Manchester Walking Tour

My only notable activity this afternoon was to go on a two-and-a-half-hour Manchester Walking Tour.

I didn’t return to my hotel between visiting the Manchester Cathedral and the Manchester Jewish Museum in the morning and going on the walking tour in the afternoon.

When I started the morning, the sun was shining and there were only a few scattered light clouds in the sky. The forecast said there was a chance of rain in the afternoon, but it assigned a low probability to it and suggested there wouldn’t be much rain, if any.

I set out with my light rain jacket, but left my umbrella at the hotel. The latter part was a mistake.

I found a Pret A Manger near the meeting point for the Manchester Walking Tour I’d booked. (Don’t blame me for the absence of accents over the e of prêt and the à. That’s how the company writes it on their signs and website.)

There, I had a nice sandwich and a refreshingly flavoured water. (When she has had a chance to read this post, a regular reader of this journal will know which of the Pret waters it was, as she recently introduced me to it. Thanks for that.)

It was sunny when I went into Pret. I spent less than twenty minutes inside. But by the time I left, it was raining steadily and moderately heavily.

I dashed to the starting point of the Manchester Walking Tour, taking cover under trees and overhangs wherever I could.

The starting point was in front of Manchester’s Central Library. Fortunately, the library has a generous overhang in front. I waited there for a couple of minutes until the guide arrived and made his presence known.

I’m going to call the guide Gareth because that’s what I remember. However, I suspect I misheard him. And it’s likely I misremembered what I thought I heard. I’d probably remember if it was something like Zeus, but it very well could be anything else. But let’s go with Gareth, shall we?

Gareth did the introductions and gave his spiel about the immediate area from under that overhang. It was still raining when we pushed on, but it had lessened and didn’t last long. It rained again a couple of times on the tour, but neither rain was heavy nor lasted long.

The Obligatory Apology

At the start of the Manchester Walking Tour, Gareth asked us all to say where we were from. There were seven customers, including me. I was the only Canadian. There was a couple from a town nearby, a man from India (he didn’t say where in India), a woman from Berlin, Germany, and a couple from Denver, Colorado.

I tried, and I think succeeded, in keeping my expression neutral when I heard there was a couple from the United States. But in my head, I was rolling my eyes and thinking, “Oh, god. Are they that type of Americans? Or are they that type of Americans?”

Gareth stopped at a few points to give a spiel on what we were seeing in front of us or in the immediate area. As we were walking from our second to third stop along the way, the woman from the American couple walked up beside me and said, “I need to apologize…”

Before she said another word, an enormous smile broke out on my face. I knew what was coming. This has happened to me a few times upon meeting Americans on the few trips I’ve taken elsewhere since Donald Trump started his second term as president, most notably on a food tour I took in Buenos Aires (you can read about it by clicking on the link).

She then went on to say that she needed to apologize to all Canadians for their president. I thanked her profusely for the apology and told her that my beef is not with all Americans—I think many of them are great—but with her president and his supporters. She then carried the American political discussion a little further, including her discomfort with the current U.S. Supreme Court.

I don’t think Trump supporters travel as much as anti-Trump people because, based on my admittedly limited experience, apologies from Americans to Canadians for Trump seem to be the rule, not the exception.

On the Manchester Walking Tour

Having now been on the Manchester Walking Tour, I get the impression that Manchester is not a city with many famous landmarks. There are several interesting sections and buildings, but no gobsmacking images. That’s a shame, because I didn’t take a lot of pictures on the way.

Gareth provided a wealth of information about those buildings and areas, along with an abundance of information about the city’s history. But without a lot of pictures, I’ve forgotten not just the historical information, but also a lot of the buildings and districts he pointed out.

The upshot is, this post won’t be as long as the Manchester Walking Tour, or at least the one I was on, deserves. That’s particularly true because I didn’t get started typing it up until later, so I’m eager to get it done and go to sleep. I’ll do what I can and say sorry for not writing more. “Sorry for not writing more.” There. I’ve said it.

After providing some history, Gareth talked a bit about the Central Library. It’s a circular building that pays homage to the Pantheon in Rome, closely mirroring its architecture, but with much more modern materials. We didn’t go inside, but Gareth said that, like in the Pantheon, they put an identical hole in the centre of the ceiling. But, unlike in the Pantheon, they put clear glass in the hole rather than leaving it open. He said that the rain we were experiencing is quite common in Manchester. A building with an open hole in the roof wouldn’t be practical.

Yesterday, I mentioned that the highly recommended Manchester Town Hall building that I tried to see is currently completely encased in scaffolding and opaque plastic. Gareth mentioned that. He said that the restoration project was supposed to be completed last year (2024), but is now expected to be finished in 2027. It’s way over budget, and they’re still trying to find more money for it. He suggested that if we wanted to see it, we should come back in 2028, just to be safe.

