When Manchester adopted the worker bee as its emblem, it was a marker of the industrious soul of a city that came to be known as Cottonopolis.
In just a few decades, the city – described by Daniel Defoe in the 1720s as 'the greatest mere village in England' – sparked a rapid period of industrialisation which changed the face not just of Britain, but the world.
It was the invention by Richard Arkwright, in 1769, of the water frame – a cotton spinning machine - that transformed textiles from a cottage industry into a mass-manufacturing business.
Arkwright went on to open the world’s first steam-powered textiles mill on Miller Street in the city.
Ancoats, which would sit at the very heart of the industrial revolution, was the first suburb run on steam power, and by the second half of the 19th-century Manchester was home to more than 100 mills and well over 1,000 warehouses.
The city and its surrounding areas were at one point responsible for around one third of the world’s cotton production.
Cottonopolis grew to include the surrounding towns of Greater Manchester, spreading wealth and jobs. But, following the Great Depression of the 1930s and two devastating world wars, the industry entered steep decline as production shifted abroad.
Key figures such as Lord Alliance continued to build successful brands here - but by the 1980s, the mills that built Manchester’s fortunes were empty, and the workers were gone.
Ancoats became a post-industrial ghost town, with only the towering chimney stacks and Manchester bee left as reminders of a heritage that could now be reborn.
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BDaB, Manchester Comment posted: 03/11/12 at 10:48 Registered: 25/04/2012
Athertonian Comment posted: 03/11/12 at 11:14 Registered: 27/01/2008
Rubbish. Industrialisation started, not in Manchester, but in the smaller Pennine towns, where water power was abundant. It then moved downstream.
There was no "spreading out", as if places like Bolton or Rochdale were just northern versions of Bowdon or Hazel Grove! The cotton towns grew together at the same time - indeed, for several decades, Bolton and Blackburn both had cotton exchanges. Manchester's international reputation rested solely on the preeminence it developed as a convenient, single commercial market - not producer - of cotton goods. Witness the large number of warehouses mentioned.
Already before the First World War, cotton had been overtaken as the main industry in Manchester, and its "100 mills" were dwarfed by Oldham alone.
You cannot rip "Greater Manchester" out of its historical context in this way. East Lancashire specialised in weaving, the coalfields - spread over an area from Widnes to Burnley - provided power and shipping (in and out) was done via Liverpool, until the arrival of the Ship Canal. Spinning was carried out in the South East, where Manchester of course played its part.
It is not for nothing that the business is called the LANCASHIRE cotton industry.