Blog City Manchester Cottonopolis

The remarkable rise of Manchester began around the end of the 19th Century, when what was then a small market town began to grow at an astonishing rate, quickly expanding to become the world's leading industrial centre and a pioneer in science and technology. 400 years ago Manchester was a small but bustling market town where traders from all over Lancashire brought their wool for trading. It was in the 1720s when canals linking Manchester to the port of Liverpool opened Manchester and her wool up to the world. These canals forged the famous partnership between the two cities that sling-shotted northwest England to global industrial dominance. The beginning of cotton imports in the late 1700s revolutionized the textile industry around Manchester. Soon water-powered cotton mills sprang up in the hills and valleys around the growing city, and not long after these same mills led the way by transitioning to vastly more powerful steam engines. People from the countryside flocked to Manchester and its surroundings in search of opportunity, along with tens of thousands of Irish fleeing the potato famine of the 1840s. These new immigrants caused the city's population to explode, rapidly outstripping the city's ability to feed and house the new entrants. Many thousands were forced to live in squalid sllums, enduring unbelievably harsh working conditions. At the same time the city prospered and commissioned fantastic examples of Victorian architecture, sucsh as the Corn Exchange, the Central Library, the Town Hall and the Halle Orchestra. Investments in education, philanthrophy and cultural pursuits made late 19th Century Manchester one of the most cosmopolitan cities in the world with a rich intellectual life. The Great Depression slammed the city's economy and Manchester's enormous aircraft factory made the city a target for German bombs. The damage from these events, along with economic competition from abroad, caused a major decline in the city's fortunes that led to high unemployment and depressingly common urban blight. Economic diversification since the 1990s has allowed the city to bounce back. Manchester is now a cultural powerhouse: Man United and Coronation Street are household names around the globe. The city centre's built environment has been transformed by ambitious new building projects too, many of which you'll see in these photos. The Then photos are courtesty of the Manchester City Council Local Image Collection. I took the Now photos in April 2015.

Then and Now Photos