Manchester Special Maltese Fishtail Cross on 1d Black plate 4 BI

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Manchester is a city and metropolitan borough in North West England. It is the sixth largest city in the United Kingdom with a population of 514,417 in 2013. It lies within the United Kingdom's second most populous urban area which has a population of 2.55 million. Manchester is located in the south-central part of North West England, fringed by the Cheshire Plain to the south and the Pennines to the north and east, and an arc of towns with which it forms a continuous conurbation. The local authority is Manchester City Council, and the city's inhabitants are referred to as Mancunians.

The recorded history of Manchester began with the civilian settlement associated with the Roman fort of Mamucium or Mancunium, which was established in about AD 79 on a sandstone bluff near the confluence of the rivers Medlock and Irwell. It was historically a part of Lancashire, although areas of Cheshire south of the River Mersey were incorporated in the 20th century. Throughout the Middle Ages Manchester remained a manorial township but began to expand "at an astonishing rate" around the turn of the 19th century. Manchester's unplanned urbanisation was brought on by a boom in textile manufacture during the Industrial Revolution, and resulted in it becoming the world's first industrialised city.

Manchester was allocated the 498 Post Office numeral in 1840.

Manchester's history is concerned with textile manufacture during the Industrial Revolution. The great majority of cotton spinning took place in the towns of south Lancashire and north Cheshire, and Manchester was for a time the most productive centre of cotton processing, and later the world's largest marketplace for cotton goods. Manchester was dubbed "Cottonopolis" and "Warehouse City" during the Victorian era. In Australia, New Zealand and South Africa, the term "manchester" is still used for household linen: sheets, pillow cases, towels, etc. The industrial revolution brought about huge change in Manchester and was key to the increase in Manchester's population.

Manchester began expanding "at an astonishing rate" around the turn of the 19th century as people flocked to the city for work from Scotland, Wales, Ireland and other areas of England as part of a process of unplanned urbanisation brought on by the Industrial Revolution. It developed a wide range of industries, so that by 1835 "Manchester was without challenge the first and greatest industrial city in the world." Engineering firms initially made machines for the cotton trade, but diversified into general manufacture. Similarly, the chemical industry started by producing bleaches and dyes, but expanded into other areas. Commerce was supported by financial service industries such as banking and insurance. View from Kersal Moor towards Manchester by Thomas Pether, circa 1820, then still a rural landscape. Manchester from Kersal Moor, by William Wyld in 1857, a view now dominated by chimney stacks as a consequence of the Industrial Revolution.

Trade, and feeding the growing population, required a large transport and distribution infrastructure: the canal system was extended, and Manchester became one end of the world's first intercity passenger railway—the Liverpool and Manchester Railway. Competition between the various forms of transport kept costs down. In 1878 the GPO (the forerunner of British Telecom) provided its first telephones to a firm in Manchester.

The Manchester Ship Canal was built between 1888 and 1894, in some sections by canalisation of the Rivers Irwell and Mersey, running 36 miles (58 km) from Salford to Eastham Locks on the tidal Mersey. This enabled oceangoing ships to sail right into the Port of Manchester. On the canal's banks, just outside the borough, the world's first industrial estate was created at Trafford Park. Large quantities of machinery, including cotton processing plant, were exported around the world.

A centre of capitalism, Manchester was once the scene of bread and labour riots, as well as calls for greater political recognition by the city's working and non-titled classes. One such gathering ended with the Peterloo Massacre of 16 August 1819. The economic school of Manchester capitalism developed there, and Manchester was the centre of the Anti-Corn Law League from 1838 onward.

Manchester

to be sorted by date

20th century

Postage stamp cancelled in 1902, code 24

1903 MANCHESTER #9 Double, bar cancel normally associated mail going out of the city by rail.

Postage stamp cancelled in 1916. Depicted is King Edward VII Registered

20th c cards and covers

1901 MANCHESTER 24 to Gothenburg (Goteborg), Sweden. Gothenburg 4 TUR.	1901 MANCHESTER 24 to Gothenburg (Goteborg), Sweden. Front	1904 Registered Mail cancel Manchester to Dusseldorf, Germany
1905 Manchester to Holbæk, Denmark. Shortpaid so rated T in hexagon.

19th century

Manchester 6 cancel 1900

Postage stamp cancelled in 1896. Depicted is Queen Victoria. Control Number 4

MANCHESTER 2D REGISTERED 2D 1898

MANCHESTER Fishtail distinctive Maltese cross plate 11 AE

1859 1d Red Die II plate 49 CG with Manchester Duplex

Numeral 498 on Queen Victoria 3d. Plate 8

19th c Cards and covers

Plate R1 MJ 8 Feb 1855 wrapper to Constantinople with Manchester sideways duplex

Plate 87 TB Apr 1867 cover with Manchester Code O 4 bar oval duplex

Plate 89 FFAug 1867 cover with Manchester Code E £ Bar Circle duplex

1875 cover sent from Manchester to Vera Cruz in Mexico, featuring a rare pair of inverted watermark 2 Shilling Blues. Manchester red double ring despatch stamp on front. Cancelled by 498 bar handstamps. 75c reclaim handstamp.

MANCHESTER LATE BOX hooded cancels on cover to Zurich, Switzerland.

Machine and Slogan cancels

Manchester #2 Columbia type machine cancel 1905

Slogan cancel 1959

Slogan cancel 1963

Slogan cancel 1965

Meter Cancels

Meter cancel Manchester 1989.

Meter cancel Manchester 1997.

Branch and Sub Offices

Great Ancoats

Great Ancoats Post Office Building, now an Architects.

Great Ancoats Post Office was on Newton Street (Off Great Ancoats Street)

1d underpaid letter to Christiana, Norway with Manchester Sideways duplex on the 1d; Great Ancoats despatch mark on the reverse 1855

Reverse of 1d underpaid letter to Christiana, Norway with Great Ancoats despatch mark on the reverse,London Transit and St. P.A. oval and KDOPA Hamburg receiver 1855.

Newton Road

1935 Newton Road, Manchester registered cover MPP perfins of Mather & Platt Ltd, Mechanical, Electrical & Hydraulic Engineers, Manchester

Sale

See: Sale

Salford

SALFORD B.O. Double Arc of 1905

York Street

York Street cancel of the 1870s, probably telegraphic

Exchange Offices

Corn & Produce Exchange - Hanging Ditch

5 Shilling Rose Telegraph cancelled at the Corn & Produce Exchange 1878

Accounts Office

5 pound Orange used at the Manchester Accounts office 1897

Inland Revenue

6d Gry Plate 18 Inland Revenue Official used in 1887. The Blue ink is known for a short period between 23.06 - 25.07.1887

Supplementary Postmarks

Paid Late

Hand stamp Paid Late

Originally listed in Alcock & Holland's The Postmarks of Great Britain and Ireland as meaning 'Paid Letter', appearing on "letters on the early 1840s in either black or red" this hand stamp has been classified as a Paid Late mark. It is not tracked down in the Post Office Records Book as the more numerous Too Late hand stamps. Both of these hand stamps tell the recipient that the letter was received into the postal system after the last post of the day.

The hand stamp ist not found very frequently - even as a supplementary postmark. The unintended respective unauthorized use of this hand stamp as canceller is known only on this letter.

Manchester to Preston 20 Sep 1843, 1d plate 30 cancelled MX, Paid Late as supplementary post mark

Manchester to Bradford 30 Dec 1845, 1d plate 58, Paid Late used as canceller

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