More than 10 years of Jan – Dec 2020 expert, enlightening and entertaining tours in and around

POLITICS MUSIC

ART STYLE

HEROES HEROINES Welcome to Manchester, the capital of THE MAIN SIGHTS the North, the world’s first industrial city – These are the most magnificent and visited Manchester the industrial strength city. We at New buildings, linked with our regular tours, perfect for the WI, Manchester Walks have developed a unique Probus, U3A, private groups, social clubs, history groups... and remarkable range of tours covering CENTRAL LIBRARY Outside it resembles Rome’s Pantheon. The heart of mediaeval Manchester every aspect of local history. Inside there are touches of St Peter’s Basilica. and an ancient place of worship. All around is Britain’s biggest public book Monthly tours, mostly midweek, collection and a heroes’ gallery of the city. in conjunction with Chetham’s Regular tours; particularly popular with PRIVATE TOURS COACH TRIPS private groups Okay, it’s closed for vital repairs for a few Book any tour, any time, for your WI, Book an exhilarating and expertly CHETHAM’S LIBRARY AND SCHOOL years, but Ed Glinert’s Town Hall book is Probus, U3A group, social club, history entertaining tour for your group, club, Ancient 15th century cloisters and corners the next best thing. society... office or society. of a former college of priests that now hosts Europe’s oldest library and was ROYAL EXCHANGE • Panoramic Manchester where Marx & Engels planned communism. It was the world’s biggest trading room, INFORMATION • The Beatles’ Liverpool Monthly tours, mostly midweek, in where top-hatted Victorian gentlemen • Coronation Street locations New Manchester Walks is an official walks, conjunction with the Cathedral staged cotton deals and where now the • Wild and Wuthering Yorkshire talks and tours outfit of professionally- nation’s finest thespians trade lines. • Football landmarks of Manchester trained and qualified Blue Badge and Green JOHN RYLANDS LIBRARY Included on various tours: Cotton, John Badge guides (plus celebrity guests) with Glorious Gothic architecture, holy texts and Rylands Library, and The 7 Wonders of decades of experience in the tourism TALKS priceless artefacts fill one of the world’s Manchester. business in Manchester, Liverpool, London most awe-inspiring palaces of culture and and around the world. Book a speaker for a talk on all aspects of greatest libraries, built out of the love of ST ANN’S CHURCH Manchester or London history: architecture, a wealthy widow for Manchester’s most Manchester’s only city centre Georgian Most walks cost little more than £10. Marx & Engels in Manchester, the Town successful 19th century merchant. church features stunning stained glass Where possible please book on eventbrite Hall Murals, Jack the Ripper, L. S. Lowry, Monthly tours windows and magnificent memorials to avoid disappointment as many of our Peterloo, industry and inventions, the salvaged from long lost places of worship. tours are now so popular. Walks tend to Pankhursts, royal scandal down the ages... Included on the John Rylands Library tour, last up to two hours. Canal and countryside We do talks at , Gorton One of the greatest collections of the Great Art Treasures and the 7 Wonders walks are usually longer. Monastery, Central Library, the St James’s Pre-Raphaelites’ paintings housed in of Manchester. Club and at a variety of hired venues. Charles Barry’s Classical-styled former The leaflet has been compiled by Ed Glinert, Contact Ed Glinert at New Manchester gentlemen’s club. long-established Manchester, Liverpool Walks for more details. Featured in “The Great Art Treasures and London journalist, tour guide, cruise of Manchester”, the Pre-Raphaelites, ships speaker and Penguin author. Lowry and Valette tours Central Library’s Reading Room, WEATHER modelled on Rome’s Pantheon Many of our tours are picture led. It all adds No one wants to walk around in torrential to the experience. rain. Occasionally it might not be possible to conduct a tour through inclement Most city walks are wheelchair weather. If in doubt, please see website accessible. before setting off. LAST MINUTE CHECKS

Please see website for dates and book with eventbrite, where possible, but do check the website before setting off.

www.newmanchesterwalks.com [email protected] Twitter: @manchestertours Facebook: /newmanchesterwalks 07769 298 068 THE MAIN SIGHTS ARCHITECTURE

Classical styled temples, Gothic spires, Italianate palazzi, baroque banks and modernist towers. But did you know, so many major Manchester buildings were deliberately designed to look like an existing European or American structure? The Town Hall as Ypres Cloth Hall; The Free Trade Hall, the Palazzo della Gran Guardia; City Tower, the United Nations Building... all explained in the tours listed below.

