Chetham's Library sits behind a heavy sandstone wall, marked by dark, timber-framed gables that date back to fourteen twenty-one. It holds the title of the oldest public library in the English-speaking world. Humphrey Chetham, a wealthy…
Radical Manchester Protest History
This walking tour guides you through the city center to the landmarks of Manchester's legacy as a hotbed of political rebellion, social reform, and workers' rights.
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1. Chetham's Library
2. Richard Cobden Statue
The bronze figure of Richard Cobden stands atop a tall granite pedestal, clutching a roll of papers and gesturing as if mid-speech. He was a Manchester manufacturer who led the campaign to repeal the Corn Laws, which had kept food prices…
3. People's History Museum
The People’s History Museum occupies a former hydraulic pumping station, recognizable by its tall, narrow brick facade and the heavy industrial pipes still running along the exterior walls. It holds the national collection of labor…
4. Abraham Lincoln Statue
The bronze Abraham Lincoln sits in a chair, his head bowed as if reading a document. This statue arrived in Manchester in nineteen eighty-six, a gift from the people of Cincinnati. It commemorates the letters sent by Manchester cotton…
5. Albert Square
Albert Square is defined by the sharp, Victorian Gothic spire of the Manchester Town Hall, which reaches toward the sky from the center of the space. The square was carved out of a dense maze of warehouses and slums in the eighteen sixties…
6. Friends' Meeting House
The Friends' Meeting House features a heavy, dark red brick facade with tall, arched windows that interrupt the standard office lines of the Civic Quarter. This building replaced the original meeting place on the same site, which was…
7. Free Trade Hall
The Free Trade Hall bears a heavy stone facade, punctuated by twelve grand, arched windows that face Peter Street. Built in eighteen fifty-six, it occupies the site of the Peterloo Massacre, where cavalry charged a peaceful protest for…
8. Peterloo Massacre Monument
The Peterloo Massacre Monument consists of a circular stone platform inscribed with the names of the eighteen people killed here on August sixteenth, eighteen nineteen. They gathered in Saint Peter’s Field to demand parliamentary…
9. Emmeline Pankhurst Statue
The bronze figure of Emmeline Pankhurst stands with one arm outstretched, frozen in the middle of a speech. She rests on a circular stone plinth in St. Peter's Square, positioned near the site of the Peterloo Massacre. Sculptor Hazel…