Corn Exchange, Manchester

The Hanging Bridge is a medieval bridge spanning the Hanging Ditch, which connected the rivers Irk and Irwell in Manchester, England. The first reference to the bridge was in 1343, when it was called Hengand Brigge, but the present structure was built in 1421, replacing an earlier bridge. Material taken from Manchester's Roman fort may have been used in its construction. It has been speculated that the Hanging Ditch may be of Roman origin, part of a defensive circuit between the rivers Irk and Irwell.The name may derive from the Old English hen, meaning wild birds, and the Welsh gan, meaning between two hills. At its Irwell end, the Hanging Ditch was 120 feet (37 m) wide and 40 feet (12 m) deep. A stream flowed through the ditch, from the Irk to the Irwell – possibly the lost River Dene, which gave its name to Deansgate. The bridge has two arches and was built using sandstone from Collyhurst. It is 108 feet (33 m) long and 9 feet (2.7 m) wide. The Hanging Bridge formed part of Manchester's medieval defences, when it was the main route from Manchester to the cathedral, then a parish church. In 1600, the Hanging Ditch was condemned as an insanitary open sewer, and in the following years the ditch was culverted and the bridge buried and built over. A directory published in 1772 recorded that nine houses had been built along the line of the bridge, suggesting that it may have been covered over during the first phase of Manchester's town planning, some time in the 1770s. The bridge was then forgotten, remembered only in the name of the area where it had stood, until its rediscovery and subsequent excavation as a result of demolition work carried out in the 1880s. The bridge was put on display, and in three months had about 32,000 paying visitors. It was once again covered up during the Victorian expansion of Manchester. More than 100 years later it was uncovered again, and following restoration work it went on display in 2002 as a main attraction of Manchester Cathedral's newly built visitor centre. Today the bridge is largely hidden by modern buildings, but it can be seen in the basement of Manchester Cathedral Visitor Centre, where it forms one side of the refectory. The bridge is listed as a Scheduled Ancient Monument.

Cathedral Gardens is an open space in Manchester city centre, in North West England. It is bounded by Victoria railway station to the north, Chetham's School of Music to the west, the perimeter of Manchester Cathedral and the Corn Exchange on Fennel Street to the south and Urbis to the east. Cathedral Gardens comprises wide areas of grassy plots, surrounded by paved walking areas and stylised concrete sitting areas. On the west side, is a short water feature.

The Wheel of Manchester was a transportable Ferris wheel installation at Piccadilly Gardens, Manchester, England. The wheel was originally a smaller installation based in Exchange Square, first assembled in 2004. The wheel's size was increased to 60 metres (197 ft) in 2007, and plans existed to increase this further. However, these plans were never submitted. The wheel was dismantled in 2012 to make way for 2012 Olympics celebrations and Metrolink construction work. In 2013, a new 52.7-metre (173 ft) wheel was installed in Piccadilly Gardens. It was dismantled in June 2015.

Exchange Square tram stop is a stop in the City Zone of Greater Manchester's Metrolink light rail system, in Exchange Square opposite the Manchester Arndale shopping centre in Manchester city centre. It is part of the Second City Crossing (2CC).Construction began in 2014 and the line to the stop was tested in November 2015. The stop opened as a north-facing terminus on 6 December 2015 with trams running to Rochdale, until the full Second City Crossing was completed in early 2017. Once the Second City Crossing opened in February 2017, services extended to East Didsbury.

The Old Wellington Inn is a half-timbered pub in Manchester city centre, England. It is part of Shambles Square, which was created in 1999, and is near Manchester Cathedral. It is a Grade II listed building.

Shambles Square is a square in Manchester, England. It was created in 1999, when The Old Wellington Inn and Sinclair's Oyster Bar were rebuilt there, having been moved from the Old Shambles nearby as part of major building works in the city following the 1996 Manchester bombing.

Chetham's School of Music () is an independent co-educational music school in Manchester, England. Chetham's educates students between the ages of 8 and 18, all of whom enter via musical auditions. Students receive a full academic education alongside specialist group and individual music tuition. Chetham's offers a year-round programme of concerts at the school, Manchester Cathedral, the Royal Northern College of Music, Band on the Wall and Bridgewater Hall. Recitals also take place in churches and community spaces, at festivals and internationally. Its senior ensembles, Chetham's Symphony Orchestra and Big Band, alongside many individual students, have won awards for their music, and many alumni have progressed to highly successful careers as professional musicians or in other sectors. The music school was established in 1969 from Chetham's Hospital School, founded as a charity school by Humphrey Chetham in 1653. After becoming a boys' grammar school in 1952, the school turned to music as its speciality, at the same time becoming a private school and accepting its first female students. There are approximately 300 students on roll, including a large sixth form making up around half of the school. Approximately two-thirds of students board on site, with others travelling in as day students from around Greater Manchester. The oldest parts of the school date to the 1420s, when the building was constructed as a residence for priests of the church which is now Manchester Cathedral. These parts are listed buildings housing Chetham's Library, the oldest free public reference library in the English-speaking world. Academic and music teaching moved into a new, purpose-designed building in 2012; this replaced the Victorian Palatine building and allowed easier access for concert visitors. A 482-seat concert hall, Stoller Hall, opened within the New School Building in 2017 as a home for both school and professional music and other genres of performance.