LE CORBUSIER’S MANCHESTER MANCHESTER’S MOST The most influential architect of the BEAUTIFUL BUILDINGS 20th century never came to Manchester but his influence is everywhere. MASTERPIECES OF MANCHESTER ART & ARCHITECTURE MANCHESTER’S GLORIOUS Manchester is one of the great Victorian VICTORIAN ARCHITECTURE cities, a riot of stone in Classical, Italianate, Gothic and Baroque.

ART

The Lake (1937), L. S. Lowry

Clockwise from top: Rylands Library, Manchester and Salford captured in all their industrial Royal Exchange glory by L. S. Lowry, and in strange subdued colourings Theatre, Manchester Cathedral and of mauves and Turneresque greens by the great French Chetham’s Library impressionist Adolphe Valette. This is the of an unrivalled collection of Pre-Raphaelites and the greatest new British religious paintings of the 20th century.

ADOLPHE VALETTE THE PRE-RAPHAELITES A Frenchman in Manchester left an Britain’s greatest ever art movement gave unforgettable impression of the city. us the epic Work, the gorgeous Light of the World, the disturbing Scapegoat and the L. S. LOWRY’S LONELY LIFE sumptuous Autumn Leaves. Discover the Spurned, snubbed and sniggered at, stories behind the paintings on this tour. Laurence Stephen Lowry (1887–1976) became Britain’s most famous and best-loved 20th century painter, whose works sell for millions. FOOTBALL HISTORY ALIVE!

FOOTBALL BABYLON MATT BUSBY Bungs, Booze, Brawls, Balotelli The Man Who Made Manchester united

FOOTBALL PUB WALK THE STORY OF MANCHESTER UNITED GEORGE BEST’S MANCHESTER The perfect tours for after-work bonding The Good, the Bad and the Bubbly

THE 1996 IRA BOMB IRISH MANCHESTER The city blasted but not beaten. And if you Best, Behan, Mick Collins, Dublin Phil, thought that pillar box is the one that Eamon de Valera, home rule, the survived the bomb... 15 June 1996 revisited Manchester Martyrs and a whiff of the Waxie’s Dargle. CORONATION STREET LOCATIONS During the Irish Festival An all-day excursion into deepest Weatherfield by tram (not the one that JEWISH MANCHESTER fell into the bistro). Tour led by legendary Two walks chosen for the chosen people, guide Willie Eckerslike looking for traces of the old Jewish Ghetto, including synagogues that are now FORMIDABLE WOMEN OF (non-kosher) shops and the bacon-curing MANCHESTER factory alongside Torah Street (yes, really). Deeds, not Words From the tarot-obsessed tea heiress to the ROMAN MANCHESTER Lord Mayor that solved the rubik’s cube, via They came, they saw, they conquered. all those Pankhursts, the leader of the Jarrow They brought us the clever notion of reading A City United marchers, and the writer who dissed Dickens. and writing, a new religion (worship of the Regular tours, mostly weekday evenings God Mithras), straight roads and lasagne. And we can now see the only authentic GANGLAND MANCHESTER Roman remains! “You’re nicked, sunshine” Beware the Ides of March and all those In the sun-starved shadows and cold corners other months where the streets have no names and angels fear to tread there is another Manchester, SLAVERY a grim, grey, gritty city where the long arm 12 years a slave? 120 years a slavery- of the law doesn’t always reach. supporting city... until a social conscience took over. Hull gets all the credit, but HIDDEN GEMS OF MANCHESTER Manchester had the biggest section of Jewels in the Crown the petition that went to Parliament to You never knew there were there such abolish slavery. treasures to behold. On October International Anti-Slavery Day Regular midweek tours SOUTHERN CEMETERY THE HISTORY OF of Europe’s largest cemeteries is the IN 20 OBJECTS final resting place of L. S. Lowry, Matt From the so-called “Berlin Wall” to the Busby, , John Rylands and the wrongly-called “IRA” pillar box. forgotten victim of the Munich Air Disaster. Monthly tours LITERARY MANCHESTER and beyond PLACES

