All the tours, talks and even some research visits in pictures. Of course sometimes I foolishly forget to take pictures.
Some February 2024 tours down to the divider line
The image above shows Manchester from several thousand feet in the air on a flight to Norway - 26 January
11 April 2023 and three pictures taken with Bayern Munich VIPs before their Champions League tie with Manchester City. The picture above shows a new Manchester spectator sport for Germans which is watching a narrowboat negotiate a lock on the Rochdale Canal in Castlefield. The picture of the man with the half and half scarf for sale outside Manchester United's ground is an exercise in cheekiness. He's selling a City/Bayern scarf under the statue of Sir Matt Busby - how can that even be a thing. The top picture is of the group in Lincoln Square.
Sunny Chorlton on the Saturday 8 April.
The Tour of Uninteresting Objects on Saturday 8 April.
“A BEAUTIFUL AND KIND THING” MOMENT IN MANCHESTER
There was one German among the group and he liked to drift away a little from the party. He was called Jürgen. Most of these guests to Manchester were in their 50s, 60s or 70s and they wanted to learn our history. Given the age of the guests frequent stops were necessary which, fortunately, is in the nature of a guided tour.
One such halt took place at the corner of Dale Street and Tariff Street in Manchester’s Northern Quarter. I was talking about the textile warehouse street scene here and how the street had been used regularly as a double for New York in films such The Avengers’ movie, Captain America.
Jürgen had decided to explore. He climbed the steep stairs at the entrance of one of the former warehouses to take a peek inside Beatnikz Republic bar. This warehouse was built around 120 years ago for Robert Howarth & Co, cotton spinners. These structures were always intended to be show-off places with drama added to any visit by ornate entrances up grand staircases.
On the way back down from his sneaky look, our very tall German, aged 73, tripped, careened down the last two steps and stumbled across the pavement, his arms failing to defend himself. His head bounced off the tarmac of the road with a sound like a bowling ball smashing against a bowling lane.
Over the heads of eighteen Germans I caught the last tumble if not the impact. Immediately, his wife and a friend were trying to pull him up into a sitting position. I rushed to help.
But the angels were quicker.
First up was a gentleman in his thirties who’d been sat in the Tariff and Dale bar over the road. He’d abandoned his post-work glass of wine without hesitation and charged over. Then came the reinforcements, two young people, perhaps early twenties, a young woman and a man, running over to help. People walking past asked if they could do anything. Everyone of them.
Within seconds and not by me, the guide for the group, an ambulance had been called. (“I’ll call an ambulance,” I said. “Done that,” said one of the young people.) A chair was found, ice brought from Tariff & Dale bar and applied to a literally golf ball sized bubble forming on Jürgen’s forehead. I felt like I was having an out-of-body moment viewing from a roof opposite looking down at myself as these wonderful locals took control.
The gent from the bar kept Jürgen talking and explained how he used to be a site-manager on building sites so had first aid skills. The problem was all the other 17 people in the group were crowding around and offering advice. It was noisy, chaotic, so I corralled them together and told them I was going to take them back to the hotel which wasn’t far away.
This meant Jürgen, his wife and Manfred, the German tour coordinator and our guardian angels could wait for the ambulance in something approaching tranquility. When I got back from delivering people to the hotel the two younger folk left and, eventually, with Jürgen settled and calm the gentleman who’d left his glass of wine was relieved from duty and he went off into the evening followed by our heartfelt appreciation.
The ambulance never came.
Manfred took Jürgen and his wife to hospital in a taxi instead. In the morning I learned Manchester Royal Infirmary (MRI) staff had been very good and our patient was seen quickly and efficiently. The doctor apparently suggested that Jürgen stay in overnight for observation but the Germans decided he would be better-off in his hotel.
I picked the group up the following morning for another walking tour with Jürgen, bless him, sporting an absolute shiner, thankfully the bubble on his forehead had deflated probably down to that rapid application of ice.
The guests were from the Wuppertal area in Germany where Friedrich Engels had grown up. They were interested in his 22 years in Manchester, his experience as a communist of the most capitalist of nineteenth century cities, but they were also interested in other radical movements, unions, Coops, Suffragettes and so forth. So that day was a Marx and Engels tour in Manchester and while they were interested in that theme they never stopped remarking on how amazing the Mancunian reaction had been to Jürgen’s fall.
Again and again, they would repeat how kind everybody was and how they were amazed at how young people had come running so quickly to help. Even the taxi-driver was complimented for doing everything he could to help on the trip to and into MRI. It was heart-warming they said, one lady described it as “one of the most beautiful and kind things she had ever witnessed”.
I agreed with my guests’ sentiments.
They were polite enough not to mention the ambulance didn't turn up.
Yet I felt annoyed with myself.
In the confusion of the moment I hadn’t taken the names of the people who ran to our assistance. This means I can’t directly recognise their actions which grace the phrase ‘good samaritan’. All I can say, is they are fine fine people and I have immense gratitude for what they did. They are being talked about in Germany right now I reckon. If they read this and recognise themselves I would love them to get in touch.
We live in cynical times. These good Mancunians gave the lie to that.
The picture above shows the group at Chetham's Library. Jurgen is the first person on the right sporting a shiner.
There was one German among the group and he liked to drift away a little from the party. He was called Jürgen. Most of these guests to Manchester were in their 50s, 60s or 70s and they wanted to learn our history. Given the age of the guests frequent stops were necessary which, fortunately, is in the nature of a guided tour.
One such halt took place at the corner of Dale Street and Tariff Street in Manchester’s Northern Quarter. I was talking about the textile warehouse street scene here and how the street had been used regularly as a double for New York in films such The Avengers’ movie, Captain America.
Jürgen had decided to explore. He climbed the steep stairs at the entrance of one of the former warehouses to take a peek inside Beatnikz Republic bar. This warehouse was built around 120 years ago for Robert Howarth & Co, cotton spinners. These structures were always intended to be show-off places with drama added to any visit by ornate entrances up grand staircases.
On the way back down from his sneaky look, our very tall German, aged 73, tripped, careened down the last two steps and stumbled across the pavement, his arms failing to defend himself. His head bounced off the tarmac of the road with a sound like a bowling ball smashing against a bowling lane.
Over the heads of eighteen Germans I caught the last tumble if not the impact. Immediately, his wife and a friend were trying to pull him up into a sitting position. I rushed to help.
But the angels were quicker.
First up was a gentleman in his thirties who’d been sat in the Tariff and Dale bar over the road. He’d abandoned his post-work glass of wine without hesitation and charged over. Then came the reinforcements, two young people, perhaps early twenties, a young woman and a man, running over to help. People walking past asked if they could do anything. Everyone of them.
Within seconds and not by me, the guide for the group, an ambulance had been called. (“I’ll call an ambulance,” I said. “Done that,” said one of the young people.) A chair was found, ice brought from Tariff & Dale bar and applied to a literally golf ball sized bubble forming on Jürgen’s forehead. I felt like I was having an out-of-body moment viewing from a roof opposite looking down at myself as these wonderful locals took control.
The gent from the bar kept Jürgen talking and explained how he used to be a site-manager on building sites so had first aid skills. The problem was all the other 17 people in the group were crowding around and offering advice. It was noisy, chaotic, so I corralled them together and told them I was going to take them back to the hotel which wasn’t far away.
This meant Jürgen, his wife and Manfred, the German tour coordinator and our guardian angels could wait for the ambulance in something approaching tranquility. When I got back from delivering people to the hotel the two younger folk left and, eventually, with Jürgen settled and calm the gentleman who’d left his glass of wine was relieved from duty and he went off into the evening followed by our heartfelt appreciation.
The ambulance never came.
Manfred took Jürgen and his wife to hospital in a taxi instead. In the morning I learned Manchester Royal Infirmary (MRI) staff had been very good and our patient was seen quickly and efficiently. The doctor apparently suggested that Jürgen stay in overnight for observation but the Germans decided he would be better-off in his hotel.
I picked the group up the following morning for another walking tour with Jürgen, bless him, sporting an absolute shiner, thankfully the bubble on his forehead had deflated probably down to that rapid application of ice.
The guests were from the Wuppertal area in Germany where Friedrich Engels had grown up. They were interested in his 22 years in Manchester, his experience as a communist of the most capitalist of nineteenth century cities, but they were also interested in other radical movements, unions, Coops, Suffragettes and so forth. So that day was a Marx and Engels tour in Manchester and while they were interested in that theme they never stopped remarking on how amazing the Mancunian reaction had been to Jürgen’s fall.
Again and again, they would repeat how kind everybody was and how they were amazed at how young people had come running so quickly to help. Even the taxi-driver was complimented for doing everything he could to help on the trip to and into MRI. It was heart-warming they said, one lady described it as “one of the most beautiful and kind things she had ever witnessed”.
I agreed with my guests’ sentiments.
They were polite enough not to mention the ambulance didn't turn up.
Yet I felt annoyed with myself.
In the confusion of the moment I hadn’t taken the names of the people who ran to our assistance. This means I can’t directly recognise their actions which grace the phrase ‘good samaritan’. All I can say, is they are fine fine people and I have immense gratitude for what they did. They are being talked about in Germany right now I reckon. If they read this and recognise themselves I would love them to get in touch.
We live in cynical times. These good Mancunians gave the lie to that.
The picture above shows the group at Chetham's Library. Jurgen is the first person on the right sporting a shiner.
This was a spin around the northern end of the city centre for Allgood, specialists in architectural ironmongery. First we had a drink in the very fine and beautifully laid-out offices at Material Source and then we toured the former Cooperative Estate, Angel Meadow and the area close to Chetham's and the National Football Museum. Fine folk one and all who even got on TV with me as I finished with an interview with ITV and Chris Hall about what the Commonwealth Games had meant for the city 20 years ago and whether there was any legacy. Allgood very kindly created a splendid metal keyring advertising my tours for me.
A tour around Castlefield to HOME arts centre with TLC St Luke's group. Most of these Mancunians had not been through this rapidly growing, particularly vertically, part of the city.
A spin around the city centre for Bruntwood Works for staff and tenants. The guests are standing on a part of the newly pedestriansed Albert Square. A sweet moment for me happened as we walked past the graduation ceremonies taking place at the Bridgewater Hall. This young man in a suit came careering over and said, "I'd just like to say thank you." I said, "Sorry I don't recognise you." "It's Jamie," came the reply. "You did that skateboarding article about us in Lincoln Square." "Of course," I said, "Jamie the skater, forgive me. Did you get your masters in, was it public spaces and their design?" "I did," said Jamie. "And what did you get?" I asked. Jamie looked down and muttered, as though ashamed, "A distinction." "Wow, don't be so modest," I said. "I included the article you wrote in my thesis, it helped. Just wanted to thank you," he said. This is the article abous skateboarding I wrote earlier this year.
This is me on tour not taking one, doing some research for a writing project. I was taking a fresh walk with a cooling breeze at Higher Shelf Stones, 621m (2038ft) above sea level just off the Snake Pass. It was a real tonic. The views down to Manchester were impressive. The top photograph shows traces of the Roman Road, called Doctor's Gate, that climbs from the Roman fort of Melandra Castle in Glossop over Snake Pass to the fort at Hope.
There was a melancholy moment on the walk, as shown on the video.This is the crash site of a B29 Superfortress. 13 men died when they hit the moor in bad conditions in November 1948. They were on a short hop from Scampton in Lincolnshire to Burtonwood near Warrington to deliver wages there to the servicemen there.
Many larger elements of the plane remain on the moor including engines and undercarriage. There is a memorial plaque and lots of crosses made from stones by visitors plus some tiny wooden crosses with the names of those killed and an American flag. The nickname for this reconnaisance B29 plane was 'Over Exposed'. Was that because its role was to do with taking photos?
The plane had seen service observing the early nuclear tests at Bikini Atoll in 1946 and had been taking part in the Berlin Airlift which started in 1948. To encounter this site on a sunny moorland walk, so different from that November 1948 day, introduced a quiet and contemplative moment on a break away from the city.
The image at the top corner of this description is of a B29 Superfortress, although not the one that crashed on the moors of the Peak District.
There was a melancholy moment on the walk, as shown on the video.This is the crash site of a B29 Superfortress. 13 men died when they hit the moor in bad conditions in November 1948. They were on a short hop from Scampton in Lincolnshire to Burtonwood near Warrington to deliver wages there to the servicemen there.
Many larger elements of the plane remain on the moor including engines and undercarriage. There is a memorial plaque and lots of crosses made from stones by visitors plus some tiny wooden crosses with the names of those killed and an American flag. The nickname for this reconnaisance B29 plane was 'Over Exposed'. Was that because its role was to do with taking photos?
The plane had seen service observing the early nuclear tests at Bikini Atoll in 1946 and had been taking part in the Berlin Airlift which started in 1948. To encounter this site on a sunny moorland walk, so different from that November 1948 day, introduced a quiet and contemplative moment on a break away from the city.
The image at the top corner of this description is of a B29 Superfortress, although not the one that crashed on the moors of the Peak District.
A glorious afternoon on Saturday 18 July with guests from Spain, Trinidad and India plus locals too. Here we are in 53Two bar and events venue enjoying refreshment in its cooling former railway arches. I'd like to say we sheltering from the most over-reported heatwave in the history of weather reporting but in truth the big 'scary' days were yet to come.
Finishing a Kimpton Clock Tower tour in the former entrance foyer at the Whitworth Street and Oxford Street junction. This dates from 1893. Some of the tiles in this festival of tiling carry the intertwined letters of 'RA' referring to the Refuge Assurance Company that built the place. Given the architect of this part of the building was Alfred Waterhouse, who was from Liverpool, if you repeat out loud the letters 'RA' it delivers a fine Scouse effect.
This group is from the Lucas Lab, AV Hill building, at the University of Manchester which specialises in 'biology' according to one of the guests. I looked it up and it's a bit more complicated than that. The group is standing next to Boris the bear in the Royal Exchange. This Boris is staying put and hasn't been forced to resign. Few of people here had enjoyed a tour of Manchester and this started their social day out around the city with some background knowledge and a bit of a laugh.
This is the crew from Fleurets, property specialists, and their guests. These people really knew their pubs and we had an enjoyable afternoon ramble around the Northern Quarter finishing in the fine Crown & Kettle. Thanks to Tim Martin, fourth from the right, for the booking.
Not sure who invited LS Lowry, looking on from the extreme right, with a print of his best picture in my opinion. This is his terrifying almost Expressionist self-portrait from 1938. Lowry never really named the picture but it's come to be called ‘Head of a Man (With Red Eyes)’. This portrait was produced the year before his mother, with whom he had a turbulent relationship, popped her clogs. Lowry is showing emotion here, which he rarely did in his work. His relationship with a mum who mocked his artistic pretensions was one of anger, frustration yet also a weird sort of mutual dependency.
Not sure who invited LS Lowry, looking on from the extreme right, with a print of his best picture in my opinion. This is his terrifying almost Expressionist self-portrait from 1938. Lowry never really named the picture but it's come to be called ‘Head of a Man (With Red Eyes)’. This portrait was produced the year before his mother, with whom he had a turbulent relationship, popped her clogs. Lowry is showing emotion here, which he rarely did in his work. His relationship with a mum who mocked his artistic pretensions was one of anger, frustration yet also a weird sort of mutual dependency.
I've not taken groups round the former Mayfield Station for a while so it was great to be back in the haunting depot cooling off on a broiling day on Saturday 9 July. Then we left the shadows blinking in the sunshine and climbed the stairs from Travis Street to the platform level for great views of the new park and the recently exposed River Medlock which had previously lurked hidden in a culvett. That big head behind the group was placed a couple of years ago on the platform level and resembles something from Easter Island. It seems to like the view as well, it keeps staring at it. Next Mayfield tour dates are here.
This is the Oxford University Society on a tour of the city centre. The tour is rather enigmatically titled 'Architecture and Planning: Why does Manchester look like it does'. This is the tour description. 'A look at the architecture and planning of the city, how it evolved and what forces, industrial, commercial and social, created its ‘look’ and ‘feel’. Also, what does the future hold? The buildings, the pattern of the streets, the occasional gardens, the railways and the canals all tell their own peculiarly Manchester story. This is an exciting tale of design, lack of design, accident, the pure profit motive and philanthropy. There are human stories of success and failure too'. There's a public tour on this theme in November - you can book here.
I've said this many times before but I love questions and this group had plenty. Questions bring in other avenues of thought to explore. Thanks to author Brian Groom (third from the right with the hat) for booking me. His book 'Northerners: A History' is well worth purchasing.
I've said this many times before but I love questions and this group had plenty. Questions bring in other avenues of thought to explore. Thanks to author Brian Groom (third from the right with the hat) for booking me. His book 'Northerners: A History' is well worth purchasing.
Two groups of National Trust bigwigs on tours after viewing the remarkable work taking place to turn a Castlefield Viaduct into a garden. Many of these folk hadn't been to Manchester before and were astonished by the richness of the history of Castlefield and its international significance. The sun shone and the walks were fun.
The groups were staying in Mottram Hall hotel near Prestbury as all the hotels in the city centre were filled with people attending Manchester's crazy gig summer. Mention of Mottram Hall put me in mind of the time in the 1996 European Championship when the German footy team were staying there. Germans love being naked of course so the lads went off to the sauna at the hotel to have a naked sweat. Some nice Cheshire ladies had the same idea but not naked, so seeing these fit but bare young sportsmen the ladies fled and, I think, asked the management to call the police. Or maybe they called police. Eventually everybody calmed down and it was all laughed off. We Brits aren't given to that sort of raw display.
