Author Archives: ed

Nicholas Mosley, the 7th Baronet Mosley of Ancoats, has died aged 82. Mosley will be unknown to most Mancunians but his connections with the city were strong and severe. His baronetcy of the exciting east Manchester suburb (described in recent social media reports as the “hippest” place in Manchester, or was it Britain, or maybe the rest of the world?) was a subsidiary title of also being Lord Ravensdale. And this was THE Mosley family, who owned Manchester, as Lords of the Manor, for around 250 years…
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On 26 November 1867 something strange happened. A woman, Lily Maxwell, voted in the by-election at Chorlton-on-Medlock Town Hall. She cast her vote for Jacob Bright, the Liberal. He won. her vote was then deemed illegal.

How did she get to vote, given it was then illegal for women to vote in parliamentary elections?
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We have a new system in place for the autumn and winter and details of our walks, tours, talks and cruises are on-line only.

To find out what’s on and when, please go to our Calendar or you can head to our Walks & Tours tab

PLEASE PLEASE make sure you check the website a day in advance in case of unavoidable late changes.
Read on for further information and for whether or not you need to book to go on our walks and tours.
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Many thanks to the histories Festival for organising a wonderful series of events with the theme of protest and democracy this second weekend of June, and now it’s back to tours of a different hue. On Wednesday 13 June Steve Bourne will take you around John Rylands Library (1pm, St Ann’s Church), followed by the Chetham’s/Cathedral double-header at (1.45pm, Victoria Station wallmap). In the evening is our regular and barely believable “Secret History of Manchester”, the tour that has proved such a winner (5.30pm, Visitor Centre).

The following day, Thursday, John Alker will be outlining “Manchester’s 10 Best buildings, a new tour in his own inimitable style (1.30pm, Visitor Centre). 

Steve Bourne is back on Friday to find “The Lost Rivers of Manchester” (Victoria Station wallmap, 5.30pm). We can’t do the Bomb walk this year. On Saturday 16th Steve will be exploring the Grand Canals west (city centre through to Castlefield and beyond, 6pm from Malmaison). His “Welcome to Manchester” tour is at 2pm from the Visitor Centre.
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We do do a Russian Manchester tour but we want to put in an early plug for our Russian London all-day extravaganza: “Spies, Saboteurs, Soviets and Samovars”.

In condemning Jeremy Corbyn for being ambiguous and vague about the Russian Salisbury poisoning scandal no one seems to have mentioned the obvious reason for his reticence to criticise. One of his predecessors as Labour Party leader – Hugh Gaitskell – was possibly poisoned by the Russians at their embassy in 1962 as “punishment” for hounding communists out of the Labour Party.
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See the Nymphs (and a host of Pre-Raphaelite-era women) on our “Pre-Raphaelite Women of Manchester Art Gallery” tours. Regular dates, Thursday evenings at 5.30pm. Please book with eventbrite.

They dazed and dazzled. They starred and shone. They glowed and gleamed through the canvas and the frames. They were the most mysterious and mesmerising women in Victorian Britain. They were amongst the most feted women of the 19th century, captured for all time in intensely saturated luminous colour by William Holman Hunt, John Everett Millais, Dante Gabriel Rossetti and their circle, but their names are still barely known to the public: Jane Burden, Elizabeth Siddal, Emma Watkins, Alexa Wilding…

They were the Pre-Raphaelite women featured in some of the most important British paintings ever created including Autumn Leaves, Astarte Syriaca, Work, The Light of the World and The Hireling Shepherd which live in Manchester Art Gallery.
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