Greater Manchester

The Anglican cathedral church of St Mary, St Denis, and St George, of mainly 15th-century construction, is in Manchester. The Roman Catholic cathedral church of St John was built in Salford in the 1840s. The Free Trade Hall in Manchester was built in 1865, on the site of the so-called Peterloo Massacre of 1819. It is the home of one of Britain's premier symphony orchestras, the Hallé Orchestra. Chetham's Library, also in Manchester, was founded in 1653 and was England's first free public library. Manchester has a wealth of museums. They include the Air and Space Gallery, which celebrates the work of the pioneer A. V. Roe; the Museum of Science and Industry; and the Museum of Labour History. The Lowry, a modern art complex containing exhibition facilities, theatres, and a cinema, opened in April 2000. The Imperial War Museum North opened in July 2002. The John Rylands Library in Manchester has a printed document dated 1423 and the oldest existing writing from the New Testament, the “St John Fragment”. Platt Hall is a museum of costume, and the City Art Gallery has an outstanding collection of British paintings.

The Cooperative Movement started in Rochdale in 1844, and its early history is recorded in the Rochdale Pioneers' Memorial Museum. The Tonge Moor Textile Museum in Bolton shows the spinning mule pioneered by Samuel Crompton, and other inventions that developed in the cotton industry. The Peel Park Museum and Art Gallery in Salford contains a large number of works by Lowry. Wigan Pier, which was used to load coal on to barges on the canal, and which was immortalized by George Orwell, has been renovated and is now the site of an exhibition on turn-of-the-century Wigan.

The decline of the manufacture of cotton textiles in the face of competition from cheaper producers has brought great difficulties to the area, but the cotton trade has been replaced to some extent by various light industries, and warehousing has become an important business. The paper industry is now the most important in Bury (formerly a wool-weaving centre), while Oldham, formerly home to the world’s largest cotton-spinning industry, now relies on the manufacture of aircraft components and electronics as well as vehicle assembly and health care products. No coal-mining currently takes place in Greater Manchester, but there is a possibility that coalfields near Wigan, mined as early as the 17th century, may be exploited at some future date. Manchester has the third most important airport in Britain, after Heathrow and Gatwick, handling over 19 million passengers in 2001.

Manchester was an important town in Roman times and did not really develop greatly until Flemish weavers moved to the city in the 14th century and rapidly established it as the centre of a major textile industry. Cotton was being woven in the mid-17th century, but it was not until the inventions of the flying shuttle, the spinning jenny, the water frame, and the spinning mule that the industry boomed. By 1787 there were over 40 cotton mills in Lancashire, most of them in the area now designated as Greater Manchester, in towns such as Bolton, Rochdale, Salford, Bury, Oldham, and Manchester itself. In 1830, the railway engine, the Rocket, built by George Stephenson, made its first appearance on the new railway between Manchester and Liverpool, heralding the development of rail transport, which was of great advantage to the trade of the county; the opening of the Manchester Ship Canal in 1894 was an additional major gain. Despite intermittent periods of depression, the area's prosperity continued for some years after World War II. In June 1996 an IRA bomb exploded in the centre of Manchester, injuring hundreds of shoppers and causing extensive damage to buildings. The city centre was redeveloped thereafter and in 2002 Manchester hosted the 17th Commonwealth Games, with a specially built stadium developed in the east of the city.