The groups were staying in Mottram Hall hotel near Prestbury as all the hotels in the city centre were filled with people attending Manchester's crazy gig summer. Mention of Mottram Hall put me in mind of the time in the 1996 European Championship when the German footy team were staying there. Germans love being naked of course so the lads went off to the sauna at the hotel to have a naked sweat. Some nice Cheshire ladies had the same idea but not naked, so seeing these fit but bare young sportsmen the ladies fled and, I think, asked the management to call the police. Or maybe they called police. Eventually everybody calmed down and it was all laughed off. We Brits aren't given to that sort of raw display.
Here are staff from Hopwood Hall College, Rochdale, discovering the delights of Rochdale town centre and the significant history attached to, what is after all, my home town. The guests are outside St Mary The Baum and my back is to the Pioneer's Museum on Toad Lane. There's a public tour of Rochdale on 10 September.
Michael Green is first on the left in this picture and this is his group from mainly North Carolina in the States. The young women are part of a football team over to play a game with a British team and to enjoy the Women's European Championship. The lucky devils the following night were going to watch England v Austria in the opening game of the competition. England won 1-0 in front of a record breaking crowd for a women's game at the Euros of almost 70,000.
Viva Columbia. These smart kids from Columbia were here to attend a language school. The picture immediately above is a random encounter with some Respect chaps from the Football Association outside The National Football Museum the day before the Women’s Euros kicked-off at Old Trafford. The FA boys wanted us to help unfurl this large England flag. The Columbian kids loved it and even got to sign the flag later. Such a happy and fun moment. Guiding is the best job.
The Saloon of Heaton Hall with a group who've loved the sparkling yet delicate interiors that not only delight the eye but come complete with a dizzying mix of stories about the Earls of Wiltons, their family and their guests. The next tour is coming up on 31 July.
This was a fascinating occasion: the Music Tour of Manchester which takes place at 1pm every Saturday with three guides on a rota. Included here are some regulars guests Heather (pink jacket) and partner (thank you both), my son, Ralph, along for the ride to see as a young musician what it was all about - he's fifth from the right. We also have four fine guests from Kentucky - it's great to see overseas guests returning. There's the two sons third and fourth from the right and their parents in the shades and the turqiouse. The young gentleman in scarlet really knew his stuff.
On the far right there are the very amusing and lively Jenkinses from Port Talbot. Massive music fans this pair, they tour the country, and were off to see Manchester band James later that day. That bucket hat must have fitted the Madchester vibe perfectly. Mr Jenkins (didn't catch his name) used to be in a Madness cover band called Baggy Trousers. They were once name-checked by the original Madness at a gig near Bath, they were even asked to join in.
There are seven gents at the rear in the picture who look as though they are about to fall into the Bridgewater Canal. This was Nick Yule's group. They were all from the Aberdeen area and had been to the same nursery school. Time and life had variously separated them across the years but in 1995 they'd met up in Manchester and in 2022 they were recreating that rendezvous all those years ago. Back in '95 they'd had their picture taken in the style of The Smiths gate-fold centre of 'The Queen is Dead' album (inset on the left) and after the tour they were off to do the same again.
On the far right there are the very amusing and lively Jenkinses from Port Talbot. Massive music fans this pair, they tour the country, and were off to see Manchester band James later that day. That bucket hat must have fitted the Madchester vibe perfectly. Mr Jenkins (didn't catch his name) used to be in a Madness cover band called Baggy Trousers. They were once name-checked by the original Madness at a gig near Bath, they were even asked to join in.
There are seven gents at the rear in the picture who look as though they are about to fall into the Bridgewater Canal. This was Nick Yule's group. They were all from the Aberdeen area and had been to the same nursery school. Time and life had variously separated them across the years but in 1995 they'd met up in Manchester and in 2022 they were recreating that rendezvous all those years ago. Back in '95 they'd had their picture taken in the style of The Smiths gate-fold centre of 'The Queen is Dead' album (inset on the left) and after the tour they were off to do the same again.
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Trower and Hamlins enjoying a drink at the charming Eagle pub after a tour including the Kings Arms and the Black Friar. This is moments after the quiz in which the winners lost, I like to be an unpredictable quiz master. Thanks to Josh, third from the right, who organised the tour with me, and to Gill Hill, the boss at the very back in light blue. The whole company were up for a grand evening out and that was delivered, I trust.
Outside the Kings Arms pub there's a polite road sign asking if drivers could slow down and watch out for their cat. As I returned into the city centre after the tour there was the cat imperiously guarding the pavement outside the pub.
Outside the Kings Arms pub there's a polite road sign asking if drivers could slow down and watch out for their cat. As I returned into the city centre after the tour there was the cat imperiously guarding the pavement outside the pub.
Totally delightful occasion showing 11-year-olds from St John's Primary School around Castlefield after they'd had a sneak peek at the National Trust's Castlefield viaduct being transformed by MCC Construction. I have a Roman helmet (doesn't everybody?) so my young assistant here is showing how to model one. The viaduct is still an active site after all.
I told some ghost stories, showed them some bollards that are inverted cannon and then we went and bounced on a Castlefield bridge. Perhaps seventeen years ago I took a group of German young women on a music tour and on the sickle bridge in Castlefield they jumped up and down, making it bounce, while singing at the top of their voices Oasis' 'Wonderwall'. Fast forward to 2022 and that marvellous moment was re-enacted by some lively south Mancunian 11-year-olds. Who knew that such tender youth would know the words to a tune from 1995? They made drew some lovely pics afterwards and posted them on Twitter.
I told some ghost stories, showed them some bollards that are inverted cannon and then we went and bounced on a Castlefield bridge. Perhaps seventeen years ago I took a group of German young women on a music tour and on the sickle bridge in Castlefield they jumped up and down, making it bounce, while singing at the top of their voices Oasis' 'Wonderwall'. Fast forward to 2022 and that marvellous moment was re-enacted by some lively south Mancunian 11-year-olds. Who knew that such tender youth would know the words to a tune from 1995? They made drew some lovely pics afterwards and posted them on Twitter.
A mighty fine group organised by Quadriga, the company doing so much to restore the face of Manchester architecture, for example London Road Fire Station. These fine people come from lots of different companies and from across the region. They were very receptive to the tour. We finished up at The Black Friar just up the road from the Quadriga Salford office. There was a networking event in the garden after I’d stopped guiding. The Black Friar is an excellent restoration of a cracking pub by Salboy and Domis. This gives confidence for the work to take place at the historically important Commercial Hotel on Liverpool Road in Castlefield.
Bad cameraman here. This isn’t all the group from Clancy, the construction company, but just some because the other pics I took seemed not to, well, take. We had a good time scooting round the city and finishing up in the Town Hall Tavern for a quiz based on what I had said during the tour. The prizes were a couple of my books. The Lost and Imagined book reveals why the pub is called the Town Hall Tavern which isn’t as obvious as it seems.
The most ridiculous tour I do. The Secret Tunnels Tour patrolling the river bed of the River Medlock. Waders are needed as several people found out who'd ignored the request. Honestly, if you come on this tour you protection up to the waist - unlike this guest who was saturated in leggings and walking boots (inset picture). Still, we had a cracking time and it was all over by 9am. Everybody then had the rest of Sunday 26 June to dry out.
Palm trees, blue skies...ah yes Didsbury. A fine group here on the 10.30am-12.30pm tour (25/6/22) of a suburb rich in stories and full of good-looking places or, in this case, at the Parsonage Gardens, very beautiful places. The latter is maintained and run by the Didsbury Parsonage Trust, people who give their time to preserve a beautiful building (behind the group in the photo) and maintain and enhance a simply gorgeous garden. On the tour there were tales of the eccentric Fletcher Moss, who lived in the Parsonage, plus tales of a remarkable Victoria Cross award, a beer-selling monkey, the scandalous Georgie Ellis and how Didsbury was central to the building of the Manchester Ship Canal. Great place for a tour so there's another on Sunday 25 September.
Another delightful occasion patrolling the Castlefield Viaduct project with MCC Construction who are delivering the project. Here the group are in the Oxnoble learning the reason behind the name of the pub and enjoying a refreshing conclusion to an expedition around the Castlefield/St John's area. I think it was the timber setts that delivered for them. We have Anna and Chris on the right from MCC Construction and Dave second left. The young lady in the foreground is Dave's daughter April who writes for Joe magazine in London.
Hilarious tour early evening on Saturday 18 June with four lovely chaps on a birthday spree and a trio of mum from Glasgow, lad from Glasgow and his partner who was from all over the UK at various stages of her life. The Glasgow lad goes on mammoth running expeditions of double marathons or some such. We're in the Kings Arms pub Salford and the smiles say it all. The birthday boy is the one receiving a hug.
ALL TOURS ARE AVAILABLE FOR PRIVATE HIRE. HERE'S A LIST OF TOURS. BESPOKE TOURS ARE ALSO AVAILABLE FOR WHATEVER MANCHESTER AND NW THEME YOU MAY WISH TO PURSUE.
A small but beautifully formed music tour in Castlefield borders after listening to lots of Manchester music and hearing all the anecdotes. The two people, second and third from the right, are from Norrland in Sweden particularly the city of Umea (pronounced OO-me-oh). They were astonished that I'd been there. I went one February, maybe seventeen years ago, at the invitation of the mayor and the city to write a report on its suitability as a tourist town. I have that report somewhere still. Loved the experience and walked across a frozen river - not something that one can frequently do in the UK. Also saw, in some small venue, Daniel Cirera and found his most bitter of bitter-sweet songs darkly wonderful. This is Roadtrippin' which he played and is one of the few songs that doesn't contain expletives. I had a chat with him after the gig. A very striking character indeed. Not long after I was back in Manchester chatting to Tony Wilson and he thought Cirera superb as well. Fitting that I was on a music tour recalling this to people from Umea.
Here's the tour group for the Libraries Festival, Manchester is one of the UNESCO Cities of Literature after all. We marched, it was a long tour, from Central Library to The Portico Library to Chetham's Library to John Rylands Library, the best foursome of public libraries in a relatively tight area in any city in Europe, perhaps anywhere. It was moving to see some Mancunians slightly overcome by the beauty of buildings they'd never been in. Manfred Krause from Germany, tall chap, second from the left, was here for a meeting with me afterwards about a tour later in the year, over a few days, looking at Manchester, the Marx and Engels' link and the Coop movement. The libraries tours cover huge themes of international history and modern life.
Having a drink later, Manfred said with a smile, "Your audience really liked that you found humour in the most serious of subjects." This reminded me of Friedrich Engels who said way back in the 1840s, "No matter how serious the topic the English can't go three minutes without attempting a joke."
Having a drink later, Manfred said with a smile, "Your audience really liked that you found humour in the most serious of subjects." This reminded me of Friedrich Engels who said way back in the 1840s, "No matter how serious the topic the English can't go three minutes without attempting a joke."
The second British Council for Offices tour, see below for the first. A few people have fled the tour early here because they had to get to other events. The three folk on the left of the group joined me in the Briton's Protection for pint and a reflective chat about property and some of the startling differences in the office market between London and Manchester.
This was a 9am stroll around the southern part of the city centre for Manchester Central and these important people who may help being conferences and exhibitions to the city. A sunny day with sunny characters.
The first of two lovely bundles of tours on consecutive days with my colleague and friend Emma Fox. We did two tours each at 2pm on 15/16 June for the British Council for Offices. This was was a very engaged group asking questions and seemingly really enjoying themselves. The gentleman on the extreme left has lived in the London area for years and years but grew up in Hyde and had some good stories about coming into Manchester in the 1980s when the underground scene was grand but the central areas terribly contracted with nobody living in them except in St John's Gardens and on top of the Arndale Centre in Cromford Court. He remembered how people stayed in their smaller towns and socialised on weekends unless there was a gig they wanted to attend. How things have changed with Manchester now a magnet pulling people in from all those small towns.
People are increasingly fascinated by Ancoats and New Islington. They are ridiculously dynamic areas, the development is so heady, so sudden almost, the transformation so complete that people want to learn what's going on. This was the case with this huge tour group. Come and join me on the next tour through the area.
Lisa Ashurst's birthday celebrations on 11 June. It was a big one so she invited lots of people along on a pub tour with me. Lisa is in turquoise and standing at the back in the top picture. This is our special space in the Abel Heywood pub in the Northern Quarter. We've just finished the Manchester music quiz wherein Geraldine Vesey's team scooped the prize. Geraldine is knocking a drink back, third from the left in the top picture. In that pic too, and in the foreground, are Rox Hughes on the left and Janine Watson on the right who's trying to hide from the camera by wearing dark glasses. Her husband Dario is absent and had been occupying the empty seat in the extreme foreground. No idea where he'd nipped off, maybe to get more drink. This was good news for the picture as he is so tall he would have blotted everybody out. Lisa, who has played a significant role in Manchester's development, was a perfect host and later in Band on the Wall was really getting into the mood. I had to leave then but apparently they still talk about her at Freight Island where she finished up.
A truly multi-national group from Europe and very healthy too. We walked from West Gorton and Sponge Park to the Central Library. Loads of great conversations en route from a range of accents. A very lovely occasion which again showed that while aspirations and hopes and the fears are the same everywhere, the way cultures develop produce delightful differences of tone and nuance. This was part of the ‘Zero Carbon Cities’ project.
The second in the series of tours for MCC Construction who are delivering the Castlefield Viaduct scheme for the National Trust. The aim is to oscillate around Castlefield in different directions so we always find a different hostelry to finish in. Here we are in the Briton's Protection sorting out the world. Chris on the left and Russ, second from the right, are from MCC.
Altrincham is a fine town to promenade through on a Queen's Jubilee Tour. The market area is now like a little Paris, no honestly, get down and have a look, outdoor eateries, people quoting poetry and so on - something like that. This is the group from a tour organised by Altrincham Bid. I loved telling the story of the odd William Cunliffe Brooks, come on another one to learn why.
Three pictures and a video above. I conducted the first events for my friend Matthew Frost's 60th birthday on the Thursday, the tour and the quiz at Matt & Phred's jazz club. I met the vast group at The Kimpton Clock Tower Hotel for the Tour of Uninteresting Objects and then we wended our circuitous way north to Matt & Phred's. It was a good laugh especially when we were outside Manchester's 'ugliest and most sinister building' and a car pulled away so I had room to speak to the group but promptly another car attempted to park in the same space. Twenty people waved the bewildered newcomer into their parking spot.
Outside Matt & Phred's Matthew elegantly skipped through the video (he likes skipping) in a fine three-piece suit. Modesty precludes me from mentioning the booby prizes the team who came last in the quiz were gifted.
The whole set of celebrations for Matthew's visit went swimmingly well. I attended the party at the Eagle on the Friday and the whisky tasting at Rogue Studios on the Saturday. After the Eagle pub some of us had attempted to have a last one in the Rover's Return pub on Chapel Street. It was closed so we booked a taxi and waited at which point a jolly drunk emerged from the pub, asked if we took drugs, then informed us he was compromised for size in his gentleman department before trying to take our cab as it arrived. As we drove off he was laughing and dancing in front of a double-decker bus as it slowed at a stop. Cities are odd places.
Outside Matt & Phred's Matthew elegantly skipped through the video (he likes skipping) in a fine three-piece suit. Modesty precludes me from mentioning the booby prizes the team who came last in the quiz were gifted.
The whole set of celebrations for Matthew's visit went swimmingly well. I attended the party at the Eagle on the Friday and the whisky tasting at Rogue Studios on the Saturday. After the Eagle pub some of us had attempted to have a last one in the Rover's Return pub on Chapel Street. It was closed so we booked a taxi and waited at which point a jolly drunk emerged from the pub, asked if we took drugs, then informed us he was compromised for size in his gentleman department before trying to take our cab as it arrived. As we drove off he was laughing and dancing in front of a double-decker bus as it slowed at a stop. Cities are odd places.
This was tour for me not by me from Emma Cullen, the project manager of U+I for Mayfield Park. She was showing me around Mayfield park which opens in August when the plants have bedded in. The video shows my brief interview with Emma. Fascinating woman. A Stretfordian, she was once the tenth fastest female sprinter in the UK but now runs a tidy race on huge projects such as this one, projects which are breathing life into dead areas. I wrote about the park here. Emma is moving on from U+I to help out with the almost adjacent ID Manchester, another transformational scheme in the central areas.
Let's talk about Julia Fawcett, CEO of The Lowry, in the top picture here, shortly.
Firstly the hands down winner of the best name of a person I've taken around on a tour this year: Eva Kirstine Fabricius, here shown third from left in the pictue immediately above. She organised a superb occasion on 1 June. We toured the area around the Innside Hotel where her and her very important Danish group were staying. Later we trammed it to Old Trafford and walked past LCCC and then MUFC to The Quays. Half the group had to leave to catch flights from Manchester Airport by the time I took this picture. This was the groups mission. 'The Danish Architecture Centre (DAC) is organizing an urban leadership program (sic) for Danish municipal directors. The program is a masterclass in Strategic Urban Governance aiming to educate and inspire the directors in the municipalities to take a holistic, strategic approach to urban development and urban change. We present the participants with the latest theoretical frameworks, give them practical leadership tools, present them with real life cases (good as well as bad) and arrange study trips in Denmark and abroad.' Thus the people in the group were from lots of different towns and cities in Denmark. I loved taking them around.
Now special thanks must go to Julia who, at relatively short notice, gave her time to explaining to the Danes the role The Lowry plays in trying to bring great shows, art and more to Salford and to gather into the venue the people of the city and Greater Manchester of all income levels and backgrounds. The problems facing huge cultural assets such as The Lowry post-Covid was highlighted in carefully chosen yet clearly thought-through words. It was a masterclass in presentation and moving in its own way too.
