Jonathan Schofield Manchester Tours
  • HOME
  • Calendar of tours
  • The Zoom Tours series
  • Gift Vouchers
  • December seven day city centre series
  • Tour Diary: Confessions of a guide
  • Every tour in pictures and some words
  • Ghost tours - spooks guaranteed
  • Exclusive: 35 King St & Georgian Manchester
  • EXCLUSIVE: Mayfield Station tours
  • Heaton Hall and Park Tour
  • The Pan-African Congress, Slavery, and Thomas Clarkson Tour: A Manchester Anniversary Tour
  • Suffragettes, Women & Manchester
  • Totally Manchester - a general tour of the city
  • Whalley Range & Alexandra Park
  • EXCLUSIVE: Refuge/ Kimpton Clock Tower Hotel
  • EXCLUSIVE: 'Boldest Building' Tour, Edgar Wood Centre
  • Secret Tunnels Tour
  • Some tours
  • Loyalty card/scheme
  • GUEST COMMENTS
  • CONTACT DETAILS AND BIOGRAPHY
  • Terms & Conditions
  • EXCLUSIVE: Chetham's Library and College House
  • EXCLUSIVE Hallé St Peter’s & Ancoats Tour NEW
  • Manchester books by Jonathan Schofield
  • The Death & Beer Tour for the Not Quite Light Festival
  • First Wednesday Spinningfields Series 2020
  • Oxford Road Corridor/ University district tour
  • Architecture & Planning: why does Manchester look like it does?
  • Castlefield & Britannia Basin
  • Didsbury, Kersal, Quays tours
  • Bombed & Besieged: Manchester at War
  • The Prestwich Tour: The surprising Manchester series
  • Some Published Articles On Manchester's Present, its Heritage and Tourism
  • The Northern Quarter & Ancoats Tour
  • Friedrich Engels And Karl Marx Tours
  • ​Chorlton tour
  • The Rollicking Pub Tour
  • The Surprising Manchester Series: Old Trafford
  • The Surprising Manchester Series: Bradford & Clayton
  • EXCLUSIVE: Kampus tours, the abandoned warehouses
  • Magical Manchester Mystery Tour - by bike
  • Incredible Interiors
  • Chapel Street and The Irwell: The Tour
  • The Tour of Uninteresting Objects
  • Shock, Surprise, Prose & Verse: Manchester and Literature
  • April Fool's Day Tour - The Incredibly Serious Tour
  • Ford Madox Brown and Pre-Raphaelite Manchester
  • The Day The World Got Smaller Tour
  • Platt Fields, Birch Fields and Rusholme Tour
  • Podcasts
  • Peterloo Massacre: The Reality & The Drama
  • Lost Graveyards and the Dead
  • Truly Madly Brutal
  • The Impossible Bridge and the Improbable Hill - River Irk Valley
  • Return to 1421: The Old Towne and Medieval Manchester
  • City of Science Tours July 2016
  • Suggested Private Tours
  • The River at Dusk - Friday 18 May
  • Literary Manchester: A city in words
  • Anthony Burgess and Literary Manchester Tour
  • Great Northern Tunnel Tour
  • 1840s Manchester: The Key Decade, talk and tour
  • Burns Night Tour Monday 25 January
  • Fire Station Tours: Calling Photographers & Sketchers
  • Manchester City of Art Tour
  • Valentine's Day tour 14 February
  • Manchester Statues, 20 July
  • The Gallery
  • Irk Valley Tour. Sweet Air, Scuttlers, Lost Churches and Hidden Stories
  • Tours deals 2 for £20, 3 for £30
  • The Ghosts of Afflecks & the Northern Quarter

CTruly Madly Brutal - Concrete dreams in twentieth century Manchester.
Saturday 31 August 3pm

A TOUR revealing how Manchester was re-imagined after World War II.

This is all about optimism and reality at a fascinating time for design. 
Broken as a superpower Britain found it hard to face its past. A dirty, bombed, Manchester, being the first urban centre of the Industrial Revolution, didn't like what it saw when it glanced in the mirror. It seemed better to wipe all the old stuff away. Make a fresh start.

So the city came up with the superb in scale and ambition 1945 Manchester Plan. The vision in this huge document is thrilling but thankfully it was never realised. If
 carried through the city would have been left with a Stalinist city centre like Nova Huta close to Cracow. The reality, apart from one or two ideas, would have been horrific. Instead of the glorious mess of Manchester architecture we would have been left with a regimented and uniform street scene. The Plan even carried an illustration (see below) that did away with famous Manchester Town Hall. It was out-of-date see. Old-fashioned.

Yet there are tell tale signs of how the plan would have been realised and there are buildings which hint at how the city might have looked if it all had been carried through. 

The tour will include site visits inside and outside buildings. It will look at buildings, huge and often overlooked artworks (such as William Mitchell's wonders, illustrated below) and describe the personalities involved with the Manchester Plan. This is an informed tour but it is huge fun too. 
​
Meet: Mercure Hotel, Portland Street, M1 4PH, ten minutes before the start time of 3pm.


Sat 31 August 3pm Truly Madly Brutal Tour
Picture
Picture
Proudly powered by Weebly