Urbis is a building in Manchester, England, designed by Ian Simpson, which opened in 2002 as part of the redevelopment of Exchange Square. Originally a Museum of the City, a switch was made in 2005-06 to presenting exhibitions on popular culture alongside talks, gigs and special events. Urbis closed in 2010, reopening in 2012 as the National Football Museum.

A plaster and resin sculpture of Michael Jackson stood outside Craven Cottage in Fulham, London, the ground of Fulham Football Club, from 2011 until 2013. Commissioned by the club's chairman Mohamed Al-Fayed, it was removed by his successor Shahid Khan. From 2014 to 2019 the statue was on display at the National Football Museum in Manchester.

The Harry Langton Collection includes cultural and sporting items relating to the history of football and forms the core of both the National Football Museum in Manchester, England and the World Rugby Museum, housed in the South Stand of Twickenham Stadium. It was created by Harry Langton (10 November 1929 – 6 September 2000), a sports journalist, after he took early retirement in 1972 from the Daily Express, a British newspaper, to launch Sports Design, a business publishing and selling sporting prints in London. With premises in Islington and the Camden Passage antique market on his doorstep, Langton soon ventured into dealing in old sporting prints, paintings and antiques. There was little market then for football, his own special interest, and over the last two decades of the century he gradually built up a vast quantity of football art and antiques illustrating the long, and global, history of the game. All codes were included. In 1981 an early display of this collection was viewed and praised by Sir Stanley Rous, the former Secretary of the Football Association, which encouraged further collecting with the idea of making it available to a wider public. Already it was attracting attention abroad. Some exhibits traveled to Germany for the opening of a Munich bank. Others appeared as black and white photographs at 'Fussball in der Vitrine' at the Galerie Littmann in Baumleingasse Basle in May 1982. In the spring of 1987 after many fruitless applications to municipal authorities for exhibition space, Sports Design presented 'Football Art – the Langton Collection' at the Wingfield Sporting Gallery in south-west London. Serious recognition arrived when the Tyne and Wear Museums Service joined the Langton Collection with the 'Soccer in Tyne and Wear 1879-1988 Exhibition' in Newcastle. This ran for two months before moving to Sunderland in January 1989. There it was viewed by an Italian promoter who proposed taking it to Italy for the 1990 Football World Cup. Transported to Rome it was ceremoniously opened at the Spazio Peroni by Silvio Berlusconi, one of whose companies, Gruppo Fininvest, was the major sponsor, and drew visitors throughout the tournament. The following year, to mark the 1991 Rugby World Cup, an exhibition of specifically rugby and old (pre soccer) football art and objects was hosted by the auctioneers Christie's at their South Kensington rooms. The Rugby Football Union later bought the specifically rugby items for the World Rugby Museum. The entire collection crossed the Atlantic in 1994 for the next World Cup. Organised by an American company, the SPI Group, it was displayed at Sotheby's in New York City. By this time problems of moving and preserving the large collection prompted an agreement with SPI that if a suitable buyer could be found it was for sale. Thus the Langton collection eventually became the FIFA Museum Collection in 1996. With support from the Heritage Lottery Fund and the efforts of Bryan Gray, the chairman of Preston North End F.C. it formed the major part of the National Football Museum, opened in Deepdale Preston in February 2001. After the sale of the main collection to FIFA, Langton continued to acquire works in his capacity as consultant. These pieces were designed to fill gaps and not to be comprehensive in themselves. Although Langton was closely involved with the Preston museum, he died in September 2000 before it opened. In 2006, his widow, Ann Langton (9 September 1929 – 12 February 2013), compiled a collection of poetry relating to football, called Saved, A Rare Anthology of Football from Homer to Gazza, which was launched at the National Football Museum's Hall of Fame Awards in Liverpool. Financial problems led to a decision to relocate the National Football Museum to the Urbis building in Manchester, which reopened on 6 July 2012. After the death of Langton's widow Ann in February 2013, the Director of the National Football Museum, Kevin Moore, wrote to her family that: "Without Harry, supported by Ann, there would have been no FIFA Collection and therefore no National Football Museum, and therefore both we and the nation as a whole owe them both a great debt of gratitude." In early 2016 the FIFA Museum Collection was renamed The FIFA-Langton collection by FIFA and NFM. This was in order to avoid confusion between the collection and those of the newly opened FIFA World Football Museum at Enge in Zurich and to better recognise the founding work by Harry Langton in football history and art appreciation.

The National Football Museum is England's national museum of football. It is based in the Urbis building in Manchester city centre, and preserves, conserves and displays important collections of football memorabilia. The museum was originally based in Deepdale, Preston, Lancashire, but moved to Manchester in 2012.

The English Football Hall of Fame is housed at the National Football Museum in Manchester, England. The Hall aims to celebrate and highlight the achievements of the all-time top English footballing talents, as well as non-English players and managers who have become significant figures in the history of the English game. New members are added each year, with an induction ceremony held in the autumn, formerly at varying locations, but exclusively at the Museum itself following its move to Manchester's Urbis building in 2012. The Hall is on permanent display at the Museum. An accompanying book, The Football Hall of Fame: The Official Guide to the Greatest Footballing Legends of All Time, was first published in October 2005 by Robson Books. Authored by football historian Rob Galvin and the Museum's founding curator Mark Bushell, it is updated every year with the newest inductees, containing an in-depth profile about the career and reputation of each one, along with a select exhibit from the Museum which relates to their achievements.