We have long been amazed by the quality and variety of architecture to be found in the City of Manchester and its surrounding suburbs. The former cotton industry warehouses are a well-known feature, quite unique to Manchester, but there are also many fine churches and pubs, and a good few interesting municipal, school, shop and office buildings. The main Victoria railway station building is a spectacular example of its kind, as also are some of the nearby city railway bridges. There are more than twenty fine "half-timbered" halls and houses dating from the 15th century onwards, and numerous Victorian "gentlemen's houses" built for the mill and factory owners. Their workforces were accommodated in extensive terraced housing, some of which is especially ornate or distinctive in design.
Our interest was heightened by Clare Hartwell's excellent handbook "Manchester" in the Pevsner Architectural Guides series, first published in 2001 (ISBN 0-14-071131-7), and by the English Heritage guide "Manchester - The Warehouse Legacy" at about the same time. Both these have a very comprehensive coverage of the City itself, but are somewhat sparse and selective in the outer districts of the county. Our own sketchy knowledge of these areas was filled out considerably by consulting the various websites containing details of the numerous "listed" buildings.
We have since visited and photographed over 1000 "interesting" buildings and structures in Greater Manchester county. By no means all are "listed", and of those that are, many, though undoubtedly of importance architecturally, are not particularly "photogenic" or are so similar to several others that they contribute little new to the overall picture.
A searchable index to those we have recorded so far is appended below. It is not a complete list, but merely our "personal favourites", and we have surely missed others of equal merit - would much appreciate hearing about any such!
We have tried to include a guide to the precise location of each item, as some are difficult to find when not in possession of local knowledge! The first street name column is the road on which the item is located, and the second is that of an adjacent intersecting road or other nearby feature (as shown on the "A-Z" street maps). The item name shown is generally the original name or function of the building, where known, which can often be very different from the present use - in some cases so different that we also included this present name/use in (brackets)! The date shown is either carried on a plaque, or is that when the structure was completed and opened, substantially in the form now seen. The column filters can be used to quickly find structures of any one type, date period, or designer etc, as desired.
It is hoped to add a selection of images of the best examples of this wonderful architectural heritage in due course.
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Manchester Architecture short website version.xls Size : 214 Kb Type : xls |
