Medieval Quarter and Spinningfields

Medieval Quarter and Spinningfields

We’ll start the walk at Victoria railway station and travel in a circular-ish route, anticlockwise around the city.

Victoria opened in 1844 designed by George Stevenson, pop inside and look for the old tiled Lancashire and Yorkshire Railway map, the old booking office, soldier’s gate and the café.

Victoria station used to have a platform that was nearly half a mile long (682m), the longest in Europe, it ran over the Irwell Bridge and into Salford’s Manchester Exchange station. Exchange closed to passengers in 1969 and was then used for newspaper trains until the 1980s.

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From Victoria Station Approach head down Walker’s Croft to Chetham’s School of Music, formerly Chetham’s Hospital School & Library founded as a charity school in 1653 by Humphrey Chetham but the oldest parts of the school date back to the 1420s and the library is the oldest free public library in the English speaking world.

Tucked away in a corner of the library is a four-sided desk in a window alcove where the German philosophisers Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels would meet up. Engels made many detailed observations of Manchester which led to the publication of his influential work, The Condition of the Working Class in England. Engels and Marx co-authored The Communist Manifesto (Photo courtesy of Wikimedia Commons).

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Between the school and the cathedral is the Glade of Light, a memorial that commemorates the 22 victims of the Manchester Arena bombing of 2017.

Manchester Cathedral, formally the Cathedral and Collegiate Church of St. Mary, St. Denys and St. George, possibly built on the site of a previous Anglo-Saxon church from AD 700. If there isn't a service in progress you can quietly walk through the cathedral and come out on the other side.

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In Cathedral Yard, look out for a statue of Indian independence icon Mahatma Gandhi by artist Ram V Sutar. Gandhi visited Manchester on his way to see mill workers in Lancashire in 1931.

Make your way round the cathedral to Fennel Street to the back of the Corn Exchange, if it’s open walk through the Corn Exchange, if it’s not walk around to Exchange Square.

Turn right and head towards Hanging Ditch, and the hidden Hanging Bridge or Hengand Brigge as it was called in 1343 probably meaning hen (wild birds) and gan (between two hills).

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Onto Shambles Square where we’ll find the Mitre Hotel, the Old Wellington Inn and Sinclair’s Oyster Bar, shambles being the old name for a street of butchers shops. Sinclair’s and the Old Wellington are thought to be the last remaining Tudor buildings in the city centre and were actually dismantled and moved 70 metres northwards to their present location in 1999 to form the new Shambles Square.

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Head back to Exchange Square and past the modern windmills turning right into Corporation Street, just under the over-head bridge we’ll find a red post box, the only structure in the area that survived the 1996 IRA bomb and is commemorated with a brass plaque.

Continue on Corporation Street and turn right into Market Street and left into Exchange Street towards St. Anne’s Square, at the Boer War Memorial statue turn left and go through the Royal Exchange or the Royal Exchange Arcade and onto Cross Street. If both are closed you can also go down Old Bank Street a bit further down.

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Going through the Royal Exchange Theatre look up and you can still see the original trading board with the day's closing figures from the days when the Exchange was the world's centre for cotton trade.

On Cross Street you'll see Mr Thomas’s Chop House, the idea of a chop house started in the 1690s when restaurants specialised in excellent cuts or chops of meat.

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Cross over Cross Street at the pedestrian crossing and cut through Chapel Walks or Back Pool Fold to Sam’s Chop House.

Back Pool Fold was a medieval street following the boundary fields of the moat of Radcliffe Hall where there once stood a ducking stool which was used to punish 'lewde women and scoldes'.

Advance to Pall Mall, no not that one, this one is a quiet place to rest before cracking on to King Street (although it looked closed for redevelopment recently) and the former Bank of England Trustee Savings Bank, designed by Charles Robert Cockerell and constructed in the 1840s.

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Continue on King Street, over Cross Street, did you see the eagle on Eagle House? And along the pedestrianised King Street to the Old Exchange, about halfway down on your right.

Go through the Old Exchange to St. Anne’s Church, consecrated on 17 July 1712, it’s thought to be the very centre of Manchester from which all distances are measured, there’s a marker on one of the corners.

There's also a symbolic sculpture of Jesus Christ depicted as a homeless man on a park bench by Canadian artist Timothy Schmalz.

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In St. Anne’s Square is a statue of Richard Cobden an English Radical and Liberal politician, manufacturer, and a campaigner for free trade and peace.

Also in the square is a tribute to the American Civil War and the Lancashire cotton famine in the form of a cotton bud fountain.

Continue through St. Anne’s Square turning left at the Boer War Memorial, down Barton Square to Barton Arcade, a large splendid glass and cast-iron Victorian shopping arcade, there are two exits onto Deansgate, take your pick.

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Turn right into Deansgate and look out for the Haywards Building on the opposite side of the road, there’s a passage to the right, called Parsonage Lane, which leads into College Land and into Parsonage Gardens, time for another rest.

The first recorded reference to Parsonage Gardens was in 1066 when, after the Norman Conquest, William granted tenancies to Albert Greslet, then Baron of Mamecestre.

Overlooking the gardens are two magnificent buildings, Arkwright House and National Buildings.

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Diagonally through the gardens brings us onto St. Mary’s Parsonage, follow the road round to a walkway on your right to Trinity Bridge, designed by the Spanish architect Santiago Calatrava and was completed in 1995.

