Page:The National Gazetteer - A Topographical Dictionary of the British Islands, Volume 2.djvu/769

Rh MANCHESTER. 761 MANCHESTER. Head, Lower King-street ; the Polytechnic ; the Divan, Oxford-road. Manchester contains three theatres the Royal, Queen's, and Prince of Wales. The Royal ia situated in Peter-street, and was opened in September, 1845 ; it ia a brick building with an architectural front in the modern Italian style ; the height of the building is about 70 feet ; the interior is in the Italian style ; the house was designed to hold 2,247 persons, but, when very crowded, has accommodated more than 3,000 spec- tators. The Queen's Theatre is a minor theatre standing at the junction of York-street and Spring Gardens, was fitted up in 1815 for melodramatic performances, and in 1839 was occupied as a place of equestrian entertainment by Ducrow. The Prince of Wales is a new and modern theatre, erected in 1864 by a limited company for the purpose of introducing comedies, burlesques, and lighter pieces of amusement, to temper the arbitrary dictator- ship in theatricals of the lessee of the Theatre Royal ; it is situated at the corner of Mosley-street and Peter- street. Two fairs are held annually in Manchester, and two in Salford those of Manchester in the Camp Field during Easter week and the first days of October ; that held at Easter is known as the Knott Mill Fair, and is much frequented ; the other is called Acres Fair, from having been formerly held in Acres Field, now called St. Ann's-square : the Salford fairs are held in Chapel- street, in Whitsun-week and on the 17th, 18th, and 19th November, this last being popularly known as Dirt Fair. Manchester boasts several learned societies the literary and philosophic, established in 1781, has numbered several distinguished persons among its members ; the council-room is adorned by portraits of Newton, Davy, and Dalton, and a marble bust of Dr. W. Henry, by Chantrey ; this society periodically publishes its trans- actions. It has also numismatic, photographic, legal, medical, statistical, natural history, and geological so- cieties, several of which publish their proceedings. There is a law library in Norfolk-street, established in 1820, containing about 4,000 volumes, and chiefly supported by attorneys and solicitors; a public library m Newall's- buildings, containing nearly 20,000 volumes, the pro- perty of a proprietary of subscribers, the value of the shares nominally 4 4. ; New Subscription Library, in Cross-street ; Mudie's, also in Cross-street ; the Portico, occupying a substantial and architectural building in Mosley-street, of the Ionic order, originally established in 1796, by 300 members, contains 14,000 volumes and admirable news-rooms, the reading-room being 66 feet by 42 ; the Free Library, Camp Field, one of the first, or the first, public libraries set on foot under Ewart's Act of 1850, established in 1851 by public subscription, amounting to 12,742, is free, and supported by a local rate of one halfpenny on the poor-rate assessment. The clubs are the Union, established April, 1825, occu- pying a large building in Mosley-street, near the Royal Institution, subscription 7 gs., entrance-money 40 gs., limited 'to 400 members, contains the usual club-house appointments on a handsome scale, in emulation of London clubs ; the Albion, King-street, similar to the preceding on a more modest scale, established in 1837, subscription 5 guineas ; Mosley-street Club, subscrip- tion 3 to 5 guineas. Besides these there are the Bridge- water, the Albert, and a railway club. In addition to these institutions and buildings Manchester possesses several societies, auxiliary and otherwise, of a religious >r benevolent kind a Distressed Foreigners' Society ; a Church Institute ; a Young Men's Christian Association ; a model lodging-house, in London-road ; ragged and industrial schools in Sharp-street, Rochdale-road, in n,'hton-road, Salford, and in St. John's Parade, ii -street ; a Salford humane society ; a glee and madrigal society ; a society for the protection of trade ; a commercial association ; a Royal School of Medicine and Surgery; a temperance society; a Society for Pro- moting Christian Knowledge local branch; a teetotal 'lied the United Kingdom Alliance; Bible, Tract, Pastoral Aid, Church and Domestic Mission Societies, a madrigal society, museum of natural his- tory ; and several public statues viz. to Peel, Welling- ton, Watt, Dalton, the Queen, and Prince Albert ; but none of them, save that to Dalton, have any pretension to be considered works of art, or are in any wise entitled to critical notice. The railway stations are at Hunt's Bank, Bank Top, London-road, New Bailey, and Oxford- road. The history of Manchester may be literally said, to adopt a phrase of Lord Macaulay, to be lost in the twilight of fable. The Rev. J. Whittaker, one of its most erudite and zealous historians, has attempted to claim for it an existence long anterior to the Roman occupation of the island, but the data on which his opinions are avowedly based are so purely conjectural as to give little more than the value of hypothesis to his romote history. A passage in Tacitus (Tacitus, Agri. Vit., 21), however, established an invasion of Lancashire by Agricola in the summer of 79, after wintering at Chester (Deva), and it appears probable that a military station was, during this expedition, established at the confluence of the Irk and Irwell, which was called Manccnion, or Mancunium, and which is in different copies of the Itinerary of Antoninus referred to as Manaurium, or Jtfanutium, all of which names undoubt- edly bore reference to the same spot, and to a military station then in existence of more or less importance. Camden has referred, in his Britannia, to some conjec- tural or probable origin of the name, which may be noted, and which were suggested by his visit to Man- chester in 1607 : " In a neighbouring park, called Alparc, I saw the foundation of an old square fort which they called Mancastle, where the river Medlock joins the Irwell. I will not say that this was the ancient Mancunium the compass of it is little but rather that it was some Koman station." In a subsequent passage Camden has ventured, with what Hollingworth denomi- nates " a light and frothy conceit," on a derivation that the town is called Manchester, because the inhabitants behaved bravely against the Danes ; they would have " the city called Manchester, that is, as they explain it a city of men, and of this notion they are strangely fond, as seeming to contribute much to their honour But I would rather," he continues, " derive it from the British word main, which signifies a stone, for it stands upon a stony hill, and beneath the town, at Colyhurst, there are noble and famous stone quarries." But whatever the origin of the name, or position of the settlement or station prior to its Roman occupation, it appears manifest that it became of entirely inconsider- able importance in subsequent history, and, like Chester, was either in part or wholly devastated by the Danes. On the testimony of Ingulfus of Croylaud, Alfred, about the year 890, first divided England into counties, appointing certain custodes, or keepers, to suppress out- rages in every county ; and " he also divided the said counties into centuries or hundreds ; and certain courts were by him, or some other after him, appointed to be kept in some town or place within the hundred, which some time was a place of good note, as Salford, near Manchester, now is, though I cannot find any ancient name of it, or other monument of its antiquity. Man- chester certainly did not give name to the hundred; whether because as it was then a city, as the story of those times call it, and no cities I know of do give names to the hundreds, having probably government within themselves ; or because it was so sore defaced and almost ruined ; or because the town of Salford was then imme- diately in the king's hands, as also it hath continued till very lately, I leave to the judgment of the reader." In this condition of ruin it may be inferred it remained, from an incidental passage in Roger of Hovenden, that about the year 920, Edward, king first of the West Saxons, and afterwards of the Mercians, sent into the kingdom of the Northumbers an army of the Mercians, that they should fortify the city of Manchester, and place valiant soldiers in it. From this period it became a frontier town between the Mercians, who inhabited Cheshire, Derbyshire, &c., and the Northumbers, who inhabited Yorkshire, &c., and in their wars and mutual i incursions was sometimes possessed by the Mercians, sometimes by the Northumbers. It was anciently a