The history of the City of Manchester covers its change from a minor Lancastrian township area into the pre-eminent industrial change of the United Kingdom and the rest of the World. The City of Manchester in Lancashire began expanding at a fast rate around the turn of the 19th century as part of a process of unplanned urbanisation brought on by a boom in the textile manufacturing industry during the Industrial Revolution. The transformation of this City took little more than a century.
Originally evolving from a Roman castrum in Celtic Britain, the City of Manchester was the site of the World's first passenger railway station and also many scientific achievements of great importance. The City of Manchester also led the political and economic reform of 19th century Britain as the vanguard of free trade. The midles of the 20th century saw a decline in Manchester's industrial importance, this prompted a depression in social and economic conditions.
In later years (from the 1990's) new investment, gentrification, and rebranding changed its fortunes, and reinvigorated Manchester as a post industrial city with multiple sporting, broadcasting, and educational institutions.
The Industrial Revolution In Manchester
The City of Manchester remained a small market town until the late 18th century, and the beginning of the Great Industrial Revolution. Some sources define the start of the industrial revolution in Manchester as July 1761 when the Duke of Bridgewater's canal reached Castlefield. The small valleys in the Pennine Hills to the north and east of the town, combined with the damp climate, proved ideal for the construction of water-powered Cotton mills such as Quarry Bank Mill, which started the industrialisation of the spinning and the weaving of cloth.
It is acknowledged that it was the importation of cotton which began towards the end of the eighteenth century that revolutionised the textile industry in the Manchester area. This new commodity was imported through the port of Liverpool which was connected with Manchester by the River Mersey and Irwell Navigation.
The City of Manchester then developed as the natural distribution centre for raw cotton and spun yarn, and a marketplace and distribution centre for the products of this growing textile industry. Richard Arkwright is credited as the first to build and erect a cotton factory mill in the City. His first experiment, installing a steam powered engine to pump water for a waterwheel failed, but he next adapted a Watt engineered steam engine to directly operate the machinery. The result was the rapid spread of cotton mills throughout the City of Manchester itself and also the surrounding towns. To these must be added bleach works, textile print works, and the engineering workshops and foundries, all needed to serve the growing cotton industry. During the mid 19th century the City of Manchester grew to become the centre of Lancashire's cotton industry and was dubbed "Cottonopolis", and a branch of the Bank of England was established during the year of 1826.
Decline Of The Cotton And Textile Trade
During the end of the 19th century, the City of Manchester began to suffer an economic decline in the manufacture of cotton and textiles, partly exacerbated by its reliance on the Trading Port of Liverpool, which was charging excessive dock usage fees. Led by a local industrialist; Daniel Adamson, the Manchester Ship Canal was built as a way to reverse this. It gave the city of Manchester direct access to the sea allowing it to export and move its manufactured goods directly. This meant that it no longer had to rely on the railways and Liverpool's ports for transporation. When it was completed in 1894 it allowed the City of Manchester to become Britain's third busiest port, despite being 40 miles inland. The Manchester Ship Canal was created by canalising the Rivers Irwell and River Mersey for 36 miles from Salford to the Mersey estuary at the port of Liverpool. This enabled ocean going ships to sail right into the Port of Manchester Docks (technically in Salford). The docks functioned until the 1970s when their closure led to a large increase in unemployment in the Manchester area.
An area that was named Trafford Park (in Stretford) was the World's first industrial estate and still exists today, though with a significant tourist and recreational presence. Manchester suffered greatly from the inter-war depression and the underlying structural changes that began to supplant the old factory type industries including textile manufacturing.
Information on Manchester Machinery Moving Transporation