Firstly the hands down winner of the best name of a person I've taken around on a tour this year: Eva Kirstine Fabricius, here shown third from left in the pictue immediately above. She organised a superb occasion on 1 June. We toured the area around the Innside Hotel where her and her very important Danish group were staying. Later we trammed it to Old Trafford and walked past LCCC and then MUFC to The Quays. Half the group had to leave to catch flights from Manchester Airport by the time I took this picture. This was the groups mission. 'The Danish Architecture Centre (DAC) is organizing an urban leadership program (sic) for Danish municipal directors. The program is a masterclass in Strategic Urban Governance aiming to educate and inspire the directors in the municipalities to take a holistic, strategic approach to urban development and urban change. We present the participants with the latest theoretical frameworks, give them practical leadership tools, present them with real life cases (good as well as bad) and arrange study trips in Denmark and abroad.' Thus the people in the group were from lots of different towns and cities in Denmark. I loved taking them around.
Now special thanks must go to Julia who, at relatively short notice, gave her time to explaining to the Danes the role The Lowry plays in trying to bring great shows, art and more to Salford and to gather into the venue the people of the city and Greater Manchester of all income levels and backgrounds. The problems facing huge cultural assets such as The Lowry post-Covid was highlighted in carefully chosen yet clearly thought-through words. It was a masterclass in presentation and moving in its own way too.
These lucky people gained access to Albert Hall during a tour of some of the more spectacular interiors in the city centre. We're sat in the gallery above the stunning space - see the picture above the one with the guests. Thanks to Agne (left front) from Mission Mars, the company which runs the venue along with Albert's Schloss below Albert Hall, who took time out from her busy day to show us around.
Architects on a private tour taking in the delights of Chapel Street in Salford looking at splendid award-winning developments such as Timekeepers Square and much else around this rapidly developing thoroughfare. Here the group are outside Salford Cathedral. The picture above this one shows the pale brick of the Timekeepers houses with the tower of St Phillip's church behind by Robert Smirke from 1824, who also designed a tiny little place in London, The British Museum. That pale brick has the always funny name of Smoked Branco Wienerberger which turns out to not be a sausage for sale on the Christmas Markets. I wrote about the development in 2017.
This was the first article I wrote about the National Trust's Castlefield Viaduct project back in 2021. It probably needs updating now. But I am very grateful for MCC Construction to have invited me to take their guests on tours around the site. We always finish in a place of dalliance, reflection and refreshment. In this case 53two on Watson Street, which is aptly in ex-railway arches which led to the Castlefield viaducts.
It's the fortnightly Heaton Hall tour in this picture with people exploring the splendid interiors, the exceptional exterior, taking on the lions at the front of the hall and listening to 250 years of music. Thanks to the Friends of Heaton Hall for helping facilitate these adventures.
A mixed-aged covering probably eight decades from Stockport NASUWT - aka The Teachers Union. I have taken these fine people around for many years with, of course, a gap during Covid times. This time the walk theme was: 'The return to 1421 - The Old Town and Medieval Manchester in its modern context'. A bespoke tour can easily be arranged.
A music tour down by the Bridgewater Canal after we'd waltzed from the Bridgewater Hall, via the Free Trade Hall, the old Theatre Royal, Central Library, Oxford Street, The Palace Theatre, The Ritz, the former club sites of The Hacienda and The Boardwalk before finishing outside Pete Waterman's old recording studio here in Castlefield.
This was a speaking event at The Brooklyn Hotel on Portland Street. I didn't get a picture of the guests but I did get a picture of a rainy Manchester from the splendid meeting space at the top of the new building. The event was a fundraiser by Manchester company Steroplast for North West Air Ambulance and Forever Manchester. Another speaker Nick Massey of Forever Manchester was as funny as ever but also underlined the great importance of the work they do. Thanks to Janice from Steroplast for arranging the whole occasion.
This is Mike Ostrowski (fourth from the left) and friends from Mellor and neighbouring Marple. We were on a tour of Ancoats and New Islington and again the changes in the area astonished the group. We also had a lively chat from Martin Glynn, the boss of Halle St Peters. I wrote an article about the latter here. We're finishing with a drink in Seven Brothers bar in Cutting Room Square.
This is a group from Handelsbanken on a tour with drinks on 19 May 2022. This is us finishing up at Mackie Mayor on Swan Street with a little quiz. Thanks to Oliver Jones of Handelsbanken on the extreme left for gathering the guests and being such jolly company.
Here's the Arts Society of Marlow lined up against the wall at Manchester Art Gallery which they are about to tour. I spent a lovely few hours with these fine folk on 18 May 2022. They regularly go on trips around the UK to see the joys of their own country. We walked from Hotel Indigo at Victoria, took in Chetham's Library, Manchester Cathedral, the Royal Exchange and refreshed ourselves with a cup of tea or coffee. Whenever I see the word Marlow though I can't help but recall the possibly apocryphal tale about Hollywood bombshell Jean Harlow when she met Margot Asquith and pronounced the latter's first name with a 't' at the end. Apparently Asquith responded with, "No, no, Jean. The 't' is silent as in Harlow'. Funny how the mind makes those links.
I've started to guide Knutsford recently and it is a marvellous town to take people round chocker with fun and serious stories and excellent buildings too. Come along on the next one and even bring your fluffy pooch: in this case a lovely dog called Cara. I must remind myself to tell her wonderful owners, Liliana and Lorin, standing behind her in this picture, to tell Cara to turn round for her photograph next time.
A few of us had a pint or two in the Lord Eldon pub afterwards. Not sure about the story Jo (extreme right in the shades) told us about when he lived in Frankfurt and he had an apartment neighbour called Naked Jorg who would patrol the streets, as his name suggests, in the buff. He still does apparently, claiming he's allergic to clothes. Jo would sometimes have to share a lift with the man which, understandably, was disconcerting.
Anyway, if you like tours in the region and aren't allergic to clothes this is one of the richest of my tours in terms of material condensed in a very small area. There's another Knutsford tour on 30 July.
A few of us had a pint or two in the Lord Eldon pub afterwards. Not sure about the story Jo (extreme right in the shades) told us about when he lived in Frankfurt and he had an apartment neighbour called Naked Jorg who would patrol the streets, as his name suggests, in the buff. He still does apparently, claiming he's allergic to clothes. Jo would sometimes have to share a lift with the man which, understandably, was disconcerting.
Anyway, if you like tours in the region and aren't allergic to clothes this is one of the richest of my tours in terms of material condensed in a very small area. There's another Knutsford tour on 30 July.
On Saturday 14 May it was a tour round the Edgar Wood building in Victoria Park aka the former First Church of Christ Scientist. I was very remiss because I failed to take a picture of the group. Still I got lucky as later Jeremy Parrett from the Special Collections (a visit is really recommended) at Manchester Metropolitan University kindly sent me these images from inside the church before it was vandalised and then restored. This shows the text that once adorned the walls around the reader platform, which has also been lost. Fortunately the best internal feature the organ screen has been saved.
Temple are based in the fabulous Express Building on Great Ancoats Street. They are a company which (ready for this?) 'are leaders in the field of built and natural environments and creating sustainable futures'. They're good sports though. We did a Scavenger Hunt or Treasure Hunt across the Northern Quarter and Ancoats which I'd written. Then the teams had to make something out of plasticine which represented Manchester. The winning entry and the winning team are pictured above. I thought the figure in the centre of their sculptural masterpiece was Bez, they said it was Alan Turing. I still don't believe them.
This was a very interesting occasion. A remote meeting with Turner prize-winner Chris Ofili and others. Chris was trying to understand more about the place of his birthday, Longsight in Manchester. Along for the ride were Imogen, Claire and Shanaz. It lovely to chat about Longsight and the city.
The Heaton Hall tour on a busy open day with some guests who asked all manner of interesting questions. A couple of them almost broke into a dance when the Glen Miller music came on.
A small group but big in heart for the ghost tour on the afternoon of 7 May.
The Angel Meadow and Irk Valley tour on 7 May with a large group of urban explorers prepared to walk a couple or so miles in urban decay which is beginning to have a couple of billion pound spent on it. In reality it's a fine bit of rurality in the city - rus in urbe for the Latin scholars if you like. Some of us finished off with a couple of pints in the Marble Arch pub.
A lovely group from Ernst Young on a tour following a team-building event. I very much appreciated the laughter from the young woman on the left in orange to the stupid joke I have made up to explain the nature of graphene, which was discovered in Manchester. The joke goes like this. "I used to be a stand-up comedian but had to give it up. My whole routine was about graphene but the audience found it the world's thinnest material." Genius, eh?
The Engels and Marx tour on the occasion of Marx's birthday, 5 May, which is also the Manchester Guardian's birthday. Marx would have been 204 years old and the Guardian would have been 201 years old. The gentleman on the left, Mario Stuchlik, had come from Germany and remembered East Berlin before the wall came down, while the lady on the right, Fiona Brehony, has made art documentary films about the area shown here, Angel Meadow. She appears to have fallen asleep standing up but she assures me she was listening. I mentioned the cooperative movement on the tour as an example of the political fecundity of Greater Manchester in the 1840s. Paul Tweedale, second from the left, told us how he is a direct descendent of one of the Rochdale Pioneers who created the first successful cooperative in 1844. James Tweedale was one of the directors of that first shop on Toad Lane that we'll visit on Saturday 4 June on the Rochdale tour.
This one isn't a tour but the British Council of Offices' Northern Gala Dinner and Awards at the Kimpton Clock Tower hotel. I was the compere and host. This was a mighty party with way more than 400 people in the Art Deco-ish room. It was strange to be on the podium in a space I often guide on the Kimpton Clock Tower tours.
Richard Beaumont and team from HSBC bank on a tour of the city including its music tradition.
A Heaton Hall tour and clever Geoff Blunt, third from the left, added to the stories associated with the hall. The building is filled with symbolism such as arrows and lyres. There's a feast of Classical mythological imagery too. Arrows feature on the coat of arms of Sir Thomas Egerton who comissioned the hall and so are represented across the property.
The main artwork in the former dining room is a copy, in oil, of Guercino's 'Death of Dido' pictured above. The story comes from Roman poet Virgil's 'Aeneid', an epic poem about the hero Aeneas, fleeing the fall of Troy with his ultimate destiny to found Rome. En route he journeys to Carthage where he and Queen Dido fall in love. Eventually to fulfil that destiny he has to leave her and she kills herself.
Geoff dug deep into his classical education and remembered this passage from the 'Aeneid', Book IV, about Dido falling madly, hopelessly, in love. Arrows are part of the imagery here, of which another classical student, Sir Thomas Egerton, would have been aware. Thus that family arrows theme is continued.
‘Ah, the unknowing minds of seers! What use are prayers
or shrines to the impassioned? Meanwhile her tender marrow
is aflame, and a silent wound is alive in her breast.
Wretched Dido burns, and wanders frenzied through the city,
like an unwary deer struck by an arrow, that a shepherd hunting
with his bow has fired at from a distance, in the Cretan woods,
leaving the winged steel in her, without knowing.
She runs through the woods and glades of Dicte:
the lethal shaft hangs in her side.’
Dicte was the name of an area of Crete and also part of the name of a goddess or mountain nymph, a huntress, often conflated with Artemis. The huntress always carried a bow and a quiver of arrows. These details all add to the story.
The main artwork in the former dining room is a copy, in oil, of Guercino's 'Death of Dido' pictured above. The story comes from Roman poet Virgil's 'Aeneid', an epic poem about the hero Aeneas, fleeing the fall of Troy with his ultimate destiny to found Rome. En route he journeys to Carthage where he and Queen Dido fall in love. Eventually to fulfil that destiny he has to leave her and she kills herself.
Geoff dug deep into his classical education and remembered this passage from the 'Aeneid', Book IV, about Dido falling madly, hopelessly, in love. Arrows are part of the imagery here, of which another classical student, Sir Thomas Egerton, would have been aware. Thus that family arrows theme is continued.
‘Ah, the unknowing minds of seers! What use are prayers
or shrines to the impassioned? Meanwhile her tender marrow
is aflame, and a silent wound is alive in her breast.
Wretched Dido burns, and wanders frenzied through the city,
like an unwary deer struck by an arrow, that a shepherd hunting
with his bow has fired at from a distance, in the Cretan woods,
leaving the winged steel in her, without knowing.
She runs through the woods and glades of Dicte:
the lethal shaft hangs in her side.’
Dicte was the name of an area of Crete and also part of the name of a goddess or mountain nymph, a huntress, often conflated with Artemis. The huntress always carried a bow and a quiver of arrows. These details all add to the story.
The Manchester Walkabout Music tour and lots of rockers and rollers with their dancing (er..walking) shoes on in Castlefield Basin.
Here are six more elegant folk on a tour round the cracking little town of Knutsford. The town has great stories and fabulous architecture. The group are standing in front of columns that once adorned St Peter's Church (also pictured) in Manchester. When this was demolished architectural magpie Richard Harding Watt brought the columns to Knutsford to add interest to his Gaskell Memorial Tower and Kings' Coffee House. Thus 13 miles or so from the incident itself we have two physical witnesses of the Peterloo Massacre. St Peter's Church was designed by James Wyatt who also designed Heaton Hall. It was finished in 1788 and demolished in 1907. There's another tour of the town on Saturday 14 May.
Sam Doyle finally got this LK Group tour off the ground two years after it was booked. We had a grand time touring pubs and finished in the Black Friar pub eating Ben Chaplin's wondrous pies - the best in the city centre area being served in a restaurant or bar.
A resplendent group of people admiring the terracotta wonders of the Kimpton Clock Tower hotel on 16 April. The building was built as the Refuge Assurrance Company headquarters in the 1890s and the early 1900s with a 1930s extension. It is not only full of beautiful architectural details but also has some great stories to tell too. There are regular tours.
A group of travellers and locals on this tour with some of the group from New Zealand and all enjoying a spooky tour with lots of other information thrown in. This is part of the Walkabout series.
Another fine group on a tour of one of the most beautiful northern grand houses: Heaton Hall. The chap fifth from the right is Dr Stephen Lloyd, curator of the Earl of Derby collection at Knowsley. He offered to take me around Knowsley Hall and I'll definitely be taking him up on that.
This was the fortnightly Heaton Hall tour, exclusive to me, taking place at 11am on Sundays. It is one of my favourite to conduct as I can develop a consistent narrative. And there's music as well.
This was the fortnightly Heaton Hall tour, exclusive to me, taking place at 11am on Sundays. It is one of my favourite to conduct as I can develop a consistent narrative. And there's music as well.
The Saturday ghost tour with some recent guests from Hong Kong on the right, now UK citizens. In the middle is Colin Carmichael and friend who were spending the day in the city taking in the art and the food and my tour.
These two and the two young French women on the right had a pint with me in the City Arms after the tour. The French women now both live in Switzerland and we had an illuminating discussion about the state of politics and life in the UK, France and Switzerland. They were here to see the band Bastille at the AO Arena. Clotilde, second from the left, wasn't sure whether she was a true band fanatic or just a normal sort of fan. I think she said she has seen them ten times so I'm going for the former rather than the latter. Manon, the blonde young lady, agrees with me too I think.
This is part of the absolute joy of guiding, meeting people from across the country and the world who offer insights into their regions and countries and what makes them tick.
These two and the two young French women on the right had a pint with me in the City Arms after the tour. The French women now both live in Switzerland and we had an illuminating discussion about the state of politics and life in the UK, France and Switzerland. They were here to see the band Bastille at the AO Arena. Clotilde, second from the left, wasn't sure whether she was a true band fanatic or just a normal sort of fan. I think she said she has seen them ten times so I'm going for the former rather than the latter. Manon, the blonde young lady, agrees with me too I think.
This is part of the absolute joy of guiding, meeting people from across the country and the world who offer insights into their regions and countries and what makes them tick.
Two pictures above of University of Minnesota students up from London where they are on placement for a term. Many of them had never been out of the States and they were really enjoying the UK. Some were 21 and some weren't quite 21 but they were all enjoying one fact in particular, they could all drink in pubs given they were over 18. Indeed it was the birthday of the young woman fourth from the left and she'd already been enjoying the celebrations before the tour. She was a bit lively but charming company as were the rest of the group.
Marple Local History Society came on a tour focussing on Manchester’s strong tradition of radical women starting at the Emmeline Pankhurst statue where we also had a presentation from Andrew Simcock (second from the left) who led the successful campaign to deliver the work. He’s a proper gent who is now raising money for an Emily Williamson statue at Fletcher Moss, Didsbury. Williamson was the woman who was the principal founder of the Royal Society for the Protection of Birds.
The Friends of Whitworth Art Gallery went on a tour with me through Ancoats and New Islington. The guests had never been to this area and found the energy there remarkable. The blossoming of this part of the city centre has come in short order, in less than a decade. Thanks to Jennie Banfield for bringing the group along. We’ll be doing another tour later in the year.
The Mayfield tour was aborted this month as we couldn’t gain access. Instead, some of the guests decided to come on a tour of the Northern Quarter. I had a great chat with Andrew in the front here. He comes from a musical family and delights in playing the organ in churches or indeed anywhere he can. We finished in the Unicorn pub for a pint or two. The gentleman with the dog brought it into the pub. The barman brought over some water for the pooch, then the landlady said dogs weren’t allowed in the pub but started stroking the animal and relented completely.
This was the first full tour of Knutsford I’ve conducted and I loved doing it. The stories are so rich and the buildings so fine. There’s tragedy with the Alan Turing case being held at the former sessions court here, there’s the uplifting story of Elizabeth Gaskell, the eccentric story of Thomas ‘Jerusalem’ Whaley and also loads of ace buildings by Richard Harding Watt.
