Trade Hall in 1905 and two of their leaders – Christabel Pankhurst and Annie Kenney – were jailed. Manchester had become Suffragette City\, but it took a generation and many thousands of broken windows for women to secure the vote. \nThis is a walk in memory of the Pankhursts – Emmeline\, Christabel and Sylvia – fierce campaigners\, resolute radicals. We visit their haunts\, outline their struggle and follow in their footsteps. \nAn excerpt from the walk\nWhen Christabel Pankhurst and Annie Kenney were arrested for disrupting the Liberal Party’s political rally at the Free Trade Hall in October 1905 they were taken first to a cell in Manchester Town Hall and then to Strangeways Prison. \nSoon one of the leading Liberal politicians of the day turned up at the prison offering to pay the women’s fines so that they could be quickly released. The philanthropic politician was none other than Winston Churchill\, MP for Oldham\, who had recently crossed the floor from the Conservative benches. But was this really a welcome move or just a cynical one? Surely if the women agreed to his offer he could champion himself as being in control of them …
URL:https://www.newmanchesterwalks.com/event/mif-tours-emmeline-pankhursts-manchester/
LOCATION:emmeline Pankhurst statue\, St Peter's Square\, Manchester\, M2 3DE\, United Kingdom
ATTACH;FMTTYPE=image/jpeg:https://www.newmanchesterwalks.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/06/Pankhursts-three-main-ones.jpg
END:VEVENT
BEGIN:VEVENT
DTSTART;TZID=UTC:20260528T113000
DTEND;TZID=UTC:20260528T131500
DTSTAMP:20260421T142536
CREATED:20250719T092817Z
LAST-MODIFIED:20260413T132235Z
UID:26333-1779967800-1779974100@www.newmanchesterwalks.com
SUMMARY:John Rylands Library...And More
DESCRIPTION:Next tour: Thursday 28 May 2026.\nMeet: Outside St Ann’s Church\, St Ann Street\, 11.30 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
END:VEVENT
BEGIN:VEVENT
DTSTART;TZID=UTC:20260604T180000
DTEND;TZID=UTC:20260604T194000
DTSTAMP:20260421T142536
CREATED:20260214T204932Z
LAST-MODIFIED:20260309T151914Z
UID:26618-1780596000-1780602000@www.newmanchesterwalks.com
SUMMARY:50th anniversary of the Pistols at the Lesser Free Trade Hall
DESCRIPTION:This tour: Thursday 4 June 2026\, 6pm.\n50th Anniversary of the Pistols at the Lesser Free Trade Hall\nMeet: Outside HOME\, 2 Tony Wilson Place.\nBooking: Please press here to book with Eventbrite.\n\nHere’s the set list\n* Tony Wilson’s pad.\n* The Boardwalk\, where Oasis made their debut.\n* The Hacienda.\n* Elbow’s “hole in my neighbourhood”.\n* The basement record shop where Morrissey had a job – yes! – for about five minutes\, resulting in a depression that inspired those great lines from “Heaven Knows I’m Miserable Now”.\n* The Ritz\, where the first Smiths gig took place.\n* The Hidden Gem church where Tony Wilson’s funeral took place.\n* The Free Trade Hall\, where this day in 1976 the Sex Pistols invented the modern Manchester music scene. \nWhat does it sound like?\nForget Memphis and Merseybeat\, Manchester is music city\, a venue to rank alongside New Orleans or Notting Hill\, a factory of superior song-making and stirring soundscapes courtesy of Joy Division\, the Fall\, New Order\, Buzzcocks\, Happy Mondays\, John Cooper Clarke\, the Stone Roses\, 808 State and\, of course\, the Smiths\, all spinning around the legend of the Hacienda\, the world’s hippest nightclub\, chicer than the Copacabana\, sexier than Studio 54\, cooler than the Cavern or Cream. \nAt the centre of the city’s beat was Factory Records\, a record label to rival Motown and Chess with a business model that could be compared only to British Leyland or the South Sea Bubble. But it’s not about Mammon or the man\, it’s about the music\, the songs\, and what songs! – “Dead Souls”\, “William\, It was Really Nothing”\, “Rowche Rumble”\, “Time Goes By So Slow” – the list\, like the road\, goes on forever. (Jon the Postman’s versions of “Louie Louie” certainly did). \n \n“Manchester\, so much to answer for\,” as the man sang. \n \n 
URL:https://www.newmanchesterwalks.com/event/50th-anniversary-of-the-pistols-at-the-lesser-free-trade-hall/
LOCATION:HOME\, 2 Tony Wilson Place\, Manchester\, Select a State:\, M15 4GU\, United Kingdom
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