King Cotton's Palace: Manchester Town Hall

The huge growth of trade and manufacturing business in Manchester in the nineteenth century - when `cotton was king' - meant that the city needed a new town hall for practical reasons alone. But the new building was also intended to impress the rest of the world: nobody who saw it was to be left in any doubt about Manchester's economic status. Detailed investigation of the town hall's planning and design show how deliberately its builders set out to create a visible symbol of the city's mushrooming wealth and power.

© 1998-2008 The Roland Collection & Pira Intl.