Given the times, its relevant that some people have claimed the American General Patten really boosted the inevitability of the Cold War, post WWII, when he made a speech at the old Town Hall of Knutsford. He said: "Russia knows what she wants. World domination. And she is laying her plans accordingly. We, on the other hand (and England and France to a lesser extent) don't know what we want. We get less than nothing as a result. If we have to fight them, now is the time. From now on, we will get weaker and they will get stronger. Let's keep out boots polished, bayonets sharpened, and present a picture of force and strength to the Russians. This is the only language that they understand and respect. If we fail to do this, then I would like to say that we have had a victory over the Germans, and have disarmed them, but we have lost the war." Crikey.
One further point about this tour. The guests were part of a south Manchester and Cheshire Scottish dancing group. I should have bought a pair of swords.
Given the times, its relevant that some people have claimed the American General Patten really boosted the inevitability of the Cold War, post WWII, when he made a speech at the old Town Hall of Knutsford. He said: "Russia knows what she wants. World domination. And she is laying her plans accordingly. We, on the other hand (and England and France to a lesser extent) don't know what we want. We get less than nothing as a result. If we have to fight them, now is the time. From now on, we will get weaker and they will get stronger. Let's keep out boots polished, bayonets sharpened, and present a picture of force and strength to the Russians. This is the only language that they understand and respect. If we fail to do this, then I would like to say that we have had a victory over the Germans, and have disarmed them, but we have lost the war." Crikey.
One further point about this tour. The guests were part of a south Manchester and Cheshire Scottish dancing group. I should have bought a pair of swords.
This was a fascinating day with guests from the municipality of Rotterdam including planners and civil servants, contractors and representatives of Mecanoo, the Dutch architectural practice. They’d had a bit of a heavy night before generously partaking of Manchester hospitality but they were all game for a long walk around the city. As usual with such guests they couldn’t believe the pace of change in Manchester.
We first toured the Mecanoo designed Kampus complex ascending to the roof terrace for some great views. The Lego model of the complex was cute in the management office. The guests were surprised that, unlike in Holland, 20% of the scheme wasn’t affordable housing. We don’t have this stipulation. The Meccanoo architect was also surprised by the fact the completed complex was exactly how he’d designed it rather than having lots of compromises foisted on it during construction.
We had lunch at Café Cotton in the excellent Halle St Peter’s in Ancoats. The guests didn’t like the Manchester water though. I told them it comes from the Lake District and is soft mountain water. They didn’t like it any better with that information and said their water was better, although one of the guests laughed and said, "even though it is 100% recycle". I’m going to have to go to Rotterdam and check their water quality because I can’t believe it’s better. Perhaps the chlorine in the water turned them off.
We finished with a trip in vehicles through Castlefield, Middlewood Locks and out to the Quays. The guests were in Manchester to look at how we did waterside developments. I thought this odd as surely there’s nobody better at doing waterside developments in the world than the Dutch. Apparently, the site they are transforming in their city is a former Unilever industrial complex and it was this aspect, the transformation from waterside industrial to waterside residential that really interested them, and is of course, something which Manchester has done very frequently in recent years.
We first toured the Mecanoo designed Kampus complex ascending to the roof terrace for some great views. The Lego model of the complex was cute in the management office. The guests were surprised that, unlike in Holland, 20% of the scheme wasn’t affordable housing. We don’t have this stipulation. The Meccanoo architect was also surprised by the fact the completed complex was exactly how he’d designed it rather than having lots of compromises foisted on it during construction.
We had lunch at Café Cotton in the excellent Halle St Peter’s in Ancoats. The guests didn’t like the Manchester water though. I told them it comes from the Lake District and is soft mountain water. They didn’t like it any better with that information and said their water was better, although one of the guests laughed and said, "even though it is 100% recycle". I’m going to have to go to Rotterdam and check their water quality because I can’t believe it’s better. Perhaps the chlorine in the water turned them off.
We finished with a trip in vehicles through Castlefield, Middlewood Locks and out to the Quays. The guests were in Manchester to look at how we did waterside developments. I thought this odd as surely there’s nobody better at doing waterside developments in the world than the Dutch. Apparently, the site they are transforming in their city is a former Unilever industrial complex and it was this aspect, the transformation from waterside industrial to waterside residential that really interested them, and is of course, something which Manchester has done very frequently in recent years.
My job leads to some strange moments.
I was with Elaine Griffiths (in the yellow jacket in the picture above) who has battled bureaucracy at Gorton Monastery for almost thirty years in east Manchester, to, forgive the pun, resurrect this remarkable and huge building.
She's not only put it back together but also given it use as an events centre in the most unlikely of places, far from hotels and smart (i.e. any) restaurants. More than that she's also delivered for a poor and deprived area of Manchester a community resource, cafe and so on from Sunday to Thursday with fund-raising events on Friday and Saturday.
Those few words do not do her work at Gorton justice in any way at all. I have never known such single-handed devotion to bring back an important historic building. She's had help from her husband, Paul, who was a choirboy here before the church closed, and many others, but she has been the driving force with her commitment. This was marked with an OBE in 2022 at Windsor Castle.
The reason for my visit was as a recce for a sold-out tour of the Monastery. Elaine and I had a great time strolling the place and I was very pleased to learn Elaine would be accompaning me on the actual tour as the full story has to be told by her to do it any kind of justice. I could relay all the architectural stuff and background but she could add the human detail about rescuing the building.
It was all going well but in the astonishing nave, the high and mighty nave, there was a problem - with the devil. Some cunning folk had said they'd wanted to do a book-signing session in the deconsecrated church and they'd said it was a spiritual signing. The admin team at the Monastery are always seeking funds and the organisers of the event were willing to pay the price asked. All good.
Well, not really. Elaine and I found the books themselves ready for the evening's event. The books were the 12-series Afterlife Saga by cult-writer Stephanie Hudson who, as the picture shows below, doesn't look like butter would melt in her mouth.
Her books are called things such as The Pentagram Child or Blood of the Infinity War and the whole Afterlife Saga is populated by demons, vampires, zombies and so forth.
To make matters more there was a very large angel figure placed on the former organ loft. It was made from board and it was black. It was Lucifer. Elaine didn't like that.
"Sacred spaces are supposed to have an energy," she said, "even when deconsecrated, but we're supposed to be looking out for people who want to channel that for dark or occult purposes. I need to cover that up. I need a table cloth."
Ten minutes later I was perched unsteadily thirty feet above a very hard-looking nave floor. The Afterlife people had balanced Old Nick precariously on chairs and books right over the organ loft balustrade. I was standing on the wobbly chairs, wobbling myself, trying to get the cloth over the wing of Satan and staring into the void beneath. To say I was relieved when I could hop down is an understatement.
That would have been a ridiculous way to die: falling from an organ loft while trying to drag a table cloth over Lucifer. It would have made me eligible for one of those Darwin Death Awards.
Two days later and Elaine was leading my group around the monastery and telling us the story of its rescue and all the hard work it entailed and how events were a good money earner for the monastery. Then we had an event of our own.
We were standing in the lovely cloister garden and as we left to go back into the building a peregrine falcon swooped from the heavens in a shower of wing feathers with talons full of pigeon. I was in the building so missed the action but lots of my guests didn't, still I went back outside and got a picture (see above). Couldn't miss that.
Was this some kind of divine manifestation of Satan's revenge? Was it a sign? Stephanie Hudson would probably think so. I don't.
I just think it was a hungry peregrine falcon. I adore these masters of the sky, the fastest animals on earth when diving, birds of prey that have worked their way back from an endangered species in the UK by colonising tall city buildings as proxy cliffs. That pigeon had been hit by sharp claws at speeds of up to 200mph.
This unexpected intervention from the natural world enhanced rather than deflected from a tour-de-force performance by Elaine which had two of my guests in tears as she described the reinvention of Gorton Monastery.
Elaine and I are looking to do another combined tour in July, possibly without a posing peregrine falcon and definitely without a cut-out Lucifer.
I was with Elaine Griffiths (in the yellow jacket in the picture above) who has battled bureaucracy at Gorton Monastery for almost thirty years in east Manchester, to, forgive the pun, resurrect this remarkable and huge building.
She's not only put it back together but also given it use as an events centre in the most unlikely of places, far from hotels and smart (i.e. any) restaurants. More than that she's also delivered for a poor and deprived area of Manchester a community resource, cafe and so on from Sunday to Thursday with fund-raising events on Friday and Saturday.
Those few words do not do her work at Gorton justice in any way at all. I have never known such single-handed devotion to bring back an important historic building. She's had help from her husband, Paul, who was a choirboy here before the church closed, and many others, but she has been the driving force with her commitment. This was marked with an OBE in 2022 at Windsor Castle.
The reason for my visit was as a recce for a sold-out tour of the Monastery. Elaine and I had a great time strolling the place and I was very pleased to learn Elaine would be accompaning me on the actual tour as the full story has to be told by her to do it any kind of justice. I could relay all the architectural stuff and background but she could add the human detail about rescuing the building.
It was all going well but in the astonishing nave, the high and mighty nave, there was a problem - with the devil. Some cunning folk had said they'd wanted to do a book-signing session in the deconsecrated church and they'd said it was a spiritual signing. The admin team at the Monastery are always seeking funds and the organisers of the event were willing to pay the price asked. All good.
Well, not really. Elaine and I found the books themselves ready for the evening's event. The books were the 12-series Afterlife Saga by cult-writer Stephanie Hudson who, as the picture shows below, doesn't look like butter would melt in her mouth.
Her books are called things such as The Pentagram Child or Blood of the Infinity War and the whole Afterlife Saga is populated by demons, vampires, zombies and so forth.
To make matters more there was a very large angel figure placed on the former organ loft. It was made from board and it was black. It was Lucifer. Elaine didn't like that.
"Sacred spaces are supposed to have an energy," she said, "even when deconsecrated, but we're supposed to be looking out for people who want to channel that for dark or occult purposes. I need to cover that up. I need a table cloth."
Ten minutes later I was perched unsteadily thirty feet above a very hard-looking nave floor. The Afterlife people had balanced Old Nick precariously on chairs and books right over the organ loft balustrade. I was standing on the wobbly chairs, wobbling myself, trying to get the cloth over the wing of Satan and staring into the void beneath. To say I was relieved when I could hop down is an understatement.
That would have been a ridiculous way to die: falling from an organ loft while trying to drag a table cloth over Lucifer. It would have made me eligible for one of those Darwin Death Awards.
Two days later and Elaine was leading my group around the monastery and telling us the story of its rescue and all the hard work it entailed and how events were a good money earner for the monastery. Then we had an event of our own.
We were standing in the lovely cloister garden and as we left to go back into the building a peregrine falcon swooped from the heavens in a shower of wing feathers with talons full of pigeon. I was in the building so missed the action but lots of my guests didn't, still I went back outside and got a picture (see above). Couldn't miss that.
Was this some kind of divine manifestation of Satan's revenge? Was it a sign? Stephanie Hudson would probably think so. I don't.
I just think it was a hungry peregrine falcon. I adore these masters of the sky, the fastest animals on earth when diving, birds of prey that have worked their way back from an endangered species in the UK by colonising tall city buildings as proxy cliffs. That pigeon had been hit by sharp claws at speeds of up to 200mph.
This unexpected intervention from the natural world enhanced rather than deflected from a tour-de-force performance by Elaine which had two of my guests in tears as she described the reinvention of Gorton Monastery.
Elaine and I are looking to do another combined tour in July, possibly without a posing peregrine falcon and definitely without a cut-out Lucifer.
As stated above the Heaton Hall tours are some of my favourites to conduct. Here’s another group outside the front entrance that’s at the back of the house. Sounds confusing. It is, but there is a reason for this arrangement which is to allow an unbroken treatment of the façade on the southern side of the building. Come on the tour and find out why it was decided to design things that way.
The Stockport tour was a total success with a vast crowd of guests including people from the town administration. I managed to get the group in the marvellous Plaza Cinema, a phantasmagoria of gorgeous Deco detail. Thanks to Joe Laing for letting us in and for Beth for talking to us up in the circle. The cinema is carved out of the side of the hill here, that meant the removal of hundreds of tons of rock. I arranged for the guests to enter via the fire escape from ground level which is deceptive because that’s the highest point above the stage and the organ. It surprised people. Two of the guests Sarah (who has a rather fabulous nom de plume of Contessa Almaviva) and Jon joined me for a drink later in the Queen’s Head, a delightful pub on Little Underbank.
My good friend Carolyn Blain organised for me to take a Japanese mother and daughter around the city centre. Yuku was the mother and Takara the daughter. Yuku knows Manchester well having visited for many years. Takara is studying in Canada. Intelligent guests are wonderful, asking questions which enable guides to develop a really comprehensive narrative. Here are my guests in the choir of Manchester Cathedral.
This was the Sleazy and Sinister Tour and it, one hopes, lived up to the murky billing with lots of bad behaviour in the stories. We started outside the Cathedral and finished in the Northern Quarter with tales of when the city gave the population 115,000 free pints of 'strong beer' in 1821. It didn't end well. In the centre of the picture are Sarah, mustard dress, and partner Stuart with the dandy hat. They were gluttons for punishment. This was their second tour of the day.
You can see Sarah and Stuart from the Sleazy and Sinister tour on first of these two pictures too. We walked the mile and a half to the start point of the next tour from this glorious place: Ordsall Hall. Look, folks, at those quatrefoils. Saucy eh? Quatrefoils are the four leaf shapes inside the timber framing.
Even more saucy is the truckle-bed. This is the wedding bed of Sir John Radclyffe and Lady Anne Asshawe and dates from the 1570s. The bed is very elaborate and very high. It's high because there was another bed underneath the main bed for a servant to sleep on while the couple were sleeping above and no doubt doing what couples do in bed. Handy that servant in the night, a noble personage might want a drink of water or maybe a snack or even a chamberpot. All one need do is shout the instructions to the lowly person beneath you and off they'd trot.
Even more saucy is the truckle-bed. This is the wedding bed of Sir John Radclyffe and Lady Anne Asshawe and dates from the 1570s. The bed is very elaborate and very high. It's high because there was another bed underneath the main bed for a servant to sleep on while the couple were sleeping above and no doubt doing what couples do in bed. Handy that servant in the night, a noble personage might want a drink of water or maybe a snack or even a chamberpot. All one need do is shout the instructions to the lowly person beneath you and off they'd trot.
A tour to the top looking at that fascinating area of the two cities, the old Salford cross area of Greengate. Here the group are on the roof terrace of 100 Embankment looking down on Manchester Cathedral.
Here we are finishing the Saturday pub tour off with a quiz in the fine 53Two railway arches under Manchester Central.
These fine gents are four of Rochdale's councillors. This is a tour I did for the town as part of my duties with Rochdale Development Agency. The idea is to make the assets Rochdale has for tourism really sing. The esplanade at Rochdale is the grandest of any town in the UK. My Rochdale tour for the general public is on Saturday 4 June.
This is a private tour I did for John Morgan (right middle) and his colleagues. We're in Society, the successful reinvention of the usually fatal-to-businesses location down from the Bridgewater Hall. Society has several operators offering different food and a great range of beers. Finally a business has stuck in this attractive waterside location.
The Manchester and Salford Ramblers taking in a tour of the University area. Here we are in the spectacular and simply enormous MEC-D building. Here's a full description of this magnificent monster. If you get chance nip along and walk through the building, it's open to all during the week.
Here's a fine group of guests at Heaton Hall on one of my regular tours. This was on March 13, 2022.
The Saturday Walkabout series ghost tour ending at St Ann's Church with the fabulous Bonnie Prince Charlie tale of Jemmy Dawson and broken-hearted Katherine Norton.
Here are a group of American travel agents from across the USA. This was a tour on Saturday 12 March and included a very special visit to Chetham's Library which got all the guests gushing over its manifest and manifold charm. The conclusion of the tour was in the Edwardian Hotel where the guests obligingly posed for a picture.
This is a walking group from south Manchester which bask in the splendid, if slightly risque when spoken, title of HAWS. That actually stands for Hale and Altrincham Women's Social. Here they are outside Halle St Peter's in Cutting Room Square, Ancoats.
The Manchester Music Walkabout tour finishes at Peter Waterman's old studio in Castlefield. Ok, this fact isn't part of the classic canon of indie Manchester music but the extremely well-known song 'Never Gonna Give You Up' was recorded here in the eighties. There was much music played on this tour and loads of anecdotes.
Another pub tour on the Saturday Walkabout series ends up in 53Two for a quiz.
A very fine spread of guests in the Saloon of Heaton Hall after briefly listening to Handel, Caruso, Glen Miller and the Stone Roses in the Music Room. The whole story of the house involves love and music. More tours here.
It's the music tour and we've just discussed The Smiths, the Hacienda nightclub and Happy Mondays and Bez. Great fun.
This is the Tour of Uninteresting Objects on 26 February which of course examines lots of interesting objects that are frequently over-looked as people rush by with their busy lives. We've just been looking at Manchester's ugliest building, the access structure to the Cold War Guardian tunnel network now under BT management for use as cabling provision. Andy Spinoza was along for the ride with his handsome pooch.
A small but very interested party on an evening ghost tour. We've just been in the dark under Forsyth's shop where things happen.
It's Friday 26 February and we're finishing off a tour, again outside the former Guardian tunnel network - see two pics up. This is Scott Lowe (third from the left) and team from Endpoint, a company based out in Knutsford.
