At the end of January 2020 I was looking for something interesting to do in the UK and I decided to make a trip to Manchester for a day out. I had never been to Manchester before so I thought it was time to visit England’s second largest city. I drove over through the Peak District past Ladybower Dam and over Snake Pass before dropping down into Glossop and then into Manchester. That is a beautiful route through the Peak District.
I parked near the city center and found myself on Piccadilly, the street that runs from the station (Piccadilly Station) to the park (Piccadilly Park) and on to the Arndale shopping area. It was a grey, gloomy and damp day and to warm up after the drive I went inside the Arndale Shopping Center. It could have been Meadowhall in Sheffield or even Arden Fair in Sacramento (except for a few British shops). These places look all the same these days.
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| Queen Victoria in Piccadilly Gardens |
Breakfast at Marks and Spencers with a bacon roll and a very fine latte (IMHO the best and most reliable coffee in the UK) got me ready for exploring the town. I had no specific agenda so I wandered back up Piccadilly to the park where there is a statue of Queen Victoria and one of Wellington and a few others who I didn’t recognize.
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| Manchester Cathedral |
From Piccadilly I walked over to the Cathedral. A nice looking church but not as impressive as some cathedrals. Inside it was again nice but not spectacular. Of note was the so called fire window, a stained glass window that commemorates the location of where a bomb dropped in WWII. The choir stalls or quire as they called it had some beautiful carvings. Very ornate and detailed carvings and, as I learned later, I missed the most unusual carvings. Each choir stall has a tilt up seat called a misericord and on the underside of these seats are more beautiful carvings of all sorts of scenes - not all religious but all quite detailed and exotic. So that means another trip to see these.
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| Gandhi outside Manchester Cathedral |
Outside the church is an area of medieval buildings - a pub, a restaurant, etc. There was the Hanging Bridge Chambers - apparently nothing to do with hanging people. A statue of Gandhi that has only recently been added. Gandhi visited Manchester to explain to the mill workers why he was proposing a boycott of English textiles, which was something that affected the people here. Apparently there were people here who objected to erecting a statue to him because of his record for intolerance of black people that was not entirely good.
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| The Coop |
Next to the Cathedral is Chetham’s Library, an old library that is supposed to be quite fine but alas closed at the weekend. Then there is the Manchester Arena; the site of the bombing at the Ariana Grande concert a couple of years ago. Then a fine facade to an old Cooperative Wholesale Society office building. Everyone shopped at the Coop when I was young.
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| John Rylands Library |
I walked down Deansgate, one of the main thoroughfares through the city. Old shops with lovely facades and then you come to the John Rylands Library. A magnificent neo-gothic building that was built by an Enriqueta Rylands to honor her late husband John. She was from Cuba and had sugar plantation money, he was a mill owner and quite wealthy. When he died he was predeceased by all 7 of his children so Enriqueta inherited everything. She built this amazing library which aside from being an architectural masterpiece also contains an impressive collection of early books.
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| John Rylands Library Interior |
The library is open to the public and it is truly amazing. The detail in the stone carvings, stained glass and wooden bookcases is a wonder to behold. The toilets are also the original Victorian conveniences and they still work.
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| Albert Square and the Town Hall |
The Town Hall sits on nearby Albert Square and it is an impressive building too. Closed for renovation at the moment but it has a wonderful exterior. Albert Square has a statue of Prince Albert of course along with some other notables, Gladstone being the only one I recognize.
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| L.S. Lowry in the Manchester Art Museum |
Adjacent to the Town Hall is the Manchester Art Museum. A free gallery with some nice paintings. Lots of 18th Century stuff and a little from the 20th. Most notable for me is the collection of L.S. Lowry pictures. Since I was young I have always liked his industrial city landscapes and here were many of my favorites. In the same room were paintings by Pierre Valette, a French artist who came to Manchester and who was a teacher to Lowry. I like his gloomy, foggy, smoky, northern city scenes too.
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| Frederick Engels Statue |
Walking further south I went to see the statue of Friedrich Engels that has recently been erected or rather re-erected as it was retrieved from the Ukraine where it originally stood. Not all were happy to see Engels commemorated in Manchester as they feel he is the reason that so many people suffered and died under the Communist heel. Engels dad owned factories in Manchester and though Engels was born in Germany he came to work at his father’s factories and it was there along with Karl Marx that he formulated his ideas for their Communist philosophy. Apparently conditions in his dad’s factories were not so great. Manchester in some respects could be considered the birthplace of Communism.
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| The Rochdale Canal |
I then walked along the towpath of the Rochdale Canal. There are quite a few canals and waterways crossing the city as canals of course were the means of transporting goods when the mills were in their ascendancy.
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| Alan Turing Statue |
In Sackville Gardens there is a statue of Alan Turing sitting on a park bench. It is nice to see him commemorated. After cracking the Enigma Code he moved to Manchester University after the war and it was there he was outed as a homosexual and suffered so much torment. It was in Manchester that he died, most likely a suicide.
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By then I had done a lot of miles and seen most of the places I wanted to see around the city center (I didn’t need to go to the National Football Museum). I continued to walk around what is known as the Northern Quarter in search of murals. There were quite a few nice ones. I do enjoy exploring a city to find these pieces of art. The city has a lot of restaurants, coffee shops, bars and pubs. It is an interesting mix of hip and trendy places alongside shabby scruffy old places. Not sure I would like to live there though it has become quite popular these days.
At the end of the day I find myself at the Arndale Shopping Center so what better thing to do than get another latte and a bite to eat at M and S. Always reliably good.
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| Anthony Burgess Mural |
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