Cottonopolis
Cottonopolis is a nineteenth-century nickname for Manchester, when the city was the world centre of the cotton trade and its surrounding towns were full of spinning mills. Manchester itself became above all a place of warehouses, exchanges and merchants, where cloth from the Lancashire mill towns was bought, sold and shipped.
In practice
The cotton boom built much of the city you see today: the red-brick mills of Ancoats, the palazzo-style warehouses of the city centre, the Royal Exchange where traders once met, and the canals and railways that linked them. It also brought crowded housing, child labour and pollution that made Manchester a byword for the problems of industrial cities. The Science and Industry Museum, on the site of the world's oldest surviving passenger railway station, tells the story.
Why it matters to newcomers
Many of the offices, flats and bars you will use in central Manchester are converted cotton warehouses and mills, and the nickname turns up in pub names, books and tours. It is the starting point for understanding why Manchester sees itself as the first modern industrial city.
Related
- Ancoats - the district of cotton mills
- Worker bee - the symbol of the industrious city
- Northern Quarter - built on textile warehouses
Sources: Wiktionary: Cottonopolis; Science and Industry Museum.