Manchester Cathedral

I was pleased to be able to visit the cathedral while on a conference visit to Manchester in November 2025. It really does have a very wide nave, - the widest they say, after the walls of the side chapels were knocked down in the Reformation. There has been a church on this site since 1086, as recorded in the Domesday Book. It was, for many years, the only church regisered to perform marriages, and in 1837, during the cotton manufacturing boom, as Manchester became the world's first great manufacturing city, 7235 weddings took place, with up to 30 couples simultaneously being lined up at the altar railings! Other notable events from the past include Thomas Clarkson addressing the first mass meeting of the anti slavery campaign in 1787. Even further back, in 1595, the astrologer John Dee was mde Warden. He was used as the model for Shakespear's Prospero in The Tempest.