It's Saturday 19 February and this is my group trying to order coffees and tea from QR codes at Hello Oriental under Symphony Park in Circle Square after a tour of the new city squares which also featured rain, hail, sunshine and all weather types short of a tornado. The tour was based on this article.
These fine people from Nottingham on the left (a family of four) and Amersham on the right came on the Discover Manchester tour and were enthusiastic to learn about the city. The young lady recalled how her teacher at school had studied in Manchester and had told them about her experiences here. She said that teacher's name was Miss Place. I wondered out loud if Miss Place always looked she'd lost something. For a teacher it could have been worse though she could have been called Miss Understanding or Miss Take.
Ah the back alleys of the city, the gruesome ginnels leading from the highways of the central areas. This one is Back Pool Fold and the group and I are discussing hauntings and tales of ducking stools and executions. This is part of the Manchester Walkabout series on a Saturday.
The magnificent First Church of Christ Scientist in Victoria Park and its superb organ screen with my group posed in front. We've just been enjoying the pioneering architecture of Edgar Wood from 1903. Wood should have been our Charles Rennie Mackintosh but he was lazy. I love conducting this tour, there's something delicious about getting exclusive entry into places.
Sometimes I don't lead tours. This epic stroll around Liverpool is at this point in Toxteth south of the city centre at Herculaneum Dock. There were five of us during this part of the day although only Jenny and I feature in the picture at the aptly named 'Dockers Stairs'. The indefatigable queen of, let's call it, 'no-bullshit practical urban studies' was the leader, namely Shelagh McNerney. Shelagh is a Liverpudlian living in Manchester but has been studying and writing about Liverpool (amongst a myriad of other themes) for yonks. She's been delving into her family past too. It was a fascinating walk away from the showpiece parts of the city centre, looking at places where the trickle-down effect is more like an occasional drip.
This is fine timing for a photo, after most of the guests had left. I blame the beer, you can still my unfinished pint in the foregorund. This is Phil and his dad, gents both, full of jovality and wisdom relaxing in the final bar, the impressive railway arch-rich 53Two. There are more pub tours every week.
Ah yes, the mysteries of Mayfield Station. Thanks to Neil (& Doris, his pooch) from @Broadwick_Live for escorting us. Thanks also to @freightisland for oiling the wheels of access, especially Jon Drape. The next tour around this wonderful site is Saturday 2 April.
Fact alert. The mezzanine floor illuminated from underneath behind the group is formed from concretine, a Manchester invention. This is 'a greener and cheaper concrete' alternative that blends concrete with graphene. Of course graphene was discovered by the University of Manchester in 2004 and is a 2D substance that is the world’s strongest known material. It’s stretchy. It conducts electricity and heat. It’s incredibly thin – only as thick as a single atom. Of course the mezzanine floor here is a bit thicker than that.
This is the official script: 'Concretene is technically a formula that allows graphene to evenly disperse throughout concrete, making a stronger mixture that can be poured just like concrete. It has serious green credentials too. Concretene reduces the amount of concrete required by 30% and speeds up the curing time from 28 days to 12 hours. But the big saving point is that concretene eliminates the need for reinforced steel, which can reduce a project’s carbon emissions by an estimated 22%-34%'.
Fact alert. The mezzanine floor illuminated from underneath behind the group is formed from concretine, a Manchester invention. This is 'a greener and cheaper concrete' alternative that blends concrete with graphene. Of course graphene was discovered by the University of Manchester in 2004 and is a 2D substance that is the world’s strongest known material. It’s stretchy. It conducts electricity and heat. It’s incredibly thin – only as thick as a single atom. Of course the mezzanine floor here is a bit thicker than that.
This is the official script: 'Concretene is technically a formula that allows graphene to evenly disperse throughout concrete, making a stronger mixture that can be poured just like concrete. It has serious green credentials too. Concretene reduces the amount of concrete required by 30% and speeds up the curing time from 28 days to 12 hours. But the big saving point is that concretene eliminates the need for reinforced steel, which can reduce a project’s carbon emissions by an estimated 22%-34%'.
This is Stockport later on the same day as the tour below, 3 February. There's the magnificent Stockport. The hoardings are part of the massive transformation taking place in this fine town, just seven miles south of Manchester. The group are from Glenbrook Property who are involved in helping Stockport achieve its huge potential. Lovely group and I'm looking forward to taking more guests around Stockport again with the public tour of the town on 26 March.
This is another university group from the University of Manchester on 3 February. Steph Nixon, the International Programmes Officer, is on the extreme left. This was a hugely multinational group and that's always good for those fascinating nuances of differences you encounter. One lad said, "My main university is Vancouver in British Columbia." "Do you live close to Vancouver?" I said. "Not that far, Calgary," he said. "I thought that was nowhere near Vancouver," I said. "It's only 700 kilometres away," he said. I said, "Only 700? If you live 700 kilometres east of Manchester you've gone through Holland and are residing in Germany. If you live 700km west you'd be out of the over side of Ireland and living on a boat in the Atlantic Ocean." It's curious how the human sense of distance varies with the scale of the country one lives in. When I was growing up in Rochdale you'd never go out in Bury. It was too far away: six miles.
I love the university groups I take around. These are students from the Alliance Manchester Business School and are here for six months. I think there are about fifteen different nationalities on this picture including an Azerbaijani young lady who might be the first Azerbaijani I've taken around. There were also some Mexican ladies who gently corrected me when referring to the USA as America. This is 2 February and the group are in the Royal Exchange.
The Manchester ghost tour, part of the Walkabout Series, on Saturday 29 starting at St Ann's Square and then ending up more or less in the same place. Great fun including guests from Italy and West Virginia. Silvia Bulfone-Paus, third from the left, is from Turin and presently a Professor of Immunobiology at the University of Manchester.
Thanks to Forsyths Music Store for letting us utilise their basement to help dramatise the stories. Three of the guests missed out on the picture here as they had to leave before the final story to get to their restaurant booking. Those bookings are like gold on a Saturday evening. The gentleman in the foreground with the hat really knew his history, he even knew what 'widdershins' meant. Come on the tour if you want to find out without cheating and looking it up.
Thanks to Forsyths Music Store for letting us utilise their basement to help dramatise the stories. Three of the guests missed out on the picture here as they had to leave before the final story to get to their restaurant booking. Those bookings are like gold on a Saturday evening. The gentleman in the foreground with the hat really knew his history, he even knew what 'widdershins' meant. Come on the tour if you want to find out without cheating and looking it up.
The Manchester Walkabout Music Tour on Saturday 29 January starting from the Bridgewater Hall and finishing in Castlefield outside Pete Waterman's former recording studio. There was music played to add a little spice and even a debate about which side of Oxford Street nightclub Rafters had been located back in the day. I looked it up afterwards and Rafters was on the eastern side and Rotters on the western. Stuart Spray brought his family along for his daughter's birthday who I believe was called Shona (the young woman in green).
The guest who'd come the longest distance was Clive Taylor in the brickred trousers pictured with his dad who used to go drinking with Freddie Garrity of Freddie and the Dreamers. Clive lives in Switzerland and gave me a cultural tip. They were off to watch the Black Dyke band at the Royal Northern College of Music later that evening. I suddenly felt nostalgia recalling the Salvation Army bands who used to troop round Shawclough Road and Whitworth Road which lay on each side of my childhood home in north Rochdale. So I bought a couple of tickets. I wasn't disappointed. The power of the brass was astonishing, the skill of the players superb. I particularly liked A Fantasy of Joy by Schjelderup which riffed on Beethoven's Ode to Joy from the Ninth Symphony.
There has always been a tendency among lazy TV producers to overlay brass band music on dramas set in the North of England or over anything featuring older populations up here such as Last of the Summer Wine. This concert showed it to be such a tired device. Almost Monty Python. The audience had a good number of younger people in attendance. Brass band music is clearly thumpingly alive.
The concert capped a very musical day all round since even one of the ghost stories on the Walkabout tours is all about the spectral return of the celebrated opera singer Madame Malibran.
The guest who'd come the longest distance was Clive Taylor in the brickred trousers pictured with his dad who used to go drinking with Freddie Garrity of Freddie and the Dreamers. Clive lives in Switzerland and gave me a cultural tip. They were off to watch the Black Dyke band at the Royal Northern College of Music later that evening. I suddenly felt nostalgia recalling the Salvation Army bands who used to troop round Shawclough Road and Whitworth Road which lay on each side of my childhood home in north Rochdale. So I bought a couple of tickets. I wasn't disappointed. The power of the brass was astonishing, the skill of the players superb. I particularly liked A Fantasy of Joy by Schjelderup which riffed on Beethoven's Ode to Joy from the Ninth Symphony.
There has always been a tendency among lazy TV producers to overlay brass band music on dramas set in the North of England or over anything featuring older populations up here such as Last of the Summer Wine. This concert showed it to be such a tired device. Almost Monty Python. The audience had a good number of younger people in attendance. Brass band music is clearly thumpingly alive.
The concert capped a very musical day all round since even one of the ghost stories on the Walkabout tours is all about the spectral return of the celebrated opera singer Madame Malibran.
On my birthday, Thursday 27 January, I went back to my hometown, 13 minutes away on the train from Manchester's Victoria Station. This picture here shows Rochdale Town Hall and St Chad's Church in summer. On Thursday I conducted a tour for members of Rochdale Development Agency of the town (I'm on the board) and got inside St Chad's for the first time - a church where my parents had married. It's a medieval church in parts with much to enjoy including a truly stunning Burne-Jones window from 1873 made in William Morris' workshop. The window shows Hope, Charity and Faith with skulking underneath their counterparts, Greed, Envy and Despair. Look out for a series of tours in 2022 of this fine town with its many visitor attractions and exciting future.
I am a fan of absurdity. A big fan. So thanks to Chetham's Library for tweeting this from a 17th century manuscript about cheesemaking. Someone while reading the manuscript at a later date has inked in the margin the all important question 'Is Cheese Rational'? There's a cute little finger sign pointing at the main text. Next time I'm at a food and drink event and the chef uses cheese I've now got the killer question.
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Sunday 23 January and a lovely event for Burn's Night (a couple of days early) at splendid Blackfriars House for Bruntwood Works. I gave a talk about the links between Manchester and Salford and then conducted a short music quiz in which guests had to write the name of the NW band/artist and the song - again all the songs had Scottish links. Stewart McCombe was superb with his rendition of Rabbie Burns poems and their meanings with reference to the entertaining biography of the fruity artist. The meal from Elite Bistro was superb, especially the belly pork with haggis dish. Thanks to the organiser Rizwan Iqbal from Bruntwood Works and also Eugenia Whitby and Selene Wood, again from Bruntwood Works. The live bagpipe music was stirring.
This the first spooky tour of the year on 22 January as the night drew in. A very responsive group with the man on the extreme left very observant too.
There's a high level view over the River Irwell close to Parsonage Gardens. This looks down on the Salford side of the river where tall apartments now strut, in particular The Edge apartment block, the only such building named after a U2 bandmember...er... something like that.
In previous years when I took groups to this viewpoint a couple of lively lads used to come out on the balcony of The Edge, 50 metres away, unbidden and dance in their underwear. They seem to have moved away now but it's a funny story anyway so I told the group and then went straight into one of favourite ghost stories about poor drowned Lavinia Robinson.
A moment later the attention of my group was diverted from my fine words when the observant gentleman proved his keen sight by pointing and saying, "There's a naked man in that flat." And there was. A very naked man, you couldn't get more naked. He was parading at our eye-level in a flat with full floor to ceiling windows. I say 'parading' but clearly he was oblivious to his exposure. If he reads this I suggest at night he draws the curtains or buys some net curtains or puts some clothes on. Actually it was very funny.
For the next spooky tour I have a ghost of a naked man story to perhaps tell.
There's a high level view over the River Irwell close to Parsonage Gardens. This looks down on the Salford side of the river where tall apartments now strut, in particular The Edge apartment block, the only such building named after a U2 bandmember...er... something like that.
In previous years when I took groups to this viewpoint a couple of lively lads used to come out on the balcony of The Edge, 50 metres away, unbidden and dance in their underwear. They seem to have moved away now but it's a funny story anyway so I told the group and then went straight into one of favourite ghost stories about poor drowned Lavinia Robinson.
A moment later the attention of my group was diverted from my fine words when the observant gentleman proved his keen sight by pointing and saying, "There's a naked man in that flat." And there was. A very naked man, you couldn't get more naked. He was parading at our eye-level in a flat with full floor to ceiling windows. I say 'parading' but clearly he was oblivious to his exposure. If he reads this I suggest at night he draws the curtains or buys some net curtains or puts some clothes on. Actually it was very funny.
For the next spooky tour I have a ghost of a naked man story to perhaps tell.
Saturday 22 January and a pre-pandemic sized group (almost) for the Halle St Peter's and Ancoats tour. I played the group the Halle Orchestra's recording of Purcell's Nymphs and Shepherds from 1929 which featured 250 Manchester school children. Through Columbia records this was Manchester's first million selling record. Renowned comedian, the late Victoria Wood, sponsored the Halle, and was a lead in That Day We Sang about the 1929 recording which featured at Manchester International Festival 2013. The rehearsal room (shown in the first of the two pictures here) in Halle St Peter's commemorates Victoria Wood. Strange times in 1929, the kids were voice-trained by Gertrude Riall who wasn't keen on the Manchester accent so put spellings on a board to teach the children, for instance, to sing long vowel 'daaarnce' rather than short vowel 'dance'. I have such a northern accent it hurts my face to say 'daaarnce'. Thanks to @Dbelldb1 for this aerial view of me holding forth to my tour group in New Islington.
Thursday 20 January was a lovely afternoon so I thought I’d deliver a book to a customer in Hollingworth by hand. I hadn’t been on the Glossop train line for so long and thought I’d give it a go, get off at Dinting, and then walk the mile or so to the address on Printer's Walk. The latter stages of the 14 mile trip from Manchester Piccadilly to Glossop is impressive with views of the Peak District's high hills opening up, there's the glide across the mighty Dinting Viaduct too.
The viaduct was completed in 1844 and towers 119ft over the valley bottom. It was strengthened with additional brick piers in 1920 which have to a certain extent ruined the proportions.
On one ‘exceedingly dark’ night in 1855 a train halted on the bridge to allow another to pass. Some passengers got excited in one carriage and thought they’d arrived at Dinting station which lies immediately over the viaduct. Three got out and stood on the low viaduct parapet thinking it the platform and then walked off the edge. Another was pulled back in. The dead were Jane Hadfield, John Healey and Thomas Priestnall. The inquest recommended a fence be built on the parapet.
If that fence is the one currently shown in the above picture and thinly lurking above the parapet then it doesn’t look likely to stop any further misadventures. You might catch something off the rust as you head over it mind.
Following on from the above story about my book delivering excursion, rather than head back to Dinting station I walked another mile from Hollingworth to Hadfield for the train back. I was early and so went into the handsome and large Palatine pub. Pleasant place this with real fires. On my visit it was occupied by half a dozen chaps in their seventies or eighties talking about their various ailments. I was feeling in rude health so I nodded to them and sat with a book elsewhere.
Back in Manchester I bumped into man-about-town, Thom Hetherington. He lives over the hill from Hadfield in Glossop but has a business partner who lives in Hadfield. After moving there, the business partner was sat one busy night, head buried in a newspaper in the Palatine pub when he felt something odd. A man was nibbling his ear. He was about to visit some verbal violence at the very least, when the man’s companions rushed over and explained that hungry gentleman ‘wasn’t right in the head’, loved ears for some reason and they were really sorry and let us buy you a pint. Apparently the man was well-known in the area as the ‘Hadfield Nibbler’.
Of course, this sounds exactly like something from The League of Gentleman, the 1999 surreal, absurd, comedy-cum-horror sitcom written and played by Steve Pemberton, Mark Gatiss and Reece Shearsmith. And so it should sound like that, because it was in Hadfield where the League of Gentlemen was largely filmed. Life imitating art.
Back in Manchester I bumped into man-about-town, Thom Hetherington. He lives over the hill from Hadfield in Glossop but has a business partner who lives in Hadfield. After moving there, the business partner was sat one busy night, head buried in a newspaper in the Palatine pub when he felt something odd. A man was nibbling his ear. He was about to visit some verbal violence at the very least, when the man’s companions rushed over and explained that hungry gentleman ‘wasn’t right in the head’, loved ears for some reason and they were really sorry and let us buy you a pint. Apparently the man was well-known in the area as the ‘Hadfield Nibbler’.
Of course, this sounds exactly like something from The League of Gentleman, the 1999 surreal, absurd, comedy-cum-horror sitcom written and played by Steve Pemberton, Mark Gatiss and Reece Shearsmith. And so it should sound like that, because it was in Hadfield where the League of Gentlemen was largely filmed. Life imitating art.
Saturday 15 January. Here we are on a Kimpton Clock Tower tour in Refuge by Volta (aka the bar and restaurant bit) after a mooch around the ex-Refuge Assurance building admiring the beautiful titlework, grand spaces and rich stories. The next tour is on 16 March.
A research trip to Yorkshire Sculpture Park for a future tour. It's a magnificent location all though a freezing fog cooled the mood a little until it lifted. Just £6 entry with a vehicle.
I loved 'Vulcan' by Eduado Poalozzi, third in the gallery above. As the Sculpture Park writes: 'Vulcan is the Roman god of fire and metalworking, reflected in the hammer he holds in this sculpture. The son of Jupiter and Juno, Vulcan was thrown from Mount Olympus by his mother who was ashamed of his looks. During his fall, Vulcan is said to have broken his leg which rendered him lame and is perhaps why Paolozzi has depicted one of the figure’s feet as being considerably smaller than the other. Myth has it that after marrying Venus, the goddess of love and beauty, Vulcan built a forge under Mount Etna on the island of Sicily. It is said that whenever Venus was unfaithful, Vulcan grew angry and beat the red-hot metal with such force that sparks and smoke rose up from the top of the mountain, creating a volcanic eruption.'
