scubish.com: Scuba diving Manchester - United Kingdom of Great Britain & N. Ireland

Understand

City information

Manchester is located in the centre of the Northwest of England, about equidistant between Liverpool and Leeds. Due to its proximity to the Pennines, which force the prevailing Atlantic Westerly clouds to rise, it receives more than its fair share of wet weather. Manchester used to have a reputation for being a dirty and boring city, but things have dramatically changed in the last decade and it is now a more pleasant, open, clean and exciting place, and well worth a visit, even if just for a day.

The adjective associated with Manchester is Mancunian or simply Manc. The distinctive linguistic accent of the city's indigenous inhabitants is much more closely related to that of Liverpool with its strong north-Waleian roots than it is to the Lancastrian or Cestrian of the neighbouring cotton towns.

Manchester Visitor Information Centre, Town Hall Extension, St. Peter's Square, +44 (0) 871 222 8223 ( fax: +44 (0) 161 236 9900) M-F 10AM-5.15PM (recorded information available by phone outside these times). The Visitor Centre has up-to-date lists of places to eat and sleep.

History

Manchester was the site of the Roman Fort Mamucium (breast-shaped) in AD 79 but a town was not built until the 13th Century. A priests' college and church (now Chetham's school & library and the Cathedral) were established in Manchester in 1421. Early evidence of its tendency towards political radicalism was its support for Parliament during the Civil War and in 1745 for the Jacobite forces of the Young Pretender.

It was not until the start of the Industrial Revolution of the 18th and 19th Centuries that this small Medieval town would build its fortune. The presence of an existing cloth trade, coupled with the mechanisation of spinning being invented in nearby Bolton, created a thriving cotton industry in Manchester. Though the high and frequent rainfall may lower the spirits of today's inhabitants, the availability of copious supplies of clean, soft, water was of great utility to the various cotton processes particularly in the bleaching, printing and dyeing of cotton cloth. Water power rapidly gave way here to steam, and indeed the world's first steam-driven factory was built in the Ancoats Northern Quarter section of the city.

Whitworth, inventor of the eponymous mass-cut screw thread also manufactured his equally revolutionary rifled guns in huge quantities at his factory in Sackville Street. And after their initial meeting at the Midland Hotel, still one of the city's most luxurious, Rolls and Royce began manufacture of their luxury motor cars in Hulme.

Trafford Park in Trafford, was to become the first industrial estate in the world, housing the Ford Motor Company and much of the pre-and wartime aircraft industry, notably the 'Lancaster' Bombers of the AVRO Co.

Manchester's success during the Victorian era and before is evident everywhere you look. Great Ancoats street was a source of wonder to Schinkel the neo-classical architect of Berlin. Equally grandiose neo-Gothic buildings line the old financial district around King Street, and public institutions such as the...