Author Archives: ed

We are delighted to be launching a new walks programme in conjunction with the great people from Great Days (of Altrincham) on Saturdays this summer, starting on Saturday 25 May.

In the morning at 11am we will be running our ever-popular music tour – Manchester Music: The Hacienda Years. In the afternoon at 2.30pm it’s “Secrets of the Northern Quarter”.
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One piece of authentic Roman masonry survives in its original position in Manchester. It is a block of stone, about a foot high and a few wide, dating from around the year 200, which can be found turning left at the end of Collier Street under Arch 95 of the Manchester, South Junction and Altrincham Railway. How it has survived is a miracle,
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5. Manchester under the Saxons and Vikings
Object: Angel Stone
Location: Manchester Cathedral
Year: c. 700
We don’t have much evidence of Saxon or Viking Manchester. Records weren’t kept, as nobody thought this obscure tract of land, Manigceastre, cut off from the important towns on the eastern side of the country, such as York, to be important.
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How far back should we trace the rivalry between Manchester and our formidable cousin, 35 miles west down the Mersey? In the year 1207 King John issued letters patent proclaiming the establishment of a new borough, “Livpul”, and inviting people to settle there. At that time Manchester was a minor player, a village of no renown. Lancashire itself was considered isolated and unimportant, the major routes from London heading east to York and then on to Edinburgh. Liverpool moved ahead of Manchester in mediaeval times because of its status as a port for British trade. Manchester caught up and overtook Liverpool during the early years of the Industrial Revolution, only for Liverpool to respond by becoming one of the world’s major transatlantic ports.
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Ed Glinert, the only Manchester tour guide who has worked with Mike Leigh and the great radical activist Paul Foot, has been talking, walking, reading, thinking, sleeping, writing about Peterloo, giving guided tours about Peterloo, giving lectures about Peterloo, for more than 30 years.

Next up, two new Peterloo tours on Sunday 18 November. See the film and then discover all the bits Mike Leigh left out! The first, “Before Peterloo”, at 11.30am from Central Library. And then, can you believe, at 2pm, “After Peterloo”, also from Central Library.

Ed Glinert has rooted out an astonishing array of stories connected with one of the defining events in English political history.
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You’ve made a great choice, logging on to New Manchester Walks, the website of the city’s group of professional tour guides. We have crafted a unique body of walks, talks and tours covering every aspect of history in and around Manchester, the world’s first industrial city – the industrial strength city.

We run a regular programme of public walks (details on this website) and have devised bespoke tours on every subject imaginable – history, art, music, architecture, football, politics…
Here is a sample of some of our hundred-plus tours:
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New Manchester Walks was shocked, but not surprised to read the hatchet job on Manchester’s Peterloo 200 commemorations in last Saturday’s Times, the small free snippet of which we reproduce from their website.

New Manchester Walks’s Ed Glinert has written a letter to The Times, which follows, righting this latest wrong on Manchester. The editorial bears all the marks of Tory peer Lord (Daniel) Finkelstein who fancies himself as a bit of a Norman Stone but bears closer resemblance in his grasp of history to Norman Wisdom. We get the feeling that The Times’s tirade against Peterloo is more about attacking Manchester for getting too uppity than in redressing history.
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Welcome to Manchester, the capital of the North, the first city of the Industrial Revolution, the city where modern-day capitalism was created, communism researched, the atom split and the computer invented…THE industrial strength city.
Make your visit special with a tour led by New Manchester Walks, the city’s group of professional guides, We have devised a number of bespoke tours aimed not only at the thousands of visitors pouring into the city, but locals looking to unravel the city’s secrets.
• 7 Wonders of Manchester.
• 7 Manchester Landmarks for Football Fanatics.
• 7 Manchester Music Landmarks – from the Hacienda to Tony Wilson’s pad.
• 7 Politically Sound Manchester Landmarks.
We also have over a hundred detailed tours, covering everything – from the Pankhursts to George Best to L S Lowry to Coronation Street.
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Having discovered that Manchester schools are now, at last, incorporating the wonderful story of how a Manchester family, the Pankhursts, led the campaign to gain women the vote, into their curriculum, we are hoping that you, school organisers, book a Pankhurst tour for older pupils with New Manchester Walks.
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Ed Glinert of New Manchester Walks is launching a new campaign to start protesting against the prominence of the wrong people on the streets of Manchester. It’s time to make the prominent art and statuary in Manchester more reflective of the city’s history of protest and civil rights. In this most left-wing of cities we have more statues of Tories than socialists; more colonialists than progressives.
The campaign begins with a new tour (please book with eventbrite), Uncomfortable Art, Uncomfortable History on Sunday 12 August at noon from the Visitor Centre, Piccadilly Gardens. The tour has been devised by Ed Glinert who has spent 35 years combating injustice in his hard-hitting journalism for City Life and Private Eye, and in books for Penguin, HarperCollins and Random House.

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