I also adored the strange sculpture 'Sitting' by Sophie Ryder, fourth in the gallery above, described thus: 'Anthropomorphic characters are used both to explore the human condition and as a metaphor for Ryder’s own feelings. Over several years she has evolved an ongoing narrative around the female/mother figure of the Lady-Hare; a hybrid with the head of a hare, and its body modelled on Ryder’s own.
It you're in Holmfirth visit Catch for food, great seafood and they even do a knickerbocker glory. After the restaurant we went to see Smiths Ltd in the Holmfirth Picturedome. Yes, a Smiths cover band. Great fun.
I loved 'Vulcan' by Eduado Poalozzi, third in the gallery above. As the Sculpture Park writes: 'Vulcan is the Roman god of fire and metalworking, reflected in the hammer he holds in this sculpture. The son of Jupiter and Juno, Vulcan was thrown from Mount Olympus by his mother who was ashamed of his looks. During his fall, Vulcan is said to have broken his leg which rendered him lame and is perhaps why Paolozzi has depicted one of the figure’s feet as being considerably smaller than the other. Myth has it that after marrying Venus, the goddess of love and beauty, Vulcan built a forge under Mount Etna on the island of Sicily. It is said that whenever Venus was unfaithful, Vulcan grew angry and beat the red-hot metal with such force that sparks and smoke rose up from the top of the mountain, creating a volcanic eruption.'
I also adored the strange sculpture 'Sitting' by Sophie Ryder, fourth in the gallery above, described thus: 'Anthropomorphic characters are used both to explore the human condition and as a metaphor for Ryder’s own feelings. Over several years she has evolved an ongoing narrative around the female/mother figure of the Lady-Hare; a hybrid with the head of a hare, and its body modelled on Ryder’s own.
It you're in Holmfirth visit Catch for food, great seafood and they even do a knickerbocker glory. After the restaurant we went to see Smiths Ltd in the Holmfirth Picturedome. Yes, a Smiths cover band. Great fun.
A Discover Manchester tour on 11 January with some locals and several international exchange students from Manchester Metropolitan University including Norwegians, Dutch, Austrians, Germans, Americans. The young woman in red in the centre of the picture said Manchester reminded her of Rotterdam. She also compared the very strict Covid restrictions in the Netherlands with the looser provisions in England. "I'm glad to be here," she said.
In the sequence below I forgot to include this picture of a talk in 2021. This was conducted in the Eagle pub in Salford and took a look at the lost buildings of Manchester and Salford - as well as some of the imagined projects that never got off the ground. The books I write about these subjects are on the table to the left. You can buy them here, and buy them you bloody should.
The PA and projector wasn't set up so I just raised my voice and painted pictures with my words - or that's what I'd like to think. Suzanne Hindle, fellow tour guide is on the front row on the left, immediately behind her is Andrew Walker of the Alliance Manchester Business School who sends me lovely groups of international students. Also pictured is artist Fiona Brehony - in the centre on the third row - who likes cake. There are several other regulars dotted about here, thanks to all of them for attending.
I recall that after the talk we went into one of the sweet rooms in this traditonal pub and debated long into the evening. We righted all the wrongs of the world. Every damned last one of them.
The PA and projector wasn't set up so I just raised my voice and painted pictures with my words - or that's what I'd like to think. Suzanne Hindle, fellow tour guide is on the front row on the left, immediately behind her is Andrew Walker of the Alliance Manchester Business School who sends me lovely groups of international students. Also pictured is artist Fiona Brehony - in the centre on the third row - who likes cake. There are several other regulars dotted about here, thanks to all of them for attending.
I recall that after the talk we went into one of the sweet rooms in this traditonal pub and debated long into the evening. We righted all the wrongs of the world. Every damned last one of them.
A New Year's Day tour that started at the Cathedral and somehow ended up by the restored Black Friar pub on Trinity Way in Salford. I had some drinks with guests in the pub afterwards. The typeface carved into the sandstone of the oriel window on the left says: 'You may travel further and fare worse'. We didn't travel further. The quote might originate with 'Come, Sir John, you may go further, and fare worse' from Jonathan Swift's Polite Conversation in 1738, or the more scurrilous 'She's just as rich as most of the girls who came out of India. I might go farther and fare worse', from William Thackeray's Vanity Fair from 1848.
The pub meanwhile dates from 1886 and was designed by William Ball. It was built for the now defunct (as an independent company) Boddington's and the old sign of the brewery, very famous and familiar in Manchester and Salford, has been retained. The pub has been rescued by Salboy, the developers of the apartment complex behind the pub. Look out for more tours in this area in 2022.
The pub meanwhile dates from 1886 and was designed by William Ball. It was built for the now defunct (as an independent company) Boddington's and the old sign of the brewery, very famous and familiar in Manchester and Salford, has been retained. The pub has been rescued by Salboy, the developers of the apartment complex behind the pub. Look out for more tours in this area in 2022.
Renaissance Ltd outside their offices at Carver's Warehouse on a private tour with director Helen Gribbon in the purple coat. Renaissance does structural engineering and their work helps hold up the buildings in much of Manchester and across the North West. One of my favourite somewhat embarrassing moments of 2021 derived from the fact I try to be an honest writer about the city, which sometimes means a conflict with my corporate guiding work.
As I picked up the group one of the party, with a grin, asked if I liked the idea of the proposed 26-29 storey Apex Tower. Everybody looked at me expectantly. In an article on Manchester Confidential I had savaged the proposal - click here. Turns out Renaissance had been asked to engineer the proposal. After an awkward moment we sort of fell about laughing, after all they didn't design the building. Generous guests indeed with a great sense of humour.
As I picked up the group one of the party, with a grin, asked if I liked the idea of the proposed 26-29 storey Apex Tower. Everybody looked at me expectantly. In an article on Manchester Confidential I had savaged the proposal - click here. Turns out Renaissance had been asked to engineer the proposal. After an awkward moment we sort of fell about laughing, after all they didn't design the building. Generous guests indeed with a great sense of humour.
David Sellers and group celebrate in the right way with a pub tour in the fine new railway arch bar 53two.
Two pictures of the last Heaton Hall tour of 2021. Simon, a good friend to these tours, is missing from the top picture as he was being a stately home guerrilla photographer capturing some superb images, including the black and white self-portrait in the gorgeous Cupola Room of this must visit house.
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The top picture here my guests in the backroom at the First Church of Christ Scientist (1903-05) after a photo show on my computer of other work by architect Edgar Wood. The room with the guests is a plain room, the rest of the building is anything but plain. It's an amazing place in a fascinating area, Victoria Park. Loads more of these tours next year and loads more Heaton Hall tours.
James Pollard's group walk into the Northern Quarter night with me on 3 December. This atmospheric scene shows the group at the junction of High Street and Edge Street.
It's 7 December 2021 and this is the Fieldfisher group enjoying a stroll around the city centre learning its secrets. Private parties are very welcome and, as here, are great for team-building. Lots of fun this one and an inevitable pub finish.
Heaton Hall tour with old friends, some of these people have been coming on my tours for more than twenty years. That's part of the joy of guilding, seeing people return again and again. The other joy is learning new stories and the secrets of new places. Of course, I've known about Heaton Hall for years and appreciated its architecture but I'd not learnt the story behind its construction and design which turns out to be one of romance and music...and, er, arrows.
A wintry walk with AECOM organised by Stephen Gleave, first on the left. After this strolling examination of the northern end of the city centre we finished in Cutting Room Square with the splendid background of Hallé St Peter's. Then we refreshed ourselves in Seven Brothers' bar close by.
Allow me an indulgence. Not a tour but an image of my Medal of Honour from the University of Manchester for services to the city and the region. I received this in November 2021. That's not me on the medal but Nobel Prize winner Ernest Rutherford. I was very proud to receive this in November. Huge thanks to Nancy Rothwell and team at the University of Manchester for this recognition. The other forty so recipients are these and I have no idea how I've managed to join this list: Dr Maria Balshaw, Mr Adam Barr, Mr John Belcher, Professor Margot Brazier, Mr David Brice, Ms Deborah Brown, Mr Tristan Burke, Ms Rowena Burns, Mr Brian Clancy, Ms Jane Davies, Mrs Gillian Easson, Professor Dai Edwards, Mr Richard Gilbert, Professor Michael Grant, Mr Don Hanson, The Reverend Dr Richard L Hills, Ms Kay Hinckley, Mr Robert Hough, Professor Nic Jones, Mr Paul Joyce, Mr Luke Kelly, Mrs Margaret Kenyon, Admiral Sir John Kerr, Mr Michael McKenna, Professor Sir Netar Mallick, Dr Paul Martin OBE, Mr Robin Mills, Mr Richard Neave, Mr Stephen Pearson, Emerita Professor Katharine Perera, Mr Terry Priest, Emeritus Professor Anthony Redmond, Dr Alec Robinson, Ms Angie Robinson, Ms Vicky Rosin, Mr Clive Rowland, Rabbi Yehudah Rubinstein, Mr Peter Sanderson, Mr Jonathan Schofield, Mr Warren Smith, Mr Andrew Spinoza, Ms Kathleen Tattersall, Dr Tommy Thomas, Mr Tony Thornley, Mr Geoffrey (Geoff) Tootill, Mr Bill Williams, Emeritus Professor Gajendra Verma, Mr Kui Man Gerry Yeung.
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The day after the Salford Lads Club tour (next set of pictures) we were round the corner at the Ordsall Hall tour with a small group - although this picture is missing some people as they were still talking to Jennifer Holland. The latter took us into some of the areas not normally accessible. Jennifer is the Commercial Manager for Salford Museums and Art Galleries and essentially took over the tour, giving me an easy day. Her insider and extensive knowledge was really appreciated. We'll be doing this tour again in 2022.
It's November 2021 and here are a group on a public tour with the charming, kind and gracious Leslie Holmes (centre) outside his beloved and truly wonderful Salford Lads Club in Ordsall.
Framed in the doorway are two good friends of mine Rachel and Guy. Guy Parker and his company CreationADM have generously created a new website for me to help sell some of the popular culture tours. Take a look here at www.manchester-tours.co.uk and tell me what you think.
Framed in the doorway are two good friends of mine Rachel and Guy. Guy Parker and his company CreationADM have generously created a new website for me to help sell some of the popular culture tours. Take a look here at www.manchester-tours.co.uk and tell me what you think.
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Salford Lads Club is now the best-preserved lads club in the country and, in the twenty-first century, a place of recreation and sanctuary for lasses as well as lads.
It contains The Smiths' room. The famous LP centrefold image from 1986's The Queen is Dead album was taken outside the main doors. The Smiths, one of the UK's best ever bands, are the main cult band of the city drawing thousands of tourists every year...especially in non-Covid times. You can often see people from across the world 'worshipping' inside Salford Lads Club scrawling emotional messages on Post-it notes.
It contains The Smiths' room. The famous LP centrefold image from 1986's The Queen is Dead album was taken outside the main doors. The Smiths, one of the UK's best ever bands, are the main cult band of the city drawing thousands of tourists every year...especially in non-Covid times. You can often see people from across the world 'worshipping' inside Salford Lads Club scrawling emotional messages on Post-it notes.
A group from Bruges in the Briton's Protection pub on 3 November. They had come to watch their team FC Bruges play Manchester City in the Champions League. They liked drinks, lots of them; they probably needed protection from the booze and their team certainly could have done with protection from a rampant Manchester City. The score was 4-1. The Mayor of Bruges is on the right doing a thumbs up. He's called Dirk de fauw (yes, the last name is lower case) and he's a lawyer by trade. In 2020 he was stabbed in the neck in an assasination attempt by a former client. The man was later detained in a psychiatric unit.
A vast group of more than forty students from Henley Business School, part of the University of Reading. We had five guides working that day. The groups are from MSc Real Estate programme led by Eamonn D'Arcy, a charming Irishman, who has built up the most important such course in the country. The group are filing through the choir and into the nave of Manchester Cathedral. Eamonn chooses to come to Manchester with the groups because it is THE paradigm city in the UK for redevelopment.
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In the first picture we're down in the spooky basement of Forsyths Music store during a Halloween tour. Forsyths is just about the oldest family-owned music shop in Europe from 1857. The hosts, sister and brother team Emma and Simon, are committed to passing their family store to future generations. Emma is standing in the second picture amidst the finest array of pianos in the country. Here's an article I wrote about Forsyths in 2021.
Two more Halloween tours with the guests standing on the tombs next to St Ann's Church.
Only Tom Bloxham of Urban Splash would insist one of my groups cross over the lock gates of the Rochdale Canal. Tom, in the foreground, through my friend Lisa Ashurst (just landed), was taking some of his former and present colleagues across town looking at the changing city. We're just about to visit the Urban Splash reinvention of Brownsfield Mill. The latter has a fascinating history, connected variously with aircraft pioneer AV Roe, birth control pioneer and not very nice person Marie Stopes and eccentric artist LS Lowry.
Nick surprised his partner Leila, grey jacket, with a tour on her birthday. Most of the people here are from Deansgate Square residents, the towers are pictured in the second picture. It's 30 October by the way. Nick is not in the picture as he's wheeling a baby (his and Leila's) somewhere behind yours truly who is taking the picture.
Paul Mann, fourth from the right, has been on several of my tours. Here he is with colleagues and a backdrop of Lincoln Square under redevelopment (you can just make out the re-positioned statue of Abraham Lincoln). Paul works at Gleeds, a cost consultancy. Their slogan is 'We are Gleeds' which is almost the classic chant from Leeds United FC of "We are Leeds, We are Leeds." After this picture we walked four metres to the right and straight into the Rising Sun pub.
The two pictures above show a lively and well-informed public group strolling the city close to the date when the Suffragette banner of 'Votes for Women' was raised in October 1905. The banner was raised in this building, the Free Trade Hall (now the Edwardian Hotel). A plaque behind that central window marks the occasion. The tour didn't just look at the Suffragettes and the Pankhurst family but other significant women in the city's story.
The woman in the pink jacket and her friend joined me for a drink in the Edwardian Hotel after the tour. It turns out this was their hotel and it turns out the lady was Cathy Lord. I hadn't seen her since 1987 when we were at university in Cardiff together. We caught up over a few glasses of wine. Truly tempus doesn't half fugit. It was great to chat to her and to learn of her successful and fulfilling life.
The woman in the pink jacket and her friend joined me for a drink in the Edwardian Hotel after the tour. It turns out this was their hotel and it turns out the lady was Cathy Lord. I hadn't seen her since 1987 when we were at university in Cardiff together. We caught up over a few glasses of wine. Truly tempus doesn't half fugit. It was great to chat to her and to learn of her successful and fulfilling life.
A tour for Deansgate Square residents some of whom were new to Manchester and wanted to learn its joys. There are eight different nationailities represented in this image. Nick and Leila are present, they were the people who hired me for a birthday party tour higher up in this sequence. Nick was missed off that image because he was looking after the young chap being held by Leila in this picture. The group are standing outside Manchester's main concert hall for classical music, The Bridgewater Hall.
One of several tours at Chetham's School of Music and Libary during the weekend open days on 25/26 September, 2021.
The Chetham's tours were free tours for the guests and were popular, very popular, in fact some of the most popular tours I've conducted in 25 years of guiding. Correction, they were the largest tours I've ever conducted. Just look at the one below.
Yes this one. This is another of those Chetham's open day tours. It looks like I'm about to lead a revolution... a very polite heritage-based revolution.
Another Chetham's open day huge tours.
The first of the gargantuan tours in September for Chetham's. The glorious medieval complex of Chetham's dates from 1421 and was 600 years old on 22 May 2021 but the party had to be deferred because of, well, you know what. My guiding colleague and friend Emma Fox is sporting a red bag on her lap, front row, in this picture. We shared some of the tours, as we are sharing the Walkabout Series in 2022.
Chris Hunt (centre with his wife on his knee - almost) celebrates his fortieth birthday with a pub crawl and a Manchester music quiz finishing at Ducie Street Warehouse. Funny crowd with one hilarious cynic, Chris' brother perhaps, who doubted my commentary and was ready with a fine quip or two. On pub tours it's grand to get a bit of heckling to liven things up and boost the jollity.
On another tour occasion I was faced with an imponderable question. I was taking a corporate group around and they knew I also do food reviews principally for Manchester Confidential. As a consequence I am frequently asked what's the best restaurant in Manchester. Given the choice this is a hard one to answer. However, on this occasion, a young woman asked, "So in your opinion, what's the best Wetherspoons in Manchester city centre?" "I'm spoilt for choice," I answered diplomatically.
On another tour occasion I was faced with an imponderable question. I was taking a corporate group around and they knew I also do food reviews principally for Manchester Confidential. As a consequence I am frequently asked what's the best restaurant in Manchester. Given the choice this is a hard one to answer. However, on this occasion, a young woman asked, "So in your opinion, what's the best Wetherspoons in Manchester city centre?" "I'm spoilt for choice," I answered diplomatically.
An Altincham tour sold out and looking good. This tour is in association with Altrincham BID (Business Improvement District, aka Altrincham Unlimited). The lady with the red cap in the right foreground is Emma who is pictured in the Forsyths Music Store images higher up on this page. Her partner is standing just over her left shoulder and is called Michael Welton. He has been an elected councillor for the Altrincham ward since 2018 and represents the Green Party. He's a musician and a member of the successful acapella group The Magnets.
