Manchester: Always Ahead of the Game

Category: Heritage & Days Out, Museums, Exhibitions.

A city of social reformers, liberal thinkers and visionaries, where grand Victorian architecture stands alongside tall, sleek monuments of the 21st century. Where great wealth that came with industrial success grew up hand in hand with social responsibility and patronage of the arts, creating the cultural legacy that we all enjoy today. And if today's Manchester is more fashion and football than cotton and canals, that same spirit lives on.

"There have always been ideas worth fighting for", People's History Museum

Beyond the grand, gleaming engines and textile machinery of the Museum of Science and Industry - MOSI - are the stories of the Manchester people who, each in their own ways, have changed the world. Great scientists and engineers - inventors to whom nothing seemed impossible and who created a world capable of factory production, of computer technology, of ever quicker transport, of medical 'miracles'. And as if to prove that in Manchester the sky's the limit, within the museum you can stand on the platform of the world's first passenger railway station and look up to Beetham Tower, the tallest residential skyscraper in Europe and a potent symbol that this is truly a city of innovation - after all, Manchester University is home to more than its fair share of Nobel Prize winners.

Nearby, beautiful trade union and society banners fill the People's History Museum, every one of them a real, dazzling work of art, along with campaigning posters, satirical political posters and cartoons. From Industrial Revolution, the Peterloo Massacre, women's suffrage and the Welfare State to gay rights, anti-nuclear and anti-war campaigns - these are colourful stories, colourfully told.

Between the two museums, the magnificent John Rylands Library stands at the heart of the new Spinningfields area of Manchester - sleek, prosperous, businesslike. Visit the Royal Exchange Theatre - the largest room in the world when it was rebuilt in 1874 - and imagine the noise in here in 1921 when the Manchester Exchange controlled almost half the world's cotton production.

The opening of the Manchester Ship Canal may have sealed Manchester's fortunes - and you can cruise along the Ship Canal all the way to Liverpool's Pier Head to understand just how important this waterway was - but it was the earlier canal network that opened up the possibilities. Canals weave in and out of Manchester to this day and provide a lovely leisure route through the city whether you are on the water, on bikes or on foot. Explore the canal system on a narrow boat trip from the Portland Basin Museum on the junction of the Ashton Canal and Peak Forest Canal. The stories of Industrial Revolution continue at Salford Museum and Bolton Museum. Hat Works tells Stockport's fascinating side of the textile story - and explains why the local football club is known as the Hatters! A steam train ride from Bury on the East Lancashire Railway line will take you straight to the heart of Lancashire's textile heritage that was so important to Manchester's prosperity.

This feature has been provided by Modern History,
a guide to events and attractions that celebrate the Northwest's industrial heritage.