Magic of Manchester
In a city with a talent for reinvention, Keren David finds a string of reasons to plan another visit
From gardens to tapas, some Northern highlights
I’M NOT a Mancunian. But having been married to a proud son of Prestwich for the best part of 30 years, and as the daughter and the mother of former and present Manchester University students, I feel as though I know — and love — the city quite well.
There’s the Trafford Centre for shopping, and Slattery’s in Whitefield for cake. There’s the Manchester City Art Gallery for culture, and Old Trafford for football. There are the impressive murals to admire at the Town Hall, and a stroll in Heaton Park is always nice. And then there’s the Lowry, the Manchester Museum of Science and Technology, the Imperial War Museum North, plus the People’s History Museum where you are immersed in the history of the industrial revolution.
I’ve watched, impressed, as Manchester reinvented itself as somewhere cool and fun, with quirky shops and good restaurants. But, still… a weekend filled with completely new experiences? Could the tourist board deliver an itinerary packed with things I’d never seen or done before?
We started out (of course) in Prestwich, queen of suburbs, which has been gently gentrifying over the past few years, and now boasts many places which serve smashed avocados. We breakfasted sitting outside All the Shapes on Warwick Street — the benches are a new addition since we last visited — and enjoyed café society Prestwich style. From there it was a short drive south to Cheetham
Hill, a journey accompanied as always by a running commentary from my husband on who used to live where (“That house was where my friend David lived… that newsagent was owned by my friend’s parents”), and where they live now (Bowden, Las Vegas).
I mention this, because our first stop, the Jewish Museum, is newly arranged on very much these lines, focusing on the Jewish journey to Manchester and in some cases away from it. The emphasis on migration chimes with the multi-ethnic community that surrounds it, and it was heartening to see Muslim mums and children touring the exhibits and enjoying bagels and falafel in the café when we were there.
Yes, I had visited before, but many years ago, for its opening in 1984. Now the museum has recently reopened after an extensive twoyear makeover, adding an extension housing a café, exhibition space and a learning gallery on to the existing former synagogue.
The museum is packed with fascinating bits of history: not only in the things that you can see, but also in the richness of the oral histories, many of them dating back many decades, collected by the museum’s founder, the historian Bill Williams. There was something poignant and moving in hearing Mancunian voices talking about their experiences of arriving as refugees — especially as it chimed with so many conversations I’ve heard in my husband’s family over the years, as he and his cousins pondered what exactly had tempted their grandpa on to that fateful train to Manchester. I could have spent hours there, just listening — and made a mental note to return.
From there, we headed south to the newly reopened Pankhurst centre, the small red-brick house
where the Pankhurst family started their political activism to win women the vote.
The house is still a centre for women’s activism, but now boasts displays and films about the Pankhurst mother and daughters, and gives a taste of their lives when the widowed Emmeline Pankhurst worked as a registrar, learning first hand about the poverty which blighted the lives of so many women. A peaceful garden is planted in purple and white flowers: the suffragette colours.
Our hotel also gave us a flavour of Manchester’s past. The Kimpton Clocktower is new branding for a building that started life as the home of the Refuge Insurance company and still has the grand tiled corridors, wood-panelled rooms and vast halls that once housed hundreds of clerks.
Now swish and modern, the hotel’s Refuge restaurant is a perfect place to admire modern Manchester’s appetite for life, now restrictions have relaxed. An ideal spot for some people watching — young Mancunians dress up to the nines — the small plates of food were delicious, with plenty of fish and vegetarian options.
A lightly spiced fish curry was a particular highlight
The next day, alas, it was pouring. And I’d come to the city that invented the raincoat without one. But never mind, undaunted I caught a coach to the Royal Horticultural Society’s brand new garden in Salford. And I was so glad I didn’t let a little bit of wet weather put me off. As one of the garden volunteers puts it in a video about the garden’s development, “There’s no such thing as bad weather really… just the wrong clothes.”
RHS Bridgewater, on the outskirts of the city, is one of the largest gardening projects undertaken in Europe in recent years. The 154acre site has been developed as a green space to serve the local community — and despite the rain, the gardens were buzzing with people partly there for the shop, café and lush garden centre.
The site was once home to a lavish mansion, Worsley New Hall, whose landscaped gardens produced food and medicinal herbs for the household. But over the decades it fell into ruin, and the house was demolished.
In its heyday, Queen Victoria visited, with her party travelling by canal — the Bridgewater Canal, giving the garden its name — which was dyed blue in her honour. The waterway powered the industrial revolution, Manchester’s route to riches, with water now having an integral part to play in the new gardens.
Along with a lake and a Chinese streamside garden, plus walking and cycle routes that run along the canalside, the glorious Paradise garden has water features reminiscent of Middle Eastern designs. One of the lovely things about seeing a garden in its early days is the promise of seeing it develop in the future: RHS Bridgewater is pretty now, but will only get more beautiful in the years to come.
Next attraction (also just reopened) was another former home of a notable Mancunian, very near the Pankhurst centre, near the universities. The house of the author Elizabeth Gaskell — author of North and South, the 19th century novel which chronicles Manchester at the height of the industrial revolution — was not valued as an important historic site for years, and was used as a student house, with shaggy pink carpets throughout and a disco ball in the basement.
Now it’s been lovingly restored, with huge attention to detail, from the books in the study to the silk dresses and linen aprons in the bedroom closet.
And to finish, another highlight which has been given a new lease of life. The Ancoats area was once a slum where many of the city’s Jewish immigrants started out, now full of hip bars. Canto, a Portuguese tapas bar, served food and wine so delicious that we reordered several of the dishes — the best tomato salad I have ever eaten, light and fluffy salt cod croquettes and intense blood orange sorbet.
When I posted pictures on social media, I had many comments from Mancunian friends, amazed that I’d managed to do so many things that they had never done themselves. “You’ve reminded me what a great city we live in,” said one. Manchester was locked down longer than most of the rest of the UK but as my visit showed, it’s returned with all the more energy and style.