Page:EB1911 - Volume 17.djvu/561

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544
MANCHESTER
  

William Montagu, 5th duke of Manchester (1768–1843), second son of the preceding, was educated at Harrow, and having become a colonel in the army in 1794, was appointed governor of Jamaica in 1808. Here he remained, except for a visit to England (1811–1813) till 1827, administering the colony with ability in a period of considerable difficulty, and doing much to prepare the way for emancipation of the slaves. From 1827 to 1830 he was postmaster-general in the cabinet of the duke of Wellington, and died in Rome on the 18th of March 1843. His wife was Susan, daughter of the 4th duke of Gordon. He was succeeded by his son George, 6th duke (1799–1855), a captain in the navy; whose son William Drogo, 7th duke (1823–1890), married Louise, daughter of the Comte d’Alten of Hanover, who after his death married Spencer Cavendish, 8th duke of Devonshire. William was succeeded by his son George Victor Drogo, 8th duke of Manchester (1853–1892), on whose death the title devolved on his son, William Angus Drogo, 9th duke of Manchester (b. 1877).  (R. J. M.) 


MANCHESTER, a township of Hartford county, Connecticut, U.S.A., about 9 m. E. of Hartford. Pop.(1890), 8222; (1900), 10,601, of whom 3771 were foreign-born; (1910 census) 13,641. Manchester is served by the New York, New Haven & Hartford railway and by electric line connecting with Hartford, Rockville and Stafford Springs. The township covers an area of about 28 sq. m., and includes the villages of Manchester, South Manchester, Buckland, Manchester Green and Highland Park. The Hockanum River provides a good water power, and Manchester has various manufactures. At South Manchester, an attractive industrial village, a silk mill was built in 1838; the silk mills of one firm (Cheney Brothers) here cover about 12 acres; the company has done much for its employees, whose homes are almost all detached cottages in attractive grounds. Manchester was originally a part of the township of Hartford, and later a part of the township of East Hartford. The first settlement within its present limits was made about 1672; the land was bought from the Indians in 1676; and the township was separated from East Hartford and incorporated in 1823.

See also Meakin’s Model Factories and Villages (1905).

MANCHESTER, a city and county of a city, municipal, county and parliamentary borough of Lancashire, England, 189 m. N.W. by N. of London, and 31 m. E. by N. of Liverpool. It stands for the most part on a level plain, the rising ground being chiefly on the north side. The rivers are the Irwell, the Medlock, the Irk, and the Tib, the last entirely overarched and covered by streets and warehouses. The Irwell, which separates Manchester from Salford, is crossed by a series of bridges and discharges itself into the Mersey, which is about 10 m. distant. The chief part of the district, before it was covered with the superficial drift of sand, gravel and clay, consisted of upper New Red Sandstone with slight portions of lower New Red Sandstone, magnesian marls and upper red marls, hard sandstone and limestone rock, and cold clays and shales of contiguous coal-fields. The city, as its thousands of brick-built houses show, has been for the most part dug out of its own clay-fields. The parliamentary and municipal boroughs of Manchester are not conterminous. The city boundaries, which in 1841 enclosed 4293 acres, have been successively enlarged and now enclose 19,914 acres.

There are four large stations for the Lancashire & Yorkshire, London & North-Western, the Midland, Cheshire lines, Great Northern, and Great Central railways, and many subsidiary stations for local traffic. Tramways, as well as railways, run from Manchester to Oldham, Ashton, Eccles, Stockport, &c., with which places the city is connected by continuous lines of street. The length of the streets in the city of Manchester is 758 m. (exclusive of those in the district of Withington, which joined the city in 1905). The tramway lines within the city boundaries extend to 111 m., and in addition there are 58 m. leased to the corporation by adjacent local authorities. As a matter of fact, the whole of south-east Lancashire and some portions of Cheshire are linked to Manchester by railways and tramways so as to form one great urban area, and the traveller passes from one town to another by lines of street which, for the most part, are continuous. Facility of communication is essential to the commercial prosperity of Manchester, and its need was recognized by the duke of Bridgewater, whose canal, constructed in 1761, has now been absorbed by the Manchester Ship Canal (q.v.). The making of this early waterway was an event only less important than the opening of the Manchester & Liverpool railway in 1830.

The township of Manchester, which forms the nucleus of the city, is comparatively small, and outlying hamlets having been added, its size has increased without regularity of plan. Roughly speaking, the city forms a square, with Market Street as its central thoroughfare. The tendency of recent development is to reduce the irregularities so that the other main streets may either run parallel to or intersect Market Street. Deansgate, which formerly ended in a narrow tangle of buildings, is now a broad road with many handsome buildings, and the same process of widening, enlarging and rebuilding is going on, more or less, all over Manchester. Market Street, which has not been widened since 1820, has been termed, and with some reason, “the most congested street in Europe”; but relief is anticipated from some of the other street improvements. The centre of the city is occupied by business premises; the factories and workshops are mainly on the eastern side. The most important of the public buildings are in the centre and the south. The latter is also the most favoured residential district, and at its extremity is semi-rural in character. Large masses of the population live beyond the city boundary and come to their daily avocations by train and tram. Such a population is rarely homogeneous and Manchester attracts citizens from every part of the globe; there are considerable numbers of German, Armenian and Jewish residents. The houses are for the most part of brick, the public buildings of stone, which is speedily blackened by the smoky atmosphere. Many of the warehouses are of considerable architectural merit, and in recent years the use of terra-cotta has become more common. It is only in the suburbs that gardens are possible; the air is laden with black dust, and the rivers, in spite of all efforts, are in the central part of the city mere dirty ditches. It is impossible to describe Manchester in general terms, for within the city boundaries the conditions vary from the most squalid of slums to suburban and almost rural beauty.

Churches.—Manchester is the seat of an Anglican bishopric, and the chief ecclesiastical building is the cathedral, which, however, was built simply as a parish church, and, although a fine specimen of the Perpendicular period, is by no means what might be expected as the cathedral of an important and wealthy diocese. In the course of restoration a piece of Saxon sculpture came to light. This “Angel stone” represents a winged figure with a scroll inscribed In manus tuas Domine in characters of the 8th century. The bulk of the building belongs to the early part of the 15th century. The first warden was John Huntington, rector of Ashton, who built the choir. The building, which was noticed for its hard stone by Leland when he visited the town, did not stand time and weather well, and by 1845 some portions of it were rapidly decaying. This led to its restoration by James P. Holden. By 1868 the tower was almost completely renovated in a more durable stone. Further restoration was carried out by J. S. Crowther, and the addition of a porch and vestries was executed by Basil Champneys. The total length is 220 ft. and the breadth 112 ft. There are several stained-glass windows, including one to the memory of “Chinese Gordon.” The recumbent statues of Bishop James Fraser and of Hugh Birley, M.P., should also be named. In the Ely chapel is the altar tomb of Bishop James Stanley. In the stalls there are some curious miserere carvings. The tower is 139 ft. high, and contains a peal of ten bells, chiefly from the foundry of the Rudhalls. There are two organs, one by Father Smith, and a modern one in an oak case designed by Sir G. Scott. The parish church was made collegiate in 1422, and when in 1847 the bishopric of