Ancoats, Manchester...

I'm now shamelessly promoting www.manchestercurious.com at every opportunity I can! It's not designed to make any profit, it's just to make people aware of the built environment in our city and how precious it is. Any profits made will be directed to Mustard Tree, our partner charity that looks out for the disadvantaged and homeless of the city. While Manchester is booming these days, not everyone can enjoy the benefits as yet.

This is the little square in front of Halle St. Peter's, Ancoats. As part of the festival you can take a tour of this fascinating and photogenic part of the city. It's the world's first industrial suburb, one of the places where the modern world was born. The church itself is fascinating, built in the style of an Italian church by Italian immigrants who moved here in the Victorian period, set up businesses which thrived and then moved out to more prosperous parts of the city. Immigrants coming to Manchester poor and destitute, setting up businesses and creating wealth and jobs. Food for thought for us all today I'd say. As the Italian immigrants prospered they moved out of Ancoats and are still here but living in the leafy, green suburbs. We eat at their restaurants.

Poor St.Peter's fell on hard times and might have been swept away but was saved and became a rehearsal space for the Halle Orchestra (a venerable Manchester cultural institution set up by an immigrant from Germany, I'm detecting a theme here). You can also go to listen to small scale concerts there. And they plan to build an extension to the church to expand on this.

It's another place you can visit as part of Manchester Curious.