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DTSTART;TZID=UTC:20260615T111500
DTEND;TZID=UTC:20260615T111500
DTSTAMP:20260525T125332
CREATED:20250609T144412Z
LAST-MODIFIED:20260502T175942Z
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SUMMARY:The 1996 Manchester Bomb. Expert tour\, 30 Years On.
DESCRIPTION:This tour: Monday 15 June 2026\, 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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DTSTART;TZID=UTC:20260616T180000
DTEND;TZID=UTC:20260616T194000
DTSTAMP:20260525T125332
CREATED:20260508T094209Z
LAST-MODIFIED:20260508T094209Z
UID:26711-1781632800-1781638800@www.newmanchesterwalks.com
SUMMARY:The Smiths of Manchester Tour (Queen is Dead at 40)
DESCRIPTION:Next tour: Tuesday 16 June 2026.\nMeet: Outside the Mercure Hotel\, Portland Street.\nBooking: Please press here to book with Eventbrite.\n\nWhere we go:\n• The Hacienda\, vilified in his the Smiths’ most famous song.\n• HOME cinema to recall The Smiths’ cinematic links.\n• The building where Moz actually had a job!\, which inspired…\n• Central Station and its role in the Moors Murders that inspired the Smiths’ name.\n• The building where the Smiths rehearsed relentlessly in 1983.\n• The venue where they made their debut.\n• The Lesser Free Trade Hall where Morrissey witnessed a music revolution and earned his first appearance in the media.\nand more. Read on…\n*** \nThey were Britain’s greatest ever group. More melodic than the Beatles\, more powerful than the Stones\, cleverer than the Who\, catchier than U2\, funnier than Madness and better-looking than Jesus & Mary Chain (okay\, not hard). \nThey played music that lifted the soul with words that sharpened the mind. \nThey played both types of music: fast and slow\, soft and loud\, country and western (???)\, and they came from Manchester. \nThey were The Smiths. \nThey sang about the city and shot its sites for their sleeves: the Hacienda\, Manchester Central\, “a river the colour of lead”\, Coronation Street\, the Holy Name Church… \nThe Smiths’ Manchester walk takes a trip through their haunts and their dark underbelly. Unlike other Smiths’ tours\, we don’t shirk from the difficult stories. We explain how the horrendous denouement of the Moors Murderers’ killing spree gave Morrissey the inspiration for the band’s name and affected much of his song-writing. \nThis is a music-driven tour. We play the relevant song at the relevant stop. \n \nHere’s an extract\nMorrissey’s stint in Yanks’ record shop\, a dank and now defunct basement outlet in Chepstow Street’s Canada House early in 1979\, partly inspired the line about jobs and misery in “Heaven Knows I’m Miserable Now”. Yes\, he could play records all day\, but was still not satisfied. The contradiction of being unhappy with not having a job yet being depressed with job was a long running problem with Moz. As he once noted in his diary: “When I had no job I could pinpoint my depression. But when I did get a job I was still depressed.” \nThe gestation of the song itself\, two minutes-plus of sumptuous sardonic cynicism\, was typically Smithsonian. Converting the title of an obscure Sandie Shaw number\, “Heaven Knows I’m Missing Him Now”\, Morrissey recorded the vocals for the first verse in London. He then insisted on travelling to Manchester to do the vocals for the second verse. Consequently the producer\, John Porter\, booked a studio\, packed the tapes and went North. There Morrissey recorded another verse but then announced he was popping out to the chip shop. 45 minutes later he still hadn’t returned. Porter phoned Moz’s mother who told him\, “Oh he was here but he’s gone back to London.”
URL:https://www.newmanchesterwalks.com/event/the-smiths-of-manchester-tour-queen-is-dead-at-40/
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BEGIN:VEVENT
DTSTART;TZID=UTC:20260626T110000
DTEND;TZID=UTC:20260626T124000
DTSTAMP:20260525T125332
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
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