Portal:Greater Manchester
The Greater Manchester Portal
Greater Manchester is a ceremonial county in North West England. It borders Lancashire to the north, Derbyshire and West Yorkshire to the east, Cheshire to the south, and Merseyside to the west. Its largest settlement is the city of Manchester.
The county has an area of 493 sq mi (1,277 km2) and is highly urbanised, with a population of 2.9 million. The majority of the county's settlements are part of the Greater Manchester Built-up Area, which extends into Cheshire and Merseyside and is the second most populous urban area in the UK. The city of Manchester is the largest settlement. Other large settlements are Altrincham, Bolton, Rochdale, Sale, Salford, Stockport and Wigan. Greater Manchester contains ten metropolitan boroughs: Manchester, Salford, Bolton, Bury, Oldham, Rochdale, Stockport, Tameside, Trafford and Wigan, the councils of which collaborate through Greater Manchester Combined Authority. The county was created on 1 April 1974 from parts of north-east Cheshire, south-east Lancashire, and a small part of the West Riding of Yorkshire.
The centre and south-west of Greater Manchester are lowlands, similar to the West Lancashire Coastal Plain to the north-west and the Cheshire Plain to the south-west. The north and east are part of the Pennines: the West Pennine Moors in the northwest, the South Pennines in the northeast and the Peak District in the east. Most of the county's rivers rise in the Pennines and are tributaries of the Mersey and Irwell, the latter of which is itself a tributary of the Mersey. The county is connected to the Mersey Estuary by the Manchester Ship Canal, which for its entire length within Greater Manchester consists of canalised sections of the Mersey and Irwell. (Full article...)
Selected article -
The tallest buildings and structures in Salford are mostly residential tower blocks constructed during the mid-20th century in the Brutalist architectural style. However, since the 1996 Manchester bombing, which initiated a redevelopment programme for Greater Manchester, the city has witnessed a boom in the construction of high rise apartments, particularly at Salford Quays, a former dockland.
Geographically, commercially, and culturally, Salford is dominated by its immediate neighbour, the City of Manchester, which lies across the River Irwell. Although Salford followed a similar pattern of urbanisation to Manchester during the Industrial Revolution it did not evolve as a commercial centre in the same way. In contrast to the vast majority of Manchester's tallest buildings, Salford's high-rises were constructed in the 1960s and 70s as part of a regeneration project to alleviate chronic social deprivation and urban decay. Some of the early high-rise buildings have subsequently been demolished themselves, as they provided unsatisfactory accommodation for families and caused as many social problems as they were meant to alleviate. A study by Professor Christopher Collier of the university suggested that Manchester's drizzly climate is largely due to the multitude of high-rise blocks in Salford.
General images
Boroughs
Selected biography -
Bernhard Carl "Bert" Trautmann, OBE (born 22 October 1923 in Bremen, Germany) is a German football goalkeeper who played for Manchester City from 1949 to 1964. Trautmann joined the Luftwaffe early in the Second World War, serving as a paratrooper. He fought at the Eastern Front for three years and later in the war he was transferred to the Western Front, where he was captured by the British. He was transferred to a prisoner-of-war camp in Ashton-in-Makerfield, Lancashire. Trautmann refused an offer of repatriation, and following his release in 1948 he settled in Lancashire, combining farm work with playing as goalkeeper for local football team St Helens Town.
Performances for St Helens gained Trautmann a reputation as an able goalkeeper, resulting in interest from Football League clubs. In October 1949 he signed for Manchester City, a club playing in the highest level of football in the country, the First Division. The club's decision to sign a former Axis paratrooper sparked protests, with 20,000 attending a demonstration.
Trautmann continued to play for Manchester City until 1964. After ending his playing career he moved into management. In 2004 he was appointed an honorary OBE for promoting Anglo-German understanding through football.
Did you know?
- ...that the Albert Medal was one of the awards given to Mark Addy for rescuing more than 50 people from the highly polluted River Irwell, Manchester, in the 19th Century?
- ...that the Port of Runcorn in Cheshire, England, was an independent customs port for two separate periods before becoming part of the Port of Manchester in 1894?
- ...that a word square found in Mamucium (pictured), a Roman fort in Manchester, may be one of the earliest examples of Christianity in Britain?
- ...that the women's scratch race at the 2008 UCI Track Cycling World Championships was held in Manchester and was won by Ellen van Dijk?
Subcategories
WikiProject
WikiProject Greater Manchester
Related WikiProjects
United Kingdom
Lancashire and Cumbria • Cheshire • Merseyside • Yorkshire
Topics
Featured Content
Featured articles: Altrincham • Bert Trautmann • Chat Moss • City of Manchester Stadium • Duncan Edwards • Emmeline Pankhurst • Greater Manchester • Joy Division • M62 motorway • Manchester • Manchester, Bolton and Bury Canal • Manchester City F.C. • Manchester Small-Scale Experimental Machine • Peterloo Massacre • Oldham • Scout Moor Wind Farm • Shaw and Crompton • Stretford • Trafford
Featured lists: Castles in Greater Manchester • Grade I listed buildings in Greater Manchester • List of Manchester City F.C. managers • List of Manchester United F.C. managers • List of Manchester United F.C. records and statistics • List of Manchester United F.C. seasons • List of Manchester United F.C. players • List of Manchester United F.C. players (25–99 appearances) • List of Manchester United F.C. players (fewer than 25 appearances) • List of railway stations in Greater Manchester • List of Sites of Special Scientific Interest in Greater Manchester • List of tallest buildings and structures in Manchester • List of tallest buildings and structures in Salford • Manchester City F.C. seasons
Good articles: 1990 Strangeways Prison riot • Alan Turing • Ashton-under-Lyne • B of the Bang • Bank Street (stadium) • Bridgewater Canal • Buckton Castle • Castleshaw Roman fort • Chadderton • Cine City, Withington • City of Salford • Controversy over the usage of Manchester Cathedral in Resistance: Fall of Man • David Beckham • Didsbury • Dunham Massey • Hale Barns • Henry Taylor (swimmer) • Hugh Mason • Hulme Arch Bridge • Hyde Road • Mamucium • Manchester and Bolton Railway • Manchester Liners • Manchester Mummy • Manchester Small-Scale Experimental Machine • Manchester United F.C. • Milnrow • Murrays' Mills • Nico Ditch • Noel Gallagher • North Road (stadium) • Ordsall Hall • Old Trafford • Oasis (band) • Radcliffe, Greater Manchester • River Irwell • Ronnie Wallwork • Royton • Sale, Greater Manchester • Tameside • Trafford Park • Upper Brook Street Chapel, Manchester • Urmston • Warburton, Greater Manchester
Things to do
You can help too!
Why not take a look at the list of stubs needing expansion, requested articles, requested images and the articles needing cleanup?
Thanks, and don't forget that if you feel an article on Greater Manchester is missing, request it, or create it.
Related portals
Associated Wikimedia
The following Wikimedia Foundation sister projects provide more on this subject:
-
Commons
Free media repository -
Wikibooks
Free textbooks and manuals -
Wikidata
Free knowledge base -
Wikinews
Free-content news -
Wikiquote
Collection of quotations -
Wikisource
Free-content library -
Wikiversity
Free learning tools -
Wikivoyage
Free travel guide -
Wiktionary
Dictionary and thesaurus