* Next tour: Sat 9 Aug 2025, 2.30pm.
* Meet: Outside Oxford Road Station.
* Booking: Please press here to book with Eventbrite.
“Streets full of water. Please advise.”
Surely 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.
Join Ed Glinert, Manchester’s leading historian, for a celebratory saunter along the great waterways.
This 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.
We’ve changed the route for this tour to take in the city centre and Ancoats.
Usual 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.
