Cottonopolis
Cottonopolis was a 19th-century nickname for Manchester, as it was a metropolis and the centre of the cotton industry.[1][2]
The Manchester warehouse which we lately visited, was a building fit for the Town Hall of any respectable municipality; a stately, spacious, and tasteful edifice; rich and substantial as its respectable proprietors, the well-known firm of Banneret and Co. There are nearly a hundred such buildings in Manchester; –not so large, perhaps, for this is the largest; but all in their degree worthy of Cottonopolis.
— Lowe J, A Manchester warehouse, Household Words 9 269 (1854)
Background
Early cotton mills powered by water were built in Lancashire and its neighbouring counties. In 1781
The number of cotton mills on Manchester peaked at 108 in 1853.[5] As the numbers declined, cotton mills opened in the surrounding towns, Bury, Oldham (at its zenith the most productive cotton spinning town in the world[6][7]), Rochdale, Bolton (known as "Spindleton" in 1892)[8] and in Blackburn, Darwen, Rawtenstall, Todmorden and Burnley. As the manufacturing centre of Manchester shrank, the commercial centre, warehouses, banks and services for the 280 cotton towns and villages within a 12-mile radius of the Royal Exchange grew.[9] The term "Cottonopolis" came into use in about 1870.[10] In the previous decade, three-quarters of the textiles manufactured were exported by foreign companies based in the Port of Manchester.[11]
Manchester became an important transport hub, the
Cotton Exchange
The commercial centre of Cottonopolis was the exchange's trading hall. The first of Manchester's exchanges was built in the market place by Sir Oswald Mosley in 1727 for
Warehousing
In the second half of the 1800s, Manchester's reputation as a financial and commercial centre was boosted by the unprecedented number of warehouses erected in the city centre. In 1806 there were just over 1,000 but by 1815 this had almost doubled to 1,819. Manchester was dubbed "warehouse city". The earliest warehouses were built around King Street although by 1850 warehouses had spread to Portland Street and later to Whitworth Street. Richard Cobden's construction in Mosley Street was the first of many palazzo style warehouse, followed by the elaborate Watts Warehouse in 1854.
In 1844 Johann Georg Kohl described Manchester's streets in his travel writing, "...Market Street, into Mosley Street, or Cooper Street, for instance. Here stand the great warehouses, five or six stories high, all large and imposing, some of them stately and elegant. At night these warehouses are brilliantly lighted from top to bottom..."[18]
The packing warehouses: Asia House, India House and Velvet House along Whitworth Street were among the tallest buildings of their time. These dominant buildings were the stately homes of the cotton industry and the backbone of Cottonopolis, providing not just the storage facilities but they displayed the finished goods. Their owners spawned equally ornate bank and office buildings providing loans for the production of cotton and associated industries.
Banking
From the late 1820s, Manchester was developing into an important city. The
In 1772, Arthur Heywood's Bank opened in Manchester, but the money was transferred daily via
Legacy
Many 18th- and 19th-century cotton mills, canals, supporting bridges and infrastructure exist today. The square mile of "warehouse city" is cited as the finest example of a Victorian commercial centre in the United Kingdom.[19] This area is a core component of the listing of Manchester and Salford on a tentative list of UNESCO World Heritage Sites [1]
The Royal Exchange was renovated in 1972 and turned into the home of one of the most prolific and highly regarded theatres outside London. The Royal Exchange was damaged in 1996 by an IRA bomb and rebuilt at a cost of £32 million.[20]
Cottonopolis in popular culture
... [Manchester] this famous great factory town. Dark and smoky from the coal vapours, it resembles a huge forge or workshop. Work, profit and greed seem to be the only thoughts here. The clatter of the cotton mills and the looms can be heard everywhere ...
— Johanna Schopenhauer, Sämmtliche Schriften, Frankfurt, (1830)
A thick black smoke covers the city. The sun appears like a disc without any rays. In this semi-daylight 300,000 people work ceaselessly. A thousand noises rise amidst this unending damp and dark labyrinth ... the footsteps of a busy crowd, the crunching wheels of machines, the shriek of steam from the boilers, the regular beat of looms, the heavy rumble of carts, these are the only noises from which you can never escape in these dark half-lit streets ..
— Alexis de Tocqueville, Oeuvres Completes, (1835)
I remember my earliest view of Manchester. I saw the forest of chimneys pouring forth volumes of steam and smoke, forming an inky canopy which seemed to embrace and involve the whole place.
— W. Cooke Taylor, (1842)
Extracts from "Spinning the Web",[21] used as the basis of a BBC Radio 4 drama.[22]
See also
- Manchester cotton warehouses
- Textile manufacture during the Industrial Revolution
- Linenopolis
References
Notes
- ^ "Cottonopolis". Oxford English Dictionary (Online ed.). Oxford University Press. (Subscription or participating institution membership required.)
- ^ Lowe, J (1854). "A Manchester warehouse". Household Words. 9: 269.
- ^ Williams & Farnie 1992, p. 14
- ^ Fireproof Construction, Looking at Buildings, retrieved 13 July 2012
- ^ a b "City Centre", Spinning the Web, Manchester City Council, archived from the original on 16 March 2007, retrieved 12 April 2007
- ^ Gurr & Hunt 1998, p. 4
- ^ NW Cotton Towns Learning Journey Archived 10 September 2007 at archive.today www.spinningtheweb.org.uk. Retrieved 27 October 2006.
- ^ Williams & Farnie 1992, p. 31
- ^ Williams & Farnie 1992, p. 20
- ^ Partridge & Beale 2002, p. 258
- ^ OCLC 1231605765. Retrieved 28 May 2021.
- ^ Merchants' Warehouse, Castlefield, Manchester, Revealing Histories, retrieved 12 September 2012
- OCLC 1181113802. Archivedfrom the original on 16 November 2019.. Citation: Indeed, the historic county of Lancashire then supported the largest cotton industry the world had ever seen.
- ^ Hartwell 2002, p. 10
- ^ Hartwell 2002, p. 18
- ^ Hartwell 2002, p. 155
- ^ Farrer, William; Brownbill, J, eds. (1911), "Townships: Manchester (part 1 of 2)", A History of the County of Lancaster: Volume 4, Victoria County History, British History Online, pp. 222–230, retrieved 12 September 2012
- ^ Kohl 1844, pp. 106–147
- ^ Manchester Cottonopolis Archived 12 January 2013 at the Wayback Machine, Spinning the Web, Manchester City Council. Retrieved 7 December 2006.
- ^ "Theatre History". Royal Exchange Theatre. Retrieved 20 September 2007.
- ^ On Cottonopolis..., Spinning the Web, Manchester City Council. Retrieved 7 December 2006.
- ^ Cottonopolis, BBC Radio 4
Bibliography
- Gurr; Hunt (1998), The Cotton Mills of Oldham, Oldham Education & Leisure, ISBN 0-902809-46-6
- Hartwell, Clare (2002), Manchester, Pevsner Architectural Guides, Yale University Press, ISBN 0-14-071131-7
- Kohl, Johann Georg (1844), England, Wales and Scotland, Chapman and Hall
- Partridge, Eric; Beale, Paul (2002), A Dictionary of Slang and Unconventional English (8 ed.), Routledge, ISBN 0415291895
- Williams, Mike; Farnie, D.A. (1992), Cotton Mills in Greater Manchester, Carnegie Publishing, ISBN 0-948789-89-1