RIGHT: Mosaic of Coronation Street characters in the Northern Quarter
BELOW: John’s cab on a cobbled street. Photo: Mick Cookson
Manchester W
by cab
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s
From Chetham’s Library and the
Northern Quarter to Ancoats industrial
area and Salford Quays, Andrew
Marshall discovers Manchester by taxi
Photographs: Andrew Marshall and Mick
Cookson
elcome to Manchester,’ says taxi driver
and tour guide John Consterdine,
as I hop into the back of his classic
looking black cab outside Victoria Station, one crisp
February morning. ‘We have a lot to see today. In
fact, I will be taking you on a 2000 year journey from
Roman times, through the medieval and industrial
periods, then bang up to date with Media City
and some music, football and stunning architecture
thrown in for good measure.’
John gets his tour underway by pointing out a few
places of interest in the vicinity of Victoria Station,
including the National Football Museum (containing
over 140,000 items of football memorabilia), the
Arndale Centre on Market Street (the second
busiest shopping street in the country after London’s
Oxford Street), the Printworks (once the largest
print works in Europe and now repurposed as a
popular entertainment complex) and one of the
planet’s most sustainable large buildings at One
Angel Square.
‘This is my city’- Taxi driver and tour guide
John Consterdine on top of a building at
Salford Quays. Photo: Mick Cookson
Fifty two-year-old John is a qualified
green badge guide and black cab driver
and was awarded with ‘Tourism Star of
the Year’ at the Manchester Tourism
Awards in 2013. John has a natural
charm and a genuine passion for the
city where he grew up, lives and works.
‘There are two things that people
generally assume about taxi drivers; that
they know the city like the back of their
hand and are not easily lost for words.
I’m proud to say that both of these are
true of me,’ he says with a smile. ‘Some
people have this preconceived idea of
Manchester as a grim northern city but
this couldn’t be further from the truth.
I want to show visitors the different
aspects of Manchester and how they
mesh together to make it whole.’
Our first port of call is Chetham’s
Library, situated in the medieval
quarter just a stone’s throw from
Victoria Station. Chetham’s was
founded in 1653 making it the oldest
free public reference library in the
English-speaking world. The extensive
collections consist of a wealth of early
printed books, manuscripts, diaries,
letters, deeds, prints and glass lantern
slides. Chetham’s was the meeting place
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of Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels
when Marx visited Manchester during
the mid-1800s, and it’s fascinating to
view the economics’ books that Marx
was reading at the time and sit at the
window table where Marx and Engels
would meet.
Next on the schedule is the trendy
Northern Quarter, where John points out
some of his favourite watering holes like
the Hare & Hounds and the Millstone.
‘These are typical Manchester pubs
where you bump into your mates after
work,’ he says.
Since it was rejuvenated in the
1980s the Northern Quarter has been
Manchester’s alternative music, fashion
and café culture hub. The main artery
Oldham Street, is where the pick of
the establishments are located such as
legendary Afflecks Palace, a sprawling
emporium bursting with retro and
vintage fashion, the Vinyl Exchange
(dealing in second hand records and
CDs) and the Night & Day Café where
booze is served in teapots and live music
happens most nights of the week.
From the Northern Quarter we drive
to Portland Street, just off Piccadilly
Gardens, to the top level of a high-rise
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car park to view one of Manchester’s
premier architectural buildings – the
Watts Warehouse built in the mid1800s for S & J Watts. This ‘Queen of
Manchester Warehouses’ once housed
the largest wholesale drapery business
in the city and people came here from
all over the globe to place orders for
cotton goods. Each of the five storeys of
the building is constructed in a different
style: Italian Renaissance, Elizabethan,
French Renaissance and Flemish with
roof pavilions featuring large Gothic
wheel windows.
The Grade II listed building narrowly
avoided demolition in 1972, and today
thrives as the Britannia Hotel, retaining
many of its original features like the
balconied stairway. ‘Only a few minutes’
walk away from here is the Gay Village
and Chinatown which gives Manchester
a friendly and international flavour,’
says John. ‘Further afield is the Midland
Hotel, a great place for afternoon tea,
where Mr Rolls met Mr Royce and the
rest is history.’
Back in the cab, I ask John how
he made the transition from taxi
driver to tour guide. ‘It was a natural
progression really,’ he says. ‘I noticed
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my taxi customers asking questions
about various places as we travelled
around, so found myself buying books
and reading up on the city so I could
provide some answers. I also went on
a tour guiding course where I learnt
about Manchester’s importance in
world history when it comes to areas
like free trade, the canal system and the
Industrial Revolution.’
John then drives down King Street,
formerly the centre of the North West
banking industry and now progressively
dominated by upmarket restaurants and
designer stores such as Liam Gallagher’s
Pretty Green and Rio Ferdinand’s
Rosso Restaurant & Bar, to arrive at
Castlefield – the industrial and Roman
heart of Manchester. This fascinating
inner city convservation area located
at the south-west end of Deansgate,
is home to the Roman era fort of
Mamucium or Mancunium (which gave
its name to Manchester), the terminus of
the Bridgewater Canal (the world’s first
industrial canal built in 1764) and the
world’s first passenger railway which
terminated here in 1830 at Liverpool
Road railway station.
