Roman Mamucium became Cottonopolis of the North
Manchester, hub of Greater Manchester in North West England, held over 589,000 residents in 2024 between the Cheshire Plain and the Pennines. A civilian settlement grew beside the Roman fort of Mamucium around AD 79 near the Medlock and Irwell. Industrial nicknames later called it warehouse city and Cottonopolis.
Historically part of Lancashire, it later absorbed parts of Cheshire south of the Mersey, and its people are still called Mancunians after the Latin Mamucium or Mancunio, probably a Latinised Brittonic name. After extensive redevelopment it hosted the 2002 Commonwealth Games. It is often called the capital of the North and vies with Birmingham for the informal title of Britain's second city.
Before the Romans, the Brigantes held a stronghold on the sandstone outcrop where Manchester Cathedral now stands, facing the Irwell. Fragments of Mamucium survive in Castlefield; the civilian settlement seems to have been abandoned by the mid-third century. After Anglo-Saxon settlement the town centre shifted to where the Irwell meets the Irk, and the Domesday Book of 1086 lists Manchester within the hundred of Salford.
It is documented as a market in 1282, and Flemish weavers arriving around the fourteenth century are sometimes credited with founding the local textile trade. The town backed Parliament in the Civil War, and Oliver Cromwell granted it the right to elect a Member of Parliament, Charles Worsley. By about 1750 pure cotton had overtaken wool; the Irwell and Mersey became navigable by 1736, and the Bridgewater Canal followed. On 16 August 1819 a vast crowd, estimated by modern critics at 50,000 to 80,000, gathered in St Peter's Square to demand political reform.
The city gave its name to Manchester Liberalism, became headquarters of the Anti-Corn Law League after 1838, and was the setting Friedrich Engels studied in his 1844 book on the condition of England's working class. In 1830 it became one end of the Liverpool and Manchester Railway, the first intercity passenger line in the world. Cotton mills peaked at 108 in 1853. The Manchester Ship Canal, built between 1888 and 1894, runs 36 miles from Salford to Eastham Locks and let oceangoing ships reach the Port of Manchester.
Source: Manchester
