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Manchester is a city and metropolitan borough in North West England, at the centre of the eponymous county of Greater Manchester. It had a population of over 589,000 in 2024. It borders the Cheshire Plain to the south, the Pennines to the north and east, and the city of Salford to the west. The two cities and the surrounding towns form one of the United Kingdom's most populous conurbations, the Greater Manchester Built-up Area, which has a population of 2.87 million.
The history of Manchester began with the civilian settlement associated with the Roman fort of Mamucium or Mancunium, established around AD 79 on a sandstone bluff near the confluence of the rivers Medlock and Irwell. Historically part of Lancashire, areas of Cheshire south of the River Mersey were incorporated into Manchester in the 20th century. Throughout the Middle Ages Manchester remained a manorial township, but began to expand significantly with a boom in textile manufacture during the Industrial Revolution, which resulted in it becoming the world's first industrialised city. Manchester attained city status in 1853. The Manchester Ship Canal opened in 1894, creating the Port of Manchester and linking the city to the Irish Sea, 36 miles (58 km) to the west. Its fortune declined after the Second World War, owing to deindustrialisation, and the 1996 Manchester bombing led to extensive investment and regeneration.
Following considerable redevelopment, Manchester was the host city for the 2002 Commonwealth Games. The city is notable for its architecture, musical exports, links to media, links to science and engineering, sports clubs and its transport connections.
The name Manchester originates from Mamucium, the Latin name for the city, or its variant Mancunio; its citizens are still referred to as Mancunians. These names are generally thought to represent a Latinised version of an older Brittonic name. It is generally accepted that the etymology of the Brittonic name is from *mamm-, which means 'breast', in reference to a breast-shaped hill on which the city was built. More recent research suggests that the name could have instead come from the Brittonic *mamma, which means 'mother', in reference to a local river goddess. The suffix -chester is from Old English ceaster ('Roman fortification', itself a loanword from Latin castrum, 'fort; fortified town'), and was first used after the end of Roman rule in Britain to describe places with former links to the Roman army.
Nicknames for the city that originated from its role in the Industrial Revolution include "warehouse city" and "cottonopolis". The city is widely known as 'the capital of the North' and is part of an ongoing dispute with the larger city of Birmingham to be the unofficial second city of the United Kingdom. The city is also infrequently referred to as 'Manny', especially by non-Mancunians, which is considered offensive by some residents. The phrase was particularly popularised by rapper Bugzy Malone's use of the phrase "putting Manny on the map".
Although the name Manchester only officially applies to the metropolitan borough within the metropolitan county of Greater Manchester, it has been informally applied to various other areas over the years; examples include the "Manchester City Zone", "Manchester post town", and the "Manchester Congestion Charge", none of which simply cover the official confines of the city: the Manchester City zone only includes a handful of stations in the city centre; the Manchester Post town covers Manchester, Sale, and Salford; and the proposed boundary of the Manchester congestion charge was the M60, not the city itself.
The first major Celtic tribe in what is now Northern England were the Brigantes; they had a stronghold in the locality at a sandstone outcrop on which Manchester Cathedral now stands, opposite the River Irwell. Their territory extended across the fertile lowland of what is now Salford and Stretford. In 79 AD, following their conquest of Britain, the Roman general Agricola ordered the construction of a fort named Mamucium to protect Roman interests in Deva Victrix (now Chester) and Eboracum (now York). Central Manchester has remained a continuously populated settlement since.
Fragments of the Mamucium fort remain visible in Castlefield. The Roman habitation of Manchester probably ended around the 3rd century; its civilian settlement appears to have been abandoned by the mid-3rd century, although the fort may have supported a small garrison until the late 3rd or early 4th century. The fort was first investigated by archaeologists in 1906, and opened to the public in 1984.
After the Roman withdrawal and subsequent Anglo-Saxon settlement, the centre of the town moved to the confluence of the rivers Irwell and Irk. In the Normans' Harrying of the North, much of the area surrounding Manchester was laid waste. The Domesday Book (1086) records Manchester within the hundred of Salford and held as tenant in chief by a Norman named Roger of Poitou. The town was later held by the Grelley family, who were the lords of the manor and residents of Manchester Castle. By 1421, Thomas de la Warre had founded a collegiate church for the parish, which would later become Manchester Cathedral; other church buildings have since become Chetham's School of Music and Chetham's Library. The latter opened in 1653 and remains open to the public, the oldest free public reference library in the UK.
Manchester is recorded as a market in 1282. Around the 14th century, Manchester received an influx of Flemish weavers, which has sometimes been credited as the foundation of the region's textile industry. The town became an important centre for the manufacture and trade of woollens and linen, and by 1540 had expanded to become, in the words of John Leland, "the fairest, best builded, quickest, and most populous town of all Lancashire". The cathedral and Chetham's buildings are the only prominent survivors from that period.
During the English Civil War, Manchester strongly favoured the Parliamentarians who were led by Oliver Cromwell. He gave the town the right to elect its Member of Parliament; Charles Worsley was so elected and appointed as Major-General for Lancashire, Cheshire and Staffordshire during the Rule of the Major-Generals. A diligent puritan, he shut down ale houses in the town and banned the celebration of Christmas.
