Things you probably didn't know about Manchester

Things you probably didn't know about Manchester

Things you probably didn't know about Manchester
3rd October 2012

Manchester, currently hosting Labour’s annual conference, has a long history of left-wing politics: Marxist Friedrich Engels lived there for several years to work at his German family’s textile factory and was even inspired by social conditions in the city to write a book, The Condition of the Working Class in England in 1944.

Here are some other things you probably didn’t know about Manchester…

• Manchester began life as a Roman settlement around AD 80 and was named Mamucium, which – according to A Dictionary of Place Names from Oxford University Press - means ‘breast-shaped hill’. By the time of the Domesday Book in 1086 it was called Mamecester before the name eventually changed to Manchester.

• It was a small, inconsequential town in Lancashire until the Industrial Revolution kick-started in the area and turned everything on its head. Dubbed ‘Cottonopolis’ at the time, it became a centre for the textile industry in the 19th century and its population grew rapidly.

• Thanks to the number of Irish workers who headed to the city during this time, it’s now estimated that 35% of the population of Manchester and Salford has some Irish ancestry.

• The now defunct Independent Labour Party, The Manchester Guardian (now The Guardian) and the Trade Union Congress were all set up there.

• The world’s first passenger railway, opened in 1830, ran between Manchester and Liverpool.

• The first atom was split at Manchester University in 1919.

• In 2010 Manchester was ranked as Europe’s top city for business competitiveness and a KPMG survey this month showed that businesses in Manchester pay the ninth-lowest taxes of any large industrialised city in the world.

We represent Manchester serviced apartments in locations across the city including Salford Quays, Deansgate and the Northern Quarter.


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