Crossing over the River Irwell, we’re now in the city of Salford, turn left down the steps or gently curved ramp towards Bridge Street.

At Albert Bridge, turn left and back into Manchester, to see the People’s History Museum a former hydraulic pumping station, Doves of Peace sculpture and Manchester Civil Justice Centre or the filling cabinet as some might say. (The museum is free, although a suggested donation of £5 is preferred and access to the court and café is free although you have to go through security).

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A few nice boozers on Bridge Street worth checking out, the subterranean Gas Lamp, the Bridge and on the corner of Deansgate the quintessential Sawyers Arms.

Back across Albert Bridge, first opened in 1844, replacing an earlier bridge from about 1785, turn left down the riverside walk next to Stanley Street.

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Cross Spinningfields Footbridge, looking up river to Irwell Bridge, and into the modern Spinningfields, travel along Hardman Boulevard turn left near The Ivy, a posh restaurant.

You’re now in Crown Square home of Manchester Crown Court, completed in 1962, one of two Crown courts in Manchester, the other being Minshull Street.

Continue through the square and take a right and a left through the new building to Wood Street.

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The Wood Street Mission is a children’s charity helping children and families living on a low income in Manchester and Salford. Founded in 1869 by Alfred Alsop, when Deansgate was one of the most squalid slum areas in the city, the Wood Street site was acquired and the building built in 1873.

The building has provided accommodation for homeless children, free dinners, clothing, shoes and even acted as an air raid shelter in World War 2. Read more about the Wood Street Mission.

Continue down Wood Street to the John Rylands Research Institute and Library is a late-Victorian neo-gothic library opened in 1900, the stunning cathedral-like reading room is open to the public, it’s free to enter but remember it is a library! John Rylands was an English entrepreneur and philanthropist, the largest textile manufacturing concern in the UK, and Manchester's first multi-millionaire.

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The entrance to the library is on the Brazennose Street side.

Cross over Deansgate to the Frederick Chopin Statue which commemorated his 201st birthday, his trip to Manchester in 1848 and it also marks the role of the Polish migrants in Manchester.

Walk along Brazennose Street to the Manchester Peace Garden in Lincoln Square with the Rising Sun pub to the right, which also has a similar façade on the rear on Lloyd Street or maybe this is the rear?

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Time for a rest and read about why a President stands in a Manchester square.

The statue of Abraham Lincoln was one of two presented to the people of England by Charles Phelps Taft, the son of William Howard Taft who was President of the United States at the time, one went to Liverpool and the other was intended for London, but the president's other son Robert didn't like the statue and it became known as the "stomach ache statue" because of the placement of the hands. What do you think? As a result this statue came to Manchester and London got a statue that is a replica of a larger one by Augustus Saint-Gaudens in Chicago's Lincoln Park. The Manchester statue was erected in 1919 in Platt Fields Park where it stayed until 1986.

Brazennose Street was the location of the original Twisted Wheel Club, one of the first clubs to play the music that became known as Northern Soul, an all night club, the club ran without an alcohol licence, serving only coffee, soft drinks and snacks.

There’s an unusual listed structure in Lincoln Square, a decorative cast-iron electricity junction box of the early 20th century by the foundry Hardy and Padmore bearing the crest of the City of Manchester, can you find it?

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In the far corner of Lincoln Square is the Roman Catholic Church of St. Mary (The Hidden Gem), if it’s open, have a quiet wander around.

Head along Mulberry Street to the left of the church, right onto Ridgefield and right onto John Dalton Street. Between the Ape & Apple pub and New-Church House is a passageway called Dalton Entry pop through into Tasle Alley and left into Albert Square.

Albert Square and the Town Hall are receiving a multi-million pound restoration and should be finished in 2024, can’t wait to see it in all its glory!

The monuments in Albert Square, from left to right, include the James Fraser Statue (a reforming Anglican bishop of Manchester), the Jubilee Fountain (erected for the Diamond Jubilee of Queen Victoria in 1897), John Bright Statue (a British Radical and Liberal statesman, one of the greatest orators of his generation and a promoter of free trade policies), Albert Memorial (a monument to Prince Albert, Prince consort of Queen Victoria), Oliver Heywood Statue (an English banker and philanthropist) and William Ewart Gladstone Statue (a British statesman and Liberal politician, Prime Minister for 12 years and Chancellor of the Exchequer for 12 years).

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If you wander anywhere around Manchester city centre, you’ll see the Manchester bees on everything from bins, walls, mosaic flooring, signs and bollards, in the summer of 2018 there was even a swarm of giant bees as part of the public art event ‘Bee in the City’.

The bee is the symbol of Manchester and being a city of industry, there’s no other creature better than this hard-working insect to represent it. The symbol of the bee dates back to the 18th and 19th centuries, when Manchester was at the heart of the Industrial Revolution. Technology and industry were thriving in the city, known to some as ‘Cottonopolis’ because of the amount of cotton fabric it produced.

The Mancunian factories were also sometimes referred to as ‘bee hives’ because the workers within them were so occupied and productive like ‘busy bees’. In 1842, the bee was first officially incorporated into the Manchester coat of arms, which included a globe with seven bees to show how the people of Manchester worked and traded across the seven seas.

Post your photos of Manchester bees on Twitter with #ManchesterCircular and we'll add them to our Bee Gallery.

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