Tours covering every aspect of the city’s literary history, ANCOATS KNUTSFORD The world’s first industrial suburb, a factory It’s classy Cranford in Chi-Chi Cheshire. featuring the Brontes, Anthony Burgess, Lord Byron, hoot from the city centre, was home to some It’s the home town of Mrs Gaskell. It’s De Quincey, Dickens, Gaskell, Ted Hughes, Shakespeare, of the world’s oldest mechanised mills, now Tatton, General Patton and the maddest modern workshops, smart apartments and architecture in the North-West. Shelley and Howard Spring. beard-friendly bars. Regular tours, including magical night LIVERPOOL Especially during October, the month of the Manchester Literature Festival time strolls We have created a series of unique and ingenious tours that go beyond John, Paul, ’S MANCHESTER ELIZABETH GASKELL’S MANCHESTER ANGEL MEADOW George and Ringo. You’ll never walk alone. Hard Times She wrote the first great Manchester novel, The seediest and slummiest 19th century 2020 marks the 150th anniversary of the Mary Barton, using a bizarre pseudonym Manchester rookery, infested with cholera NORTHERN QUARTER great author’s death. Look out for our and then fled to London. Tour includes visit and criminals, described by Friedrich Engels Streets named in Mediterranean tiles, events in Manchester and London. to her restored house. as “hell on earth”. Nice. pavements slabbed in mosaic, cult markets Monthly tours and cardamom-scented curry cafes. Boho TED HUGHES COUNTRY WILD, WINDY AND Manchester, cool Manchester, modish We recall the elemental, visceral verse WUTHERING HAWORTH CASTLEFIELD Manchester. It’s old Manchester renewed of late 20th century poet laureate at his Relive the terror and torment of Wuthering The Roman birthplace of Manchester and modish Manchester refreshed. It’s Yorkshire haunts. Heights amid the melancholy of the became a centre of new industry in good, it’s modern. Brontes’ lives. the 18th century and has now been spectacularly revived. SALFORD Dirty old town to some or the “real North” DIDSBURY to others, the Crescent City is packed with MUSIC It’s Posh Down South stories of rogues and rough diamonds, Manchester’s most sumptuous suburb religious zealots, reformers, radicals and hides many a tantalising tale. revolutionaries. Manchester is the city that gave the world some of its greatest groups: The Fall, New Order, , Buzzcocks, Joy Division, Happy Mondays, Oasis... POLITICS

IAN CURTIS’S MANCHESTER MARK E. SMITH’S MANCHESTER There’s left wing. There’s right wing. There’s New JOHN COOPER CLARKE THE SMITHS Manchester Walks’s political tours. Our inside tours of The Beat and Bard of Salford From the Moors Murders to Meat Is Murder the People’s History Museum bring hundreds of years MANCHESTER IN 12 SONGS We host regular music tours covering every of history alive. From “Bus Stop” to “God’s Cop” aspect of the city’s amplified heritage – and we play the sounds at carefully chosen MARX & ENGELS IN MANCHESTER MANCHESTER MUSIC: locations By day they were Victorian gentlemen with 16 August 1819: some 60,000 local people THE HACIENDA YEARS sedentary lifestyles and smart boots. By were attacked by the military at a political night they were rabid radicals roaming the demonstration. Within minutes a dozen streets with revolutionary fervour. Follow in were dead and hundreds injured. We host a Marx’s and Engels’ footsteps through the series of walks covering every aspect of one same hell-holes and high-spots. of the defining moments of English history.

PANKHURSTS/SUFFRAGETTE CITY Time magazine named Emmeline Pankhurst, the Moss Side-born Suffragette leader, as one of the 100 Most Important People of the 20th century. Walk in her Manchester footsteps. PUB WALKS WATER

THE INTELLECTUAL PUB CRAWL CANAL CRUISE IN SEARCH OF THE Ever fancied having a pint while discussing Take to the water as we cruise from Wittgenstein’s principles of psychologism? Castlefield along the Bridgewater Canal, No, nor do we. Your round. through Pomona Lock into the Manchester LOST RIVERS OF Ship Canal and up to the Quays. MANCHESTER LITERARY MANCHESTER PUB TOUR Private bookings for groups only It was the best of pints, it was the worst of MAPPING THE MEDLOCK pints. So begins Charles Dickens’s classic GRAND CANALS OF MANCHESTER The River that Manchester Forgot drinking novel, An Ale of Two Cities. Towpaths and Tunnels, Capstans and Cuttings SALFORD QUAYS MARX & ENGELS PUB WALK Through the old industrial heartlands Huge docks which once harboured the What ever happened to Leon Trotsky? Well (east) to Sportcity and its state of the art world’s ocean-going liners. Gleaming he never came to Manchester, but Marx stadiums or west to radically regenerated museums of the modern age. A world and Engels did, and boy did they like a drop. Castlefield on our tours of towpath tales famous canal, as deep as Suez, as powerful and lockside lore. as the Panama. Here a new city – Media OLD SALFORD’S SPIT AND City – has risen, a city of glass, steel and SAWDUST PUBS burnished metal, bold and brilliant. Quick, get the beers in before the Media City types turn up!

SCIENCE & INDUSTRY WEIRD & WONDERFUL

Manchester was the world’s first industrial city. (Keep quiet, CHILLING TALES FROM THE MANCHESTER GRAVEYARDS Birmingham). It was also where atomic theory was devised, Tragic deaths, accidental deaths, hoax the atom first split, the computer invented and graphene deaths, bloody deaths, death by shooting, murders, assassinations, instant death, isolated. Discover the appliance of science on tours featuring unexplained deaths, slow tortuous death, Alan Turing, John Dalton and the atom bomb (not literally). decapitations and hangings. Watch out for the graverobbers! ALAN TURING COTTON: THE CLOTH THAT HELL IS A CITY He broke the Nazis’ Enigma code, almost CUT MANCHESTER Savile, Brady, Hindley, Shipman, the Ripper, invented the computer, and was persecuted It grows in the American Deep South, was Hangman Pierrepoint & some really bad folk. to a painful suicide by the ungrateful authorities. shipped to the North-West and spun in

A tortured genius and modern martyr. the mills before being packed and pressed, HITLER’S PLANS FOR MANCHESTER Regular weekend tours shown off in palatial warehouses and Swastika banners on the Town Hall, turned into clothes to dress the world. jackbooted thugs “cleaning” the streets, Cotton’s legacy can be found across SSGB – it nearly happened. Manchester, from the Town Hall, topped by a golden cotton boll, to the Royal Exchange STRANGEWAYS NO ESCAPE! where cotton merchants traded in the No Escape! world’s biggest room. The dodgy prison, the edgy streets. THE WORLD’S FIRST RAILWAY UNDERGROUND MANCHESTER – Adventures on the Wheels of Steel DON’T MENTION THE WAR 15 September 1830: thousands gather at Manchester about to be Blitzed, invasion the edge of Manchester for the arrival of imminent... let’s take refuge in an air-raid the iron horse bearing the prime minister shelter and when we come up the Yanks and the president of the board of trade. will have brought us oranges and chocolate. What could go wrong? Everything. DID YOU KNOW?

Rolls and Royce never met at the Midland Hotel. Everyone thought they did until Ed Glinert, Manchester’s most energetic historian, did some basic research.

The three stripes on the city’s coat of arms are nothing to do with three rivers.

Thought the pillar box on Corporation Street was the one that survived the IRA bomb? It isn’t.

Thought the council built a shelter to shield the public from atomic bombs? No. It was only for VIPs.

Did you know Manchester was close to being the setting for only the second assassination of a British prime minister?

Did you know The Smiths were named after the people who shopped the Moors Murderers to the police?

Thought the Midland Hotel was free of Russian secret service bugs? Huh.

Thought L. S. Lowry was a kindly avuncular old gent? Not quite.

Did you know the army bomb disposal team was only two seconds away from diffusing the 1996 IRA bomb?

MANCHESTER IS MUSIC CITY – 10 REASONS WHY

10cc – I’m Mandy, Fly Me Buzzcocks – Love You More The Distractions – Time Goes By So Slow Elbow – The Birds The Fall – Ludd Gang Happy Mondays – Bob’s Yer Uncle Joy Division – Interzone New Order – Fine Time Oasis – Morning Glory The Smiths – Half a Person Peter Saville’s ingenious cover for Find out more on our music walks. New Order’s Fine Time