Young film-makers on a tour looking at Manchester in the 1800s on a university film project. They were particularly interested in the sinister stories. A drink at the end helped turn the tour into a comfortable question and answer session.
A small but intensely interested group learning about the city they will be living in from the University of Manchester's Criminology department.
A bigger but intensely interested group learning about the city they will be living in from the University of Manchester's Criminology department.
Another clever group learning about the city they will be living in from the University of Manchester's Criminology department. Thanks to Professor Judith Aldridge for setting these tours up.
A Liverpool tour and a pub finish. Liverpool is on my NW of England patch and a beautiful city with a million stories. It has the best collection of original pub interiors in the UK and this one, The Golden Lion, is no exception. The group here is from building firm Walker Sime, or to give them their full brand description, the 'multi-disciplinary construction consultancy'.
A warm September tour for the charity Walk for Calm organised by the Lowry Hotel. The general manager of the hotel, Adrian Ellis, is in the centre of this group. I presume it was warm given the shorts.
Andrew Walker of the Alliance Manchester Business School looks after overseas exchange students. This is one of his groups on an equinox walk, 21 September 2021. I lost count of how many nationalities are represented here. These groups are some of the most courteous I take round the city. It underlines the importance of the universities to Manchester life.
Yep this was a first. In all my years of guiding I've never conducted one specifically for dog owners. The new residential towers of Deansgate Square have, however, a large dog-owning population. I don't mean the dogs are necessarily large but the number of people in Deansgate Square who own them is. We went west along the Bridgewater Canal and Manchester Ship Canal to the Quays and back.
The gentleman in the middle with the red lead handle is one of my favourite Manchester restaurateurs, Maurizio Cecco. He owns the Salvis restaurants in the city and if all goes to plan will be opening another in 2022 in the ground floor unit on the left in this picture.
There are many types of tours but this was the first in which I had to wait on several occasions because my guests had defecated on a public pavement or pathway. There's always something new.
The gentleman in the middle with the red lead handle is one of my favourite Manchester restaurateurs, Maurizio Cecco. He owns the Salvis restaurants in the city and if all goes to plan will be opening another in 2022 in the ground floor unit on the left in this picture.
There are many types of tours but this was the first in which I had to wait on several occasions because my guests had defecated on a public pavement or pathway. There's always something new.
Underneath the arches and the last of the British Orthodontic Society tours. I think I'm quoting Emmeline Pankhurst to the guests. I seem to be standing in the middle of Peter Street outside the Edwardian Hotel, aka The Free Trade Hall. Fortunately I wasn't run over.
Get your lanyards out and let's tour this city. Members of the British Orthodontic Society (BOS) waiting for September revelations. The BOS meeting was one of the few conventions held in the city over the last eighteen months.
Two hilarious guests taking advantage of a break from their BOS duties, to come on a tour of Manchester. They were angels. At least in the top picture they were (I have no idea who the photo-bombing gent in the check shirt is). On the second picture the pair are losing their thread in the Portico Library.
The aftermath of a talk for the BOS conference in September at the King Street Townhouse Hotel. It was all very jolly and the food was good.
Adopted Mancunian Ethlinn, third from the right, her Welsh fiance in stripes, and her Irish family over in Manchester to talk Friedrich Engels and radical Manchester history on a sunny late summer's day.
Des Walker and his group from Walker Sime take a well-earned pint or two in one of the great Salford and Manchester pubs, the Kings Arms. The walk was supposed to go in a completely different direction but we ended up in the pub instead. The Kings Arms is a proper boozer with a theatre upstairs. Good beer too.
Two groups in September and Heaton Hall and Park tours. These mostly ended at the lovely Temple. Thanks goes to my little helpmate standing in front of his mother in the bottom picture of this sequence. He was mustard on all the Greek mythology. The group are stood at the balustrade of the Temple with the tall buildings of the city centre behind them. I told them the mad story that had happened up here a couple of weeks previously when a person, not on the tour, had approached me and explained the 'lost kingdom of Tartaria'. You can read all about that here if you are one of my patrons. It's a peach of a conspiracy theory.
One of the more interesting couple of days in my guiding life came with this September tour for Polish Film Director Jan Komasa. He was nominated for an Oscar in 2019 for his film Corpus Christi. We were doing an 'alternative' tour. Not the tourist attractions this time but grittier looking locations Komasa needed for a Manchester/Salford based feature film. After a moving visit to St George's Community Centre in Collyhurst we visited a remarkable boxing club in Eccles. This picture was taken in an Eccles pool club. Jan seems to be incapable of preventing himself being a film director. He's throwing light back on himself and producer/director of acquisitions Matt Baker to help illuminate my picture.
ProofID brought some of their guests over from the States. Here the group are settling down to a meal at Dukes 92 after a stroll across town dipping into a pub or two and talking about the past, present and future of the city.
A good afternoon for the Secrets of Ancoats and New Islington tour on Saturday 11 September. A special mention must be made of Eric (back row, almost directly under the sinister hook). Eric, in his eighties, told the lovely story of Whit Walks, when he would join the procession from St Peter's Church, which is now Halle St Peter's in Ancoats. His son Clive was with him on a trip back from his home in Switzerland. They came on this tour as they'd been on the tour the day before and were part of the disappointed cricketer fraternity, see below. The rich memories of people such as Eric really enhance the tours giving them a resonance that adds immeasurably to the experience.
This was a curious one. I picked up a group for the regular 11am Discover Manchester tour which Manchester Guided Tours put on every day. The date was Friday 10 September and there were some guest extras - in two places. First off the group was bolstered by the dubious decision of the Indian Cricket Team to pull the last Test Match of the summer at Old Trafford due to backroom staff testing positive for Covid. Some of the group had come hundreds of miles to watch the first day of the Test, one gent setting off from north of Glasgow at 5.30am, only to learn, not far from Old Trafford shortly before 9am, that the game was cancelled. Anyway, despite their frustration the cricket fans put on a brave face and we had a good time, so much so I forgot to take a picture of the group but did catch my second set of 'extras' on camera. These comprised lots and lots of construction workers clumped around the statue of the suffragette Emmeline Pankhurst. I joshed on social media that every Friday builders gather in Manchester to praise Pankhurst's work in fighting for the female franchise. I fear some people believed me.
Simon Stone, Catherine and Anna from Manchester International Festival and Steffi, Simon's Partner, frame the Adrift sculpture at the back of Central Library. Simon was fabulously ebullient and incredibly enthusiastic. He directs films, theatre and much else as well as being a writer. He was the director of The Dig which was on Netflix in 2021 starring Carey Mulligan and Ralph Fienes. The plot revolved around the discovery of the Anglo-Saxon burial boat at Sutton Hoo in Suffolk on the eve of World War II. It was a lovely film. In this picture he's plotting the Manchester procession for the Amal walk highlighting the plight of young refugees.
The FletcherRae architectural practice group on a tour with pubs and a little quiz at the end in the Town Hall Tavern. Well done to Richard and Rachel for winning the prizes by coming last - I like to invert things occasionally. And thanks to Ben, flowery shirt on the right, for hiring me.
Dan Jones, historian and broadcaster, relaxing before I chaired a question and answer session with him at Blackwell's Manchester. I was stood outside the next door pub with a pint and his book. I saw him walking towards me so I hailed him. He decided to have a pint with me and then we had another, the shop staff were a little anxious about his arrival but cheered up when they saw him outside. "How do you want to play this?" asked Paul, the manager of the shop. "We've sorted it," said Dan. "I'll ask him questions and he'll answer them," I said. I reckon the evening was all the better for being unrehearsed, far more natural, and Dan answered the questions with verve but also with a very welcome forthright approach, swerving nothing. The book we were talking about, Power and Thrones, A New History of the Middle Ages is big in scope and well-written. It's nestling on an A-board in the picture above.
A group outside the main entrance of Heaton Hall which is actually the back entrance too. Very confusing. Very apt for this startlingly beautiful and complex building though. The picture includes my colleague guide, Emma Fox, second from the left. Take a look at her tours by clicking on her name.
A fine and merry trip around Rochdale from the station to the Cooperative museum. We are standing in front of St Mary's in the Baum. Baum (Rochdale dialect for 'balm') refers to the wild flowers which grew in the meadows where the church was built, variously thought to be Lemon Balm (Melissa Officinalis) or White Mint. There are more tours of Rochdale in 2022 and of Middleton in the same borough as well.
On the Rochdale tour I gained access into St John’s RC Church, Fireground and the Cooperative Museum. Everybody was very welcoming in these places and overjoyed to be part of a tour. Indeed, surprised. At St John's with it's gorgeous Byzantine-style apse in vivid mosaic, I was equally surprised. I’ve never come across a Roman Catholic priest prepared to delay mass for fifteen minutes so we could look around his church. Thank very much to him and the lovely lady who asked him to show off the interior in the first place.
This is the St George's Community Centre walking group. the centre is based in Collyhurst. We had a right laugh touring Angel Meadow. The dogs seemed to enjoy it as well, although the tour, unlike the one later in the year, wasn't specifically for dogs.
Most tours are not just an individual game of research and delivery but ultimately a team effort. My Heaton Hall and Park tours have been a tremendous success but they could not have been delivered without the indefatigable Friends of Heaton Hall. This volunteer group have unlocked the property for me prior to tours, offered encouragement and huge amounts of knowledge and expertise. Special mention must go to Val, Colette and the two Daves, Clegg and Blood. Dave Blood was one of the fire service team who extinguished a catastrophic fire in the early 1980s that could have led to the Hall's demolition. Dave Blood is shown here with an original miniature I bought for the Friends of Heaton Hall of the second countess. It's from circa 1830 and is a watercolour, artist unknown. It's exquisite and shows off the beautiful and fashionable Mary Margaret Stanley Egerton to perfection. It offers a window into her colourful character.
There are several pictures above of the Heaton Hall and Park tours in August. Most of the pictures are from the extravagantly decorated Saloon although the panoramic picture is taken on the imperial staircase. This was my favourite new tour of 2021 by a country mile. The house has a lovely story to tell and beautiful interiors and exteriors.
The weirdest tour I conduct, more or less, is the Secret Tunnels tour wading through the River Medlock. Waders are absolutely necessary and guests have to be nimble, fit and not too heavy to fit down a cat ladder into the river. The tunnel to the former Shooter's Brook is exceptional as we move from London Road to Oxford Road. The guests here are under the eighteenth century bridge across the latter which has been built out in subsequent centuries but still carries the weight of thousands and thousands of buses every year on apparently the busiest bus route in Europe. It carries lots of pedestrians and cyclists too, very few of whom look down into the river as we wade past. Look out for more of these tours in 2022.
Thanks to Jon Drape of Freight Island, Kieran Faulkner of Broadwick Live and Danny Williams of U+I plus Mo in security for allowing me to take a tour around Mayfield Station on Sunday 1 August. I loved the dramatic lighting coming through the Freight Island screen. The whole of Mayfield is about drama and this rainbow of light highlighted that.
The Sterlini family group patrolling Manchester with me and getting the lowdown from The Factory, via St John's Gardens and Castlefield, through Deansgate Square to HOME and First Street. The father-in-law in purple, on the right, loved the industrial history and was full of questions. Peter, who'd hired me, in grey in the centre of the picture, wanted to know the location of the secret manhole to the cat ladder that leads to the Great Northern tunnels. Of course I told him. Living in Stretford they were amused by Stretford's nineteenth century nicknames of 'Swineopolis' and 'Porkhamton'. You'll have to come on a tour to find out why the town used to be called that.
Naughty omission here. I was doing a tour of Prestwich and I forgot to take a picture of my group so here's a picture of Mark E Smith up there on the chippy wall in the suburb. You even get a wheelie bin included. Smith was a truculent so and so but he could deliver loads of funny lines and some memorable tunes. My guests were far more tolerant and easy-going even though we spent so much time standing on the dead. St Mary's church is the real marvel on the western side of Prestwich and the graves tell a rich Manchester story. Some of my local heroes lie there, the pioneering Artisan Botanists and also William Fairbairn, one of the greatest British engineers.
I don't normally feature in these tour pictures but true-gent Jonathon Nolan, from RPS Group, over my left shoulder in the cream, zip-top, arranged for one of the staff at the Sir Ralph Abercromby to take a pic with all the group. Jonathon had organised the whole occasion and also printed off the cutest little drinks vouchers with a picture of each pub. I've been using them ever since. That's a joke by the way. The whole pub tour was a right laugh with the daft quiz, top image. The prize winners looked happy.
Here's a family group on an adventure around Manchester. The organiser was Christina Newton who's in the pink, so to speak, holding little boy blue and sporting the broadest of smiles. The two lads in this pic were hilarious, if there was a wall or indeed anything to climb on they did. The group are standing in the Briton's Protection pub garden and when I returned to do the pub tour above, they were still there, indeed they'd bought me a pint on the tab. I think they were supposed to be in Spain but because of certain things that have been happening in the world which you may be aware of they'd decided, very sensibly, to make a day of it in Manchester instead.
The four preceding pictures show the time I took the German Ambassador, Andreas Michaelis, and his wife, Heike on a tour on Wednesday 28 July. Their surname was Michaelis and they'd had an interesting career including being the ambassadorial couple to Israel. They were were charming company, full of insight and wit. We had, of course, to visit the desk at Chetham's Library where Engels and Marx had studied in the 1840s. Ambassador Michaelis pretended to be serious, given the subject matter under discussion, but he couldn't help himself and at some quip collapsed in laughter. Before then Fergus, the librarian of Chetham's, and I had been wondering how we would recognise the German Ambassador's car as it approached Chetham's. "That's probably it, " we both exclaimed as it nosed round Todd Street into Long Millgate. The ambassador's car's number plate was '1 Ger'.
A small but perfectly formed group taking on Platt Fields area, with the wonderful 'Toast-rack' building popping up behind.
The rather excellent pair of groups from Arndale based company OneFile featuring boss Susanna Lawson who was kind enough to comment: 'Thank you so much so @JonathSchofield for 2 wonderful tours for the @OneFileUK team today around #Manchester City centre during our strategy away day. Lived here for 28yrs and learnt so much. Would definitely recommend Jonathan's tours.' I completely agree.
Buttress Architects tour on 15 July with lots of guests. We ventured into parts of Ancoats not usually visited on guided tours and then we ate and drank deep at Jane Eyre bar in Cutting Room Square and had a proper laugh. There was a pioneering use of QR codes for some of the schemes Buttress are involved with in the area.
The 11 photographs below and one above are all from Manchester International Festival tours between 2-18 July, 2021. For some reason I didn't take pictures of two of them. There were four themes: The Manchester Guardian and the city; Manchester and the power of the new; We built this city and Manchester at play. The guests were the usual well-informed International Festival crew and the weather generally played its part.
So Sunday 27 June's Discover Manchester tour consisted of a single postgraduate student studying at York University and hailing from Chicago. She was an affable young woman reading medieval history who is a Comic-con fan and is called Capri. “Italian ancestry?” I asked. “Yes,” she replied, “well, Italian, Polish, Greek, mainly, but with also some French, Czech, Romanian and Irish. And you?” Mainly Rochdale,” I said, “Actually, just Rochdale.”
She was trying to see more of Britain as people could travel a little more now and had been meeting fellow Comic-con fans from Mcr. Apparently you can travel the globe and meet new Comic-con ‘friends’ as part of the ‘community’. Yesterday she’d spent four hours with them dressed as an anime character from ‘Ace of Diamond’. During the UK winter lockdown Capri had kept active ‘by fostering hamsters’ (who knew?). So despite a completely unprofitable if delightful hour and a half tour I did get another guiding story. Tour guiding is a crazy funny job - best in the world.
She was trying to see more of Britain as people could travel a little more now and had been meeting fellow Comic-con fans from Mcr. Apparently you can travel the globe and meet new Comic-con ‘friends’ as part of the ‘community’. Yesterday she’d spent four hours with them dressed as an anime character from ‘Ace of Diamond’. During the UK winter lockdown Capri had kept active ‘by fostering hamsters’ (who knew?). So despite a completely unprofitable if delightful hour and a half tour I did get another guiding story. Tour guiding is a crazy funny job - best in the world.
The Whalley Range and Alexandra Park tour on Sat 26 June and a lovely day with a couple of pints in the Hilary Step bar later. The guests are stood where Whalley House was once been sited which was Samuel Brooks’ home, the man who laid out the the suburb of Whalley Range following his purchase of 39 acres in 1834. I had been five minutes late meeting in the park because I usually meet at the south western entrance and had forgotten I was due to meet at the north eastern entrance. I wondered where everybody was and then decided to check my own website and realised I was on the wrong side of the park. Websites can be really useful in the absence of memory. Worrying for a guide though, forgetfulness.
I played a lot of music associated with the area, The Buzzcocks, Thin Lizzy and The Smiths. I talked about how the Smiths are good for tours because they name checked so many Manchester locations. As I was describing this the gentleman with the white shirt on the extreme right in the picture said out loud, "Under the iron bridge we kissed". "I don't remember that," I quipped. Hey, it got a laugh.
He was, of course, referring to a line in the Smiths' song 'Still Ill' which mentions the iron bridge over the railway (now tram) line that runs parallel to Kings Road, Stretford, where Morrissey had grown up. There are loads more Manchester and Salford suburb tours coming up over the next two such as: Chapel Street, Salford; Kersal, Salford; Platt Fields, Manchester; Fairfield, Tameside; The Quays; Middleton, Stockport, Knutsford, Rochdale, Prestwich and so on.