We then moved on, next, if I remember, to a statue honouring Emmeline Pankhurst, who lived from 1852 to 1928. She was a suffragette. In Pankhurst’s time, women didn’t just not have the right to vote, they were considered to be property of men.

(I got most of this information from Gareth, with the year of her birth and death coming from a picture I took of an engraving in front of the statue. I’m always concerned about whether or not guides know what they’re talking about. And I’m even more worried about my memory. So, be somewhat skeptical of the accuracy of what I write here.)

Pankhurst’s slogan was “Deeds, not words.” At the time, only men who owned property had the right to vote, so she advocated attacking property. She and her followers smashed windows and set fires. They also, I can’t remember if it was set fire to or bombed, 10 Downing Street in London, the Prime Minister’s residence.

She and many of her followers were arrested and jailed. Some went on a hunger strike in jail and were force-fed. Force-feeding typically involved feeding tubes, and some women had their front teeth removed to accommodate those tubes. Some women died from the torturous force-feeding.

Then came the First World War. Many of the men in England were sent off to war. England needed people to do their jobs. Pankhurst went to the government and said that her suffragettes would stop all of their activities and do the jobs formerly done by men who went off to war on the condition that they would get the right to vote, and when they proved they could do those jobs as well as men, they would get to keep them. The government agreed.

After the war, women were indeed given the right to vote, kind of. Men 18 years of age or older could vote. But women couldn’t vote until they turned 30. And women could vote only if they owned property or were married. The government feared that because so many men had died in the war and, consequently, women then greatly outnumbered men, they’d, heaven forbid, take over if their voting wasn’t limited in some way. (As if men had done such a great job at managing the country and most of the world to that point.)

I’ve forgotten when women finally got equal voting rights, without the need to own property or be married.

I’ve probably forgotten one, two, three or more things I didn’t take pictures of, but I do remember that we went on to a memorial honouring the victims of a massacre in the area that occurred as a result of a fight over poverty and the contribution of the corn laws to that poverty in 1819. Eighteen people died, and hundreds were injured. A companion memorial beside it honours the victims of a few other massacres around the world.

At some point, we came to a building known as the Free Trade Hall. It used to be a music venue. Several famous musicians played there. It’s known for a notorious Bob Dylan concert. It’s there that Dylan switched from acoustic music to electric. The audience was not happy and raucously expressed their disapproval. Someone in the audience shouted out, “Judas!” According to Gareth, Dylan’s response was, “Let’s just say, defiant.” Gareth said there’s a video on YouTube of that. Because of my dedication to my readers, I took the time to find it. You can see it by clicking this link.

The Free Trade Hall has since been converted into a hotel.

Around here, Gareth pointed down a street to the Town Hall a few blocks away. From that side, its clock tower sticks up above the scaffolding. On the side I viewed it from yesterday, all I could see of it was the pointy bit at the top.

Farther along on the Manchester Walking Tour, we stopped by the John Rylands Library, a beautiful old red brick building. I might go in while I’m in Manchester. There are interesting stories regarding the history of the building, but I’ve forgotten most of them.

What I do remember is that it was built by a rich couple, John and Enriqueta Rylands. According to Gareth, there are statues of John and Enriqueta inside. They’re facing each other so they can look at each other for all eternity. Apparently, the two statues are not particularly close to each other. I don’t know how firmly Gareth’s tongue was planted in his cheek when he said this, but he suggested that Enriqueta wanted to put some distance between her and her husband. She was much younger than he was, and Gareth thought that she might have believed that the best thing about him was his money.

We also looked at some shopping streets and centuries-old buildings.

We went into a Victorian shopping arcade and what had been the old exchange for cotton contracts, the Manchester Royal Exchange. The latter was quite interesting. The last trade was completed in 1968.

The trading floor and the whole interior of the building were converted into a theatre-in-the-round in the centre and an open lobby, snack bar, and bar around it. It’s beautiful inside. There’s a chalkboard mounted on one of the walls that had been in the building when it was still an exchange. It hasn’t been erased and shows the last trades that were made there.

Two stops near the end of the tour were near sites of tragedies. One was at the memorial to the victims of a massacre at an Ariana Grande concert in Manchester in 2017.

Another was at the site where the IRA set off a massive truck bomb on a street in Manchester on June 15, 1996. The immediately surrounding buildings were all almost entirely destroyed. Only one thing remained standing with little damage: A jaunty, cylindrical, bright red Royal Mail box.

Gareth showed us a picture taken shortly after the bombing. Everything was practically obliterated except for that bright red mail box that stood defiant among the wreckage. The mailbox was removed during the reconstruction and then returned to its original location, with a plaque placed on it dated November 2, 1999.

I’m tired. And that’s all I can remember from the Manchester Walking Tour. Catch you tomorrow.