Large quantities of cotton were used after about 1600, firstly in linen and cotton fustians; by around 1750, pure cotton fabrics were produced and cotton had overtaken wool in importance. The Irwell and Mersey were made navigable by 1736, opening a route from Manchester to the sea docks on the Mersey. The Bridgewater Canal, Britain's first wholly artificial waterway, opened in 1761, bringing coal from mines at Worsley to central Manchester. The canal was extended to the Mersey by 1776. The combination of competition and improved efficiency halved the cost of coal and the transport cost of raw cotton. Manchester became the dominant marketplace for textiles produced in the surrounding towns. A commodities exchange, opened in 1729, and numerous large warehouses aided commerce. In 1780, Richard Arkwright began construction of Manchester's first cotton mill. Manchester exported its cotton goods to Africa as a way of paying for slaves to be purchased for the transatlantic slave trade; this supply line to Africa and its reliance on the British Empire supported Manchester's population and economic growth.
Manchester was one of the centres of textile manufacture during the Industrial Revolution. The majority of cotton spinning took place in the towns of south Lancashire and north Cheshire, and Manchester was for a time the most productive centre of cotton processing. This caused the rapid expansion of the town that would lead to it becoming the world's first industrialised city. Manchester also became known as the world's largest marketplace for cotton goods; it was dubbed "Cottonopolis" and "Warehouse City" during the Victorian era. Brought on by the Industrial Revolution, there was rapid, unplanned urban expansion of Manchester at the turn of the 19th century. Engineering firms made machines for the cotton trade, then diversified into general manufacture. The chemical industry started by producing bleaches and dyes, but expanded into other areas. Commerce was supported by financial service industries such as banking and insurance. In 1803, John Dalton formulated his atomic theory while teaching in the city.
Manchester was the scene of bread and labour riots, as well as calls for greater political recognition by the city's working class. On 16 August 1819, large crowds protested in St Peter's Square, Manchester; estimates of the crowd range between 30,000–150,000 contemporaneously and 50,000–80,000 by modern critics. When ordered to disperse the peaceful crowd, the soldiers charged them on horseback, killing at least 18 and injuring more than 700 in the Peterloo Massacre.
The political landscape of early industrial Manchester contained capitalist and communist schools of thought. The city was the home of Manchester Liberalism, and the centre of the Anti-Corn Law League after 1838. The city is the subject of Friedrich Engels's work The Condition of the Working Class in England in 1844, as Engels spent much of his life in and around Manchester and met with Karl Marx at Chetham's Library. The first Trades Union Congress was held at the Mechanics' Institute, Manchester in 1868 and Manchester was an important centre of the Labour Party, the Suffragette Movement, and the Chartist Movement.
Trade, and feeding the growing population, required a large transport and distribution infrastructure: the canal system was extended, and Manchester became one end of the world's first intercity passenger railway – the Liverpool and Manchester Railway – in 1830. The number of cotton mills in Manchester peaked at 108 in 1853; afterwards, the number declined and Manchester was surpassed as the largest centre of cotton spinning by Bolton by the 1850s and Oldham by the 1860s. This period of decline coincided with the rise of the city as the financial centre of the region. In 1878 the General Post Office (the forerunner of British Telecom) provided its first telephones to a firm in Manchester.
New industrial processes were developed in the city, and the city had become known for its experimental ways of thinking: the Manchester School promoted free trade and laissez-faire, there was the advent of new classes or groups in society and new religious sects, and the city was experimenting with new forms of labour organisation. The period saw the construction of some of its finest public buildings, including Manchester Town Hall. It also enjoyed a vibrant culture, which included the Hallé Orchestra. In 1889, when county councils were created in England, the municipal borough became a county borough, giving it greater autonomy. Manchester was also a site of widespread poverty and squalor, with economic extremes on display throughout the city.
The Manchester Ship Canal was built between 1888 and 1894, in some sections by canalisation of the Rivers Irwell and Mersey, running 36 miles (58 km) from Salford to Eastham Locks on the tidal Mersey. This enabled oceangoing ships to sail into the Port of Manchester. On the canal's banks, just outside the borough, the world's first industrial estate was created at Trafford Park.
Manchester continued to process cotton, constituting 65% of the world's production in 1913. The First World War interrupted access to the export markets; combined with increased cotton processing in other parts of the world, this led to the rapid decline of the city's textile industry. Industry and employment suffered during the Great Depression, particularly due to its effect on the value of British exports. Manchester also saw a cultural revolution in the 1930s as locals tried greater creativity and local pride to counteract the effect of the status of the economy; this included the first formation of the British High Street, and embarking on infrastructure projects such as the Manchester Central Library.
Manchester mobilised during the Second World War: casting and machining expertise at Beyer, Peacock & Company's locomotive works in Gorton was switched to bomb making, and Dunlop's rubber works in Chorlton-on-Medlock made barrage balloons. Manchester was the target of bombing by the Luftwaffe, and by late 1940 air raids were taking place against non-military targets.
The biggest air raids on the city during the war took place during the Manchester Blitz on the nights of 22–23 and 24–25 December 1940, when an estimated 474 tonnes (467 long tons) of high explosives and over 37,000 incendiary bombs were dropped. Much of the historic city centre was destroyed, including 165 warehouses, 200 business premises, and 150 offices. 376 were killed and 30,000 houses were damaged. Manchester Cathedral, Royal Exchange and Free Trade Hall were among the buildings seriously damaged, with the restoration of the cathedral taking 20 years. 589 civilians were recorded to have died as a result of enemy action within the Manchester County Borough.
Text from the Wikipedia article “Manchester”, available under CC BY-SA 4.0.