I played a lot of music associated with the area, The Buzzcocks, Thin Lizzy and The Smiths. I talked about how the Smiths are good for tours because they name checked so many Manchester locations. As I was describing this the gentleman with the white shirt on the extreme right in the picture said out loud, "Under the iron bridge we kissed". "I don't remember that," I quipped. Hey, it got a laugh.
He was, of course, referring to a line in the Smiths' song 'Still Ill' which mentions the iron bridge over the railway (now tram) line that runs parallel to Kings Road, Stretford, where Morrissey had grown up. There are loads more Manchester and Salford suburb tours coming up over the next two such as: Chapel Street, Salford; Kersal, Salford; Platt Fields, Manchester; Fairfield, Tameside; The Quays; Middleton, Stockport, Knutsford, Rochdale, Prestwich and so on.
The second of my mini-Altrincham series of tours with another large group of enthusiasts wanting to know something of the food and drink focused town. They were mostly local and surprised by the great stories from Altrincham. It was a quick change after the cycle ride below to get ready for and to the Altrincham group.
We did about fifteen miles on this cycling tour from the city through Peel Park, Kersal Wetlands, Kersal Moor, Heaton Park, Clowes Park and back. Of course we had a pint at the former of home of Edward Holt, the son of Joseph Holt who'd created the eponymous brewery, although some people had a coffee instead. A person on Twitter complained when I posted the picture, writing: 'Should you be advocating for cycling under the influence'? Advocating? Well I could start a pro-drinking and cycling campaign I suppose. Seriously it can be a such sanctimonious world on social media, people delighting in telling others how to live their lives. We had one pint but more to the point we had a great time, good for body and soul. This was on the morning of 15 June.
The first of a new series of Altrincham tours with the happy group close to the market. A fine day for a stroll telling crazy tales of the early market, of brutal whippings, of suffragettes, of musicians and a man who could eat an awful lot, did so and won a bet. That was on 5 June.
The second of the groups on the same training course as the one below. This time the tour finished in the exotic distant reaches of Piccadilly Gardens. There were at least 11 different nationalities on this one.
A group on MOD training course of Manchester from many parts of the globe. They were looking at how the city centre had developed in the last few years, so we went from Piccadilly along the Rochdale Canal to New Islington, Ancoats and back through the Northern Quarter to Exchange Square. We had a great time, lots of laughs as well as lots of facts and some great questions. 18 May 2021.
The Chorlton tour on 15 May, 2021, with a fine group taking in Hough End Hall then down to the Green and back up to the Library. A tour decrying the ruination of Chorlton's finest building plus anecdotes of Beech Road, bits of St Ambrose Barlow everywhere, sixth formers drinking in the Horse and Jockey many years ago, the Bee Gees of course, temperance halls, footballers and the wonderful Thomas Walker and his re-discovered grave.
Saturday 1 May, 2021 and guests on the Engels and Marx in Manchester tour. The two lads on the left had come from Sheffield and Chesterfield. Not a staycation as such but they thought it good to start to learn more about their nation. The chap third in from the left had a pop art t-shirt with Karl Marx represented four times. At the end of the tour he said: "I wish I'd got one with four Engels on now." Friedrich Engels is a far more appealing character than Karl Marx.
Saturday 24 April and the second public walk of the season. This time exploring Castlefield with seven fine people and one tiny dachshund. After most of us enjoyed a mini-bottle of wine each in sunny St John's Gardens.
The 2021 tours start in April with a lovely couple discovering Manchester on atour through St John's Gardens as foliage starts to colour the trees.
2020 ends but not with tours just more lockdowns and Covid-dread.
The six photographs here, one above and five below, are from the Halloween tours which marked the end of the physical tours before another lockdown came into force. These were great fun and thanks to KSMCR for letting me use 35 King Street. This was a great location and we had tremendous fun amusing people and making them jump. Apologies for the blurred picture below but this small group deserved to be included. The couple on the left were dressed as characters from Scooby Doo and the couple on the right had just moved to Manchester for work from Berlin and were loving the city even as it closed down once more.
I should call these pictures 'The Facemask Series'. I sincerely hope that in a year (or please, less) there will be no need to corral our mushes into these legal impositions.
I should call these pictures 'The Facemask Series'. I sincerely hope that in a year (or please, less) there will be no need to corral our mushes into these legal impositions.
The 5th Pan-African Congress, Manchester and Slavery tour ends up in a cellar for a slide show. 24 October.
The Georgian Tour on Saturday 24 October. A small tour with loads of questions asked.
Waiting for a train that won't arrive at the abandoned station tour of Mayfield. Sunday 18 October tour looking through the broken windows to Piccadilly Station before visiting the magnificent set of buffers.
Saturday's 5pm ghost tour at 35 King Street. This picture taken just before we descend to the dark depths.
The Tour of Uninteresting Objects at St John's Gardens at the upturned cannon that act as bollards.
The 35 King Street and Georgian Manchester tour on Saturday 17 October. This taken just after an image show explaining the life and times although we didn't dance like Shakers.
Ghost hunters on the tour in the evening of Friday 16 October after listening to singing in the dark.
Suffragettes, significant women and Manchester tour on Saturday 10 October at the former Free Trade Hall where the Suffragettes raised their banner on 13 October, 2013.
35 King Street and Georgian Manchester Tour on 10 October, 2020 wearing the masks that mark the period we're living in.
The Discover Manchester Tour on Saturday 10 October with on the left two young people from London who thought they would come to Manchester and sample other cities in the UK rather than always go to Europe.
Delightful guests from, India Kirthi and Dharmesh with Paul and Joseph from MIDAS, Greater Manchester's inward investment agency. The optimism and positivity of the guests was a pure tonic. Thursday 8 October.
35 King Street: The Georgian Town House tour on Saturday 3 October. A tour around fruity Georgian Manchester finishing in the shelter of a house first built in 1736. The guests assured me they were smiling behind their masks.
The Halle St Peters tour on Saturday 3 October. A tour through the elegant interior of the 2019 extension and the 1859 church: by Stephenson Studio and Isaac Holden respectively. Then there was an excursion around Ancoats. It was wet and cold but the stories were warm.
An alternative view of the Kersal tour through a sketch app
Kersal tour on Sunday 13 September. There are no places to stop for refreshments so to end we had a camper van waiting with water, bubbly or wine.
The Secret Tunnels Tour, 12 September 2020
Mayfield abandoned station tour in August 2020
Timing is everything. I took this lively and large group of Alliance Business School students around on 1 February, just prior to the rededication of the cross in St Peter's Square. The stepped plinth made a fine stage for the photo. The cross marks the site of the former St Peter's Church. The site has a rich and important history as explained here.
A Gothic tour of Manchester with students studying Gothic forms in the city centre from Manchester Metropolitan University. We went to the Gothic-revival Town Hall, passed similar revival Gothic buildings in the streets and finished in the real-deal medieval Gothic of the Cathedral choir. I'm hoping the students can now spot those pointed arches and vaults with ease. Joan Crawford, their lecturer, took the picture below because my phone was playing up. Below the picture of the group is the stunning stalls of the choir.
Graham, Kevin and David from Allied London on a personal tour of London Road Fire Station. They are standing under Night and Day figures, representing the 24 hour readiness of the former station. Below are two of the wallpapers that still exist in the building. One looks original from the 1906 construction date, the other is from the 1970s. It isn't hard to tell them apart.
Delta Airlines Group over from America with Marketing Manchester and Emma Gordon in the red coat. The Cuban woman in the tan jacket loved the Northern English accents. "They are so clear," she said. She hasn't been to Newcastle yet.
Uruguayan guests on a tour of Manchester and really enjoying Britain generally. "Manchester is a really beautiful city," the gent said. The two on the left were staying at a B&B in Crumpsall, and although they thought it a little far out of town were enjoying that normally unregarded suburb. "Some people have said Crumpsall has problems," said our man, "but they should see some parts of Montevideo."
The Gibson family on a private tour of the Principal Hotel. The reason was Chrissie Gibson's birthday (the lady on the right). With her are Mike Gibson, over her shoulder, their daughter Beccy and son, Paul, with Paul's girlfriend on the left. When people are genuinely interested in what you are saying it makes the tour so very easy.
Grant and Kath flank Mark Jorgensen on a private tour of the city visiting the Royal Exchange, John Rylands Library, the Town Hall and Extension and Manchester Central Library. Lovely folk all with Mark being one of the great wits of the city. He once wore a latex pig's head to scare guests for me in a deep underworld in Manchester. It worked despite the fact he fell over. Then again it was very dark.
Alan Beswick's wonderful and very funny group of gents from car dealerships around Manchester and into Yorkshire. We did a Friday afternoon pub tour and it was hilarious. The pubs we visited were Beermoth, Sam's Chop House, The Town Hall Tavern and, pictured here, the Bridge Street Tavern. We finished around 4pm and the men were off to San Carlo restaurant. I wonder how much was left of it by the end of the evening.
Lots more pictures of London Road Fire Station tours here including Neil Bohanna's group from the RNCM and two very special guests from other tours. Pictured with his wife below is Gordon Price who was well-known throughout his service years and was the fireman who had a slate from Strangeways Prison roof thrown at him during the 1990 riot. The slate ended up wedged in his helmet. Also below is a picture of Louise Bayliss who is the great granddaughter of the very first Chief Fire Office at the station in 1906, Frederic Bayliss. Apparently Bayliss began life, in Louise's words, as a 'tinker's son' in Malmesbury in Wiltshire. A friend or relation got a job in Manchester, he came up and eventually became the boss of the Manchester Fire Brigade. Nine children were brought up in his flat at the Fire Station. Louise is shown below holding a picture of her long-ago relation.
This was a cracking occasion. I was at Astra Zeneca in Macclesfield before Christmas talking to about 300 people on the achievement of the North West, the Nobels, the science, the art and the ridiculousness. Lots of laughs and lots of questions..
Here are some more London Road Fire Station tour pics in December. Poignant memories from Bob, Val and Harvey as they toured the lower floors of the soon to restored giant building. These tours took place on 9, 10, 11, 14, 15,17, 29 December and the pictures appear in reverse order.
London Road Fire Station tour with the group in the Coroner's Court (note to self, take some pictures when people aren't in the Coroner's Court). The gent in the third row of seats on the right is Steve Parkinson who trained in the Fire Station in the eighties. He remembered so much of his time on the site. And some of the pranks too, such as the occasion when the trainee in the next bed snored so loudly Steve tipped his bed out of the window when the man was out. The bed was left hanging elevated on the external wall over Whitworth Street. When Mr Snorer came back he couldn't find the bed so he found somewhere else to sleep. Problem solved. On the back row is Amy, a colleague from Manchester Confidential. This tour took place on Wednesday 7 December.
Two tours of the Fire Station from Sunday 4 December. The man in the witness stand of the Coroner's Court and demonstrating how to use a fireman's pole is Alan Russell who worked at the fire station in the late seventies until it closed. Going to be getting in touch with Alan as he has a whole raft of stories and the stories make this building leap back to life.
The Chetham's :Library tour from Saturday 3 December. Michael Powell, the librarian, has pulled from the shelves a missal from the mid-1300s to show guests. This is beautifully illuminated and all in Latin. A missal is what the priest would read to an uncomprehending congregation at mass and is arranged in sections across the year. “There is one bit in English,” says Michael Powell. This turns out to be the marriage vows which people had to understand even if they didn't understand the liturgical Latin because they were taking an oath and had to know what they were entering into. The male side of of the vow is identical to that today - almost. The female’s is similar except it doesn’t have ‘to honour and obey’, instead women vow to be ‘boner and buxom in bed’. This means to be sprightly and enthusiastic during love-making and thus help the man increase the flock for the Church. The expression became a bit too direct for more sensitive Ages. It was funny to note the slightly shocked expression of the guests around the table and then the shy giggles.
Two Saturday tours at London Road Fire Station. Saturday 3 December.
A few of the guests couldn't make the tour so it was just two people on Saturday 3 December's Principal Hotel tour but they were fine company and hugely interested in the story of the former Refuge Assurance building and its astounding tilework.
A group in the dark during a tour of the city on Thursday 1 December. I hope the tour was illuminating even if the light wasn't.
Tuesday 29 November and the Bonnie Prince Charlie tour of Manchester. This was the 271st anniversary of when the rebel Stuart army entered Manchester in 1745. The chap on the right was an authority on the occasion and has been studying the subject for twenty years. One day he might do a book. Here we are warming up in the fabulous bar of Beermoth on Brown Street.
A lovely group from the Heywood, Middleton and Circle Club gathered on the stairs at the Principal Hotel. The second lady from the left it turns out was a friend of my mother's years and years ago and worked at the Nat West Bank with her. Tuesday 29 November.
The Friedrich Engels birthday tour and people singing Happy Birthday to the man who was born 196 years earlier. The tour took place on Saturday 26 November rather than the actual date of 28 November but we didn't think he would mind. Engels and Karl Marx studied in Chetham's Library and the books they read are on the desk in the bay window behind. Engels would smile to think of us singing Happy Birthday in a place he knew so well, he was a man who like jolification.
This was a tour across the city finishing at Chetham's organised by my long-lost now recently found relation Georgina Schofield, she's the first woman on the left clutching some of my books. My brother, Charles, is next to her on the right. This was a fine tour that began and ended in the Abel Heywood pub. I mention Heywood in this article and this one. I adore this quote from Abel Heywood to justify the expense of building Manchester Town Hall: ''We cleared a vast area, and Mr Waterhouse’s beautiful design rose, stone on stone and pillar on pillar. We spared no expense. Every detail we desired to have perfect. To have been parsimonious, to have neglected corners or recesses which were obscure, to have allowed ornamentation which was tawdry, would have been for ever to brand Manchester as a city given up to no higher thought than the quickest accumulation of wealth.'
Some interesting and important creatives and influencers here with Liz Pugh from Walk the Plank. They include Lotte Van de Berg, Jeanefer Jean-Charles, 'Cycling Tsar' Chris Paul, Nathan Jackson and Billie Klinger. We're sampling the delights of the Sir Ralph Abercromby after a Peterloo Massacre tour. Plans are being hatched maybe for something big on the 200th anniversary of the massacre on 16 August, 2019. Outside the window, it seems, a blue van is spying on us. Sneaky.
Two groups from the Forward Institute enjoying 8am-9am tours on Monday and Tuesday 21/22 November. Lots of good questions from these fine folk although I must be careful with jokes. As we walked through Albert Square, one woman said, "These Christmas Markets are huge." "They're the only ones that can be seen from space," I said. "Wow, who'd have thought that?" she said. "Er, forgive me, I was only joking," I hastily added.
A odd occurrence happened during this meal with enthusiastic Dutch guests on Saturday at Albert’s Chop House. They were over for the United v Arsenal game and they were great fun. The meal had been pre-booked for them by the organiser. To start with we had sourdough with a dip. Everybody loved it, especially the Dutch chap opposite. “This is a lovely oil,” he said. I raised an eyebrow, “Oil? That’s beef dripping.” There was a crisis over the table, “Oh no I’m a vegetarian, I’ve never eaten meat all my life.” The man was wiping at his mouth with his napkin. “I thought it was a really good balsamic,” he said. The organiser looked suitably embarrassed as he hadn't asked if there were any vegetarians. Later, though, I saw our vegetarian friend pick up the sourdough, as though in a trance, and make to dip it once more. Can’t blame him, good stuff that beef dripping. It’d turn anybody. The gentleman in question is the one in the second picture, wearing the paper crown, blowing a whistle and reading a joke from a cracker. Saturday 19 November.
Big group takes on the Incredible Interiors tour and finishes in the Directors Suite of the Principal Hotel. Third from the right is Tony Lloyd, the acting mayor of Greater Manchester. Saturday 19 November.
Night time tour of the city and taking in the Victoria Station area.
Four interesting people taking a real interest in Manchester on Tuesday 15 November. Here they are in the Cathedral. This was the first tour in twenty years during which my shoes were complimented. So thanks to the lady, second from left below.
Seven very funny mates from Holland who chose Manchester as a fun place to visit. They wanted a pub tour so we went to Pilcrow, The Angel, The Marble Arch and finished at the Briton's Protection. Saturday 12 December.
My blurry and busy public tour pic of Chetham's visit on Saturday 12 November. Some excellent phone pictures from Mark Payne.
Turley Planning group on the Incredible Interiors tour on Friday 10 November. They've gained scary eyes.
Personal tour for two delightful and incredibly well-read ladies on Thursday 10 November.
The strategy team from Transport for Greater Manchester. They're a bit blurred. I blame the speed of the world spinning underneath us. Actually it's my dodgy camera technique but since this a picture of every group then it has to be included. Thursday 9 November.
Blue Badge and Green Badge Guides from the North West Tourist Guides loving a Chetham's tour on Monday 7 November.
After dinner speech at Manchester Architects (formerly Manchester Society of Architects) dinner at the Imperial War Museum North on Friday 4 November.
Eric Grossman, USA Today journalist and his partner, working out Manchester in the sunshine in close harmony with a woman's passing head and a black cab. Wednesday 2 November, 2016.
Stretford Grammar School group on a tour of the area close to their school including Longford Park and Great Stone Road on Tuesday 1 November...and a cat.
The three pictures below were taken of the groups on the Halloween tours Monday 31 October, 2016.
General tour of the city centre with perceptive guests on Saturday 29 October.
Gallery Of Guests
I have 26 tours and one talk in 16 days between 2-19 July 2015, 16 of these tours are for Manchester International Festival. Here's a picture of every tour and the talk.
I have 26 tours and one talk in 16 days between 2-19 July 2015, 16 of these tours are for Manchester International Festival. Here's a picture of every tour and the talk.
