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The Society's Online Archives & for many of the Society's images
The Manchester Local Image Collection is a rich photographic record of Manchester, its people, streets and buildings. The online archive has over 90,000 images of Manchester and Greater Manchester.
Programme for our 2024 - 2025 Season
Browse a record of the 2023 - 2024 Season to get a feel for what to expect.
Next Meeting: 17th February 2025:
‘Railway Navvies' with Kevin Harrison
The story of the men who built the railways - the unknown Victorian labourers who blasted, tunnelled, drank and brawled their way across nineteenth-century England. Preached at and plundered, sworn at and swindled, this anarchic elite endured perils and disasters, and carved out of the English countryside an industrial-age architecture unparalleled in grandeur and audacity since the building of the cathedrals.
An educating evening ahead on 17th February !
Matlock's Leap
A while back I was reading through some online resources of local history and archaeology, and came across the diary of a certain George Booth of Chisworth, which contained entries dated between 1832 and 1834. Whilst it is largely Charlesworth and Chisworth based, Mr Booth wanders all over the area, to Glossop, Gamesley, Chinