Manchester continued

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Manchester continued.

Wednesday.

A walking along the canal day. We particularly wanted to see an area of Manchester along the Irwell river as Alison’s family history studies had thrown up a relative who lost a sister drowned in the “Emma” disaster of 1828. This was a large boat with 200 people on board for the launch ceremony when it capsized, drowning about 47. There are some fascinating news reports of tragedy and heroism from witnesses at the time. It is also the site of the New Baily courts and prison from which Alison’s 2x great grandfather was transported to Van Diemens Land.

We started at The Lowry complex at Salford. A large theatre, shopping complex and media studio area with grand modern buildings and large open spaces beside the quays. Much of the riverside area has been redeveloped as up market industrial, head office and media city studio buildings. Most with lots of public space. Further in to Manchester we came across the New Baily development with a huge amount of building work for residential and commercial space.

A real developing city is Manchester. The crane count is enormous. Still a lot of preserved cotton warehouses, often converted to residential or offices. Quite a lot of universities and specialist colleges. We were particularly impressed as there are carefully preserved areas of “dark satanic mills” but this is a vibrant modern city with a rich industrial heritage.

Thursday

Our final day in Manchester. Still on the family history theme we went out to the enormous southern cemetery. We had a section and grave number we were looking for so, when we enquired at the office, the manager took us out to the non- conformist area and quickly found our particular plot. It was in an area that was the oldest part of the cemetery (1881) that had been left for wildlife conservation purpose, however as soon as our plot was found the manager called up gardeners to trim back the long grass and scrub up the inscription.

Still having some time left on our bus tickets we rode back into the city for the John Rylands library. A beautiful gothic style library with a reading hall and an enormous collection of books and manuscripts of all sorts. Starting with the earliest known cuneiform texts and working forward from there.

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