Ancoats is our next stop and another
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ABOVE LEFT: Inside Chetham’s Library – the oldest public reference library in the English
speaking world
ABOVE RIGHT: Media City/Salford Quays
BELOW: Canal boats at Castlefield
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significant first. Hailed as the world’s first
industrial suburb, with its concentration
of mill buildings (including the oldest
steam-powered mills in the world),
Ancoats is an important landmark in
the history of the Industrial Revolution,
when Manchester became known as
‘Cottonopolis.’ For many years from
the late 1700s onwards, Ancoats was a
thriving industrial area until suffering an
economic decline in the 1930s due to a
slump in the cotton industry.
In the last couple of decades there’s
been a period of substantial regeneration
with many of the great mills converted
into apartments and offices. John
mentions that the popular BBC series
‘Dragon’s Den’ is filmed here, and shows
me the ‘Peeps’, a series of peep holes
into some of the buildings that provide
glimpses into the past, including a mill
interior that has been closed up since
the Second World War.
We stop for lunch at the nearby
Crusty Cob, a well-known favourite
among taxi drivers, where John regularly
brings his tour clients. As we enjoy the
famous meat and potato pies, he tells
me more about his life as a tour guide. ‘I
have clients from all over the world from
Ecuador to Australia and locals too, who
are surprised with what they discover on
their doorstep,’ he tells me. ‘Most of my
tours are around two hours in length
but sometimes longer like today. You
will find as we go around, that you will
want to spend longer at some points of
interest than at others. I might build
a break in here and there and have a
general socialise with my clients, as I’m
interested in their lives and what brings
them to Manchester.’
‘With Manchester having two of
the leading teams in England, next on
the tour is some football,’ says John,
as we set off towards Eastlands, where
I wander around Manchester City’s
impressive Etihad Stadium soaking up
the atmosphere. A handful of football
pitches away from the Etihad Stadium
is the National Cycling Centre and
Velodrome (home to the British Cycling
team) and the indoor BMX Arena. ‘You
won’t want to leave the Velodrome once
inside,’ says John, and he’s not wrong it’s strangely hypnotic watching cyclists
go round and round on a track that is
much steeper in reality than it looks on
television. Bikes are available for hire if
you want to experience it all for yourself
at a later time.
From Eastlands, it’s back to the city
centre to visit a point of interest with
a more educational flavour. ‘The
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TOP: Two Smiths fans outside the Salford Lads Club
ABOVE: Ancoats
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The Etihad Stadium - home of Manchester City
University of Manchester with its
40,000 students, some coming from all
over the world adds to the city’s cultural
diversity,’ says John as we arrive at the
main campus on Oxford Road. Here’s
a few interesting facts about this top
research and learning facility that dates
back to 1824: Twenty five Nobel Prize
winners have worked or studied here,
it’s where the nuclear atom was split
by Ernest Rutherford in 1917 and
the first stored computer was run in
1948. Located at the university is the
Manchester Museum that is well worth
a post tour visit (entry is free) with
dinosaurs, Egyptian mummies and live
animals on show.
A ten minute drive from Oxford
Road and the cab is heading up Sir
Alex Ferguson Way and Sir Matt Busby
Way (commemorating the two great
Red Devils’ managers) to Manchester
United’s stadium Old Trafford - the
ultimate pilgrimage for fans worldwide.
The great footballing triumvirate of
Best, Law and Charlton in the form of
bronze statues watch over the famous
stadium where tours are available and
the chance to pick up the latest team
shirt at the club megastore.
From football to music and John
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parks the cab on the real-life Coronation
Street in Salford, where the only thing
missing is some washing strung across
the cobbles. At one end of the street is
the Salford Lads Club (a voluntary run
recreational club that has been going
strong since 1903), with a virtually
unchanged interior of original fittings
including a boxing ring, snooker rooms
and a gym with viewing balcony. The
club gained international fame in 1986,
when Mancunian band The Smiths
fronted by Morrissey, posed in front of
the building for the inside cover of their
album The Queen is Dead.
A former weights room inside the club
is now ‘The Smiths Room’ - a shrine
to the influential 1980s band where,
along with memorabilia, hundreds
of photos of fans outside the iconic
entrance are displayed on the walls.
‘From Joy Division and New Order to
Oasis and the Smiths, Manchester is
a place renowned for creative music,’
says Leslie Holmes, the club’s project
manager. ‘The Smiths Room is the third
most visited music site in England after
the Cavern and Abbey Road.’
In addition to his ‘Signature
Manchester Tour’ John also offers
specialist tours such as a Music Tour,
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Football Tour, Industrial Buildings Tour,
Pub Tour and Coronation Street Tour,
and he can also devise one specifically
for your interests. The cab itself, which
seats five, and is fully accessible, is a big
part of the tour experience. My own
tour with John is drawing to a close at
Salford Quays – Manchester’s new
waterfront destination featuring an
eclectic and exciting mix of businesses
and places of interest, from the BBC and
ITV at Media City to the L.S Lowry
Museum displaying works of the painter
famous for depicting scenes of northern
industrial life.
We briefly explore the area and then
take a lift to the rooftop of a nearby
building, where with outstretched
arms John proudly announces: ‘This is
my city - just look at that for a view.’
As I take in the 360 degree panorama,
he points out some of Manchester’s
classic landmarks: Strangeways Prison,
Manchester Ship Canal, Old Trafford,
the Imperial War Museum and the new
Coronation Street set - it’s a fitting
setting and finale to a top-notch tour of
Manchester by a top-notch bloke.
•www.manchestertaxitours.com 07946
239 221 www.visitmanchester.com
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