The Way We Were

Bol Partner

Take a stroll around Manchester today and you will see an attractive, modern, thriving, world-class city. Look above street level and you can’t fail to be impressed by the magnificent grandeur of the older buildings, which bear witness to the City’s industrial and commercial wealth, created during the Victorian period. It is difficult for us to imagine life for the City’s residents so long ago but we have some help in doing so. From the 1860s, professional photographers took pictures which were published as ‘albumen prints’, ‘stereographs’ and ‘magic lantern’ projection slides and, in the early 1900s, as postcards. In addition to these wonderful images, guide books were a rich source of facts, figures and descriptions of many aspects of city life. Together, they form a visual and written record which enables us to imagine visiting Manchester, one hundred years ago.This 75 page booklet reproduces a guide book and thirty eight photographs owned by the Keasbury-Gordon Photograph Archive. Most of the photographs were taken between 1880 and 1920 and are reproduced from magic lantern slides and postcards. I have included photographs that are not strictly in the City area, such as a barge crossing the Barton Aqueduct over the Manchester Ship Canal and Pilkington's Lancastrian Pottery Factory, as they are an important part of Manchester’s story. The guide book, including two maps and a section on neighbouring Salford, was published in 1868. Its fifty pages are crammed with fascinating insights into Manchester’s history, its buildings, institutions, services, industries, eminent residents, tourist attractions and much more. The photographs and text complement each other and enable us to travel back in time to visit Victorian and Edwardian Manchester.

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Pages: 36, Paperback, Createspace Independent Pub