manchester tourist guide history
Wednesday, 30th July 2003
The Liverpool and Manchester RailwayWhen the Prime Minister, the Duke of Wellington, opened the Liverpool to Manchester Railway in 1830 he ushered in a transport revolution. Despite the earlier line at Stockton and Darlington it was this which proved that rail travel had a future as it quickly made money. With an emphasis on passenger travel it also made travel more democratic - for the first time poorer people could journey regularly for a reasonable price. It all got off to an inauspicious start with an angry crowd at Manchester protesting about the price of food and about the lack of representation in Manchester. There was tragedy too when William Huskisson MP was run down and killed by a train. Less seriously, as the picture shows, people wondered if horses would be made redundant. The railways made travel easier but also the separation of the classes more pronounced as the purely commuter towns of south Manchester such as Wilmslow, Alderley Edge, Sale and Cheadle Hulme spread over the fields. This led to a debate about those who owed their wealth to the city abandoning it. ‘If God made the country and Man made the town.. the Devil made the suburbs,’ thundered Charles Rowley in 1899.
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