The Glade of Light

Manchester Cathedral, formally the Cathedral and Collegiate Church of St Mary, St Denys and St George, in Manchester, England, is the mother church of the Anglican Diocese of Manchester, seat of the Bishop of Manchester and the city's parish church. It is on Victoria Street in Manchester city centre and is a grade I listed building. The former parish church was rebuilt in the Perpendicular Gothic style in the years following the foundation of the collegiate body in 1421. Then at the end of the 15th century, James Stanley II (warden 1485–1506 and later Bishop of Ely 1506–1515) was responsible for rebuilding the nave and collegiate choir with high clerestory windows; also commissioning the late-medieval wooden internal furnishings, including the pulpitum, choir stalls and the nave roof supported by angels with gilded instruments. The collegiate church became the cathedral of the new Diocese of Manchester in 1847. It was extensively refaced, restored and extended in the Victorian period, and again following bomb damage during World War II. It is one of fifteen Grade I listed buildings in Manchester.

Palatine Bridge is a wrought-iron road bridge in Greater Manchester. Opened in 1864 and rebuilt in 1911, it crosses the River Irwell between Salford and Manchester.

The Victoria Arches are a series of bricked-up arches built in an embankment of the River Irwell in Manchester. They served as business premises, landing stages for steam packet riverboats and as Second World War air-raid shelters. They were accessed from wooden staircases that descended from Victoria Street.Regular flooding resulted in the closure of the steam-packet services in the early 20th century, and the arches were later used for general storage. Following the outbreak of the Second World War they were converted into air-raid shelters. They are now bricked up and inaccessible, the staircases having been removed in the latter part of the 20th century.

Chetham's Library in Manchester, England, is the oldest free public reference library in the English-speaking world. Chetham's Hospital, which contains both the library and Chetham's School of Music, was established in 1653 under the will of Humphrey Chetham (1580–1653), for the education of "the sons of honest, industrious and painful parents", and a library for the use of scholars. The library has been in continuous use since 1653. It operates as an independent charity, open to readers free of charge, Monday-Friday 09.00-12.30 and 13.30-16.30 by prior appointment. Tours of the Library for visitors are bookable online from 2 September 2019 via the Library website.The library holds more than 100,000 volumes of printed books, of which 60,000 were published before 1851. They include collections of 16th- and 17th-century printed works, periodicals and journals, local history sources, broadsides and ephemera. In addition to print materials, the library holds a collection of over 1,000 manuscripts, including 41 medieval texts.Chetham's Library is an Accredited Museum under the Arts Council England Accreditation scheme. The whole of its collections are Designated as a collection of national and international importance under the Museums, Libraries and Archives Council Designation scheme, now administered by Arts Council England.Paintings featured as a part of the library's fine arts collection include portraits of William Whitaker, the Reverend John Radcliffe, Robert Thyer, the Reverend Francis Robert Raines, and Elizabeth Leigh. The collection includes An Allegory with Putti and Satyrs, oil on canvas, attributed to sixteenth century artist and Netherlander Vincent Sellaer.One of the most substantial collections pertains to Belle Vue Zoo and Gardens, Manchester's most renowned entertainment attraction and zoological centre, in operation from the 1830s to the 1980s. The collection contains thousands of posters, programmes and photographs, as well as the financial and business papers of the owner, John Jennison; large numbers of items in this collection are available in digitised form online. A 2014 grant of £45,000 obtained by Chetham's Library allowed curators to make the collection available to online users, via digitization projects.

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.

The River Irk is a river in the historic county of Lancashire in the North West England that flows through the northern most Lancastrian towns of the ceremonial county of Greater Manchester. It rises to the east of Royton and runs west past Chadderton, Middleton and Blackley before merging with the River Irwell in the centre of Manchester.

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.

Victoria Bridge is a stone arch bridge in Greater Manchester, England. Completed in 1839 and named after Queen Victoria, it crosses the River Irwell, connecting Salford to Manchester. The bridge replaced an earlier medieval structure, Salford Old Bridge, which dated from the 14th century. The old bridge was built on the site of an ancient ford, from which Salford took its name. Contemporary accounts of its design are complimentary, but by the 19th century its narrow construction was viewed as an impediment to traffic, and it was demolished. Construction of the new bridge began in 1838 and it was completed about a year later, at a cost of about £20,800. It was opened to traffic on 20 June 1839, although Queen Victoria did not visit it until October 1851. Victoria Bridge is made from sandstone, and uses a single semi-elliptical arch of about 100 feet to cross the water below. It was declared a Grade II listed building in 1988.

Manchester Exchange was a railway station in Salford, England, immediately north of Manchester city centre, which served the city between 1884 and 1969. The main approach road ran from the end of Deansgate, near Manchester Cathedral, passing over the River Irwell, the Manchester-Salford boundary and Chapel Street; a second approach road led up from Blackfriars Road. Most of the station was in Salford, with only the 1929 extension to platform 3 east of the Irwell in Manchester.

The Corn Exchange, Manchester is a shopping centre in Exchange Square, Manchester, England. The building was originally used as a corn exchange and was previously named the Corn & Produce Exchange, and subsequently The Triangle. Following an IRA bomb attack on central Manchester in 1996, it was renovated and was a modern shopping centre until 2014. The building was sold to investors and has been re-developed into a number of food outlets. It is a grade II listed building.

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.