Rogers Govender must be a busy man. As well as presiding over the city’s cathedral he is also the rector of a parish church and the warden of the Collegiate Church. But the Dean doesn’t have far to to go to move from one to the other – […]
With discarded pizza boxes, overflowing industrialised-sized wheelie bins and a strong smell of vomit, the shabby back alleys and open air car parks of Manchester hardly portray the city in the best light. As you would expect, the Christmas market stalls and high street stores are doing a […]
“We went like a shot from a gun,” wrote an excited railway passenger in 1835. “No sooner did we come to a field than it was a mile behind us.” Charles Young was travelling on the pioneering Manchester to Liverpool line just five years after its opening and […]
Peter Beuth, a German visitor to Manchester in 1823, wrote of a place where “machinery and buildings can be found commensurate with the miracles of modern times – they are called factories.” Clearly not believing his friend would be familiar with this new type of workplace he felt […]
William Blake’s reference to ‘dark satanic mills’ in his Jerusalem poem, conjures up negative connotations of the industrial revolution and the impact it had on the lives of ordinary people. Workers toiled away for long hours in dirty factories, with little time for leisure, contemporary commentators suggested. Machines […]
Past In The Present 