Guided Walk around Manchester - Saturday 10th Nov 2012

We were lucky enough to persuade Liz to take us on a walking tour of another part of Manchester this time.
The walk was advertised as 'Back Street Bohemia to Big Bucks and Big Books' to loosely describe the area's we were visiting.

We met at the The Mayfield in the Piccadilly station concourse at 11am and headed off towards the Northern Quarter, stopping at places of interest and even going into the foyer of the Abode hotel to admire the tiling and the fabulous staircase of the original warehouse that it was.

Liz also took us into the atrium of an office complex in the Northern Quarter which was originally a warehouse and you could still see where the carts would have driven up full of cotton to be unloaded and the hoists used to get it to the upper levels - it's incredible that it is still possible to see such a fabulous example of the 'King Cotton' Victorian era, when Manchester was a thriving city turning raw cotton into cloth.
Continuing our way through the Northern Quarter we found out, amongst other things, why some of the road signs have white writing on blue backgrounds and other blue on white, and why some of the pavements have metal edges.

We then visited the old Fish Market which is now the Manchester Craft and Design Centre. After admiring the stalls and shops, we stopped for a photo! 

As we left the Norther Quarter, we started to walk through the old Banking district and had a coffee break at Browns Restuarant, which was originally Parrs Bank, one of the city's former opulent banking halls. The building was designed by Charles Heathcote in 1902 and is a superb example of Edwardian baroque with some increasingly fashionable art nouveau detailing, particularly in the wrought ironwork.
Sitting in such spendour having a coffee was a real treat. Afterwards we continued through the old Banking disctrict, ending up on King Street and admiring various architectural features. We continued towards John Rylands library and into Spinningfields where the walk 'officially' finished. Most of the group then headed off for lunch at a local pub.

It was a fantastic tour of parts of Manchester that some of us didn't even know existed!

Our thanks go to Liz for making it such an interesting morning:-)