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X-WR-CALDESC:Events for Manchester Walks
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BEGIN:VEVENT
DTSTART;TZID=UTC:20260402T110000
DTEND;TZID=UTC:20260402T130000
DTSTAMP:20260501T140740
CREATED:20260301T225130Z
LAST-MODIFIED:20260301T225244Z
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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
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BEGIN:VEVENT
DTSTART;TZID=UTC:20260410T143000
DTEND;TZID=UTC:20260410T161500
DTSTAMP:20260501T140740
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
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BEGIN:VEVENT
DTSTART;TZID=UTC:20260415T143000
DTEND;TZID=UTC:20260415T160000
DTSTAMP:20260501T140740
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
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BEGIN:VEVENT
DTSTART;TZID=UTC:20260423T113000
DTEND;TZID=UTC:20260423T130000
DTSTAMP:20260501T140740
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
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BEGIN:VEVENT
DTSTART;TZID=UTC:20260423T143000
DTEND;TZID=UTC:20260423T160000
DTSTAMP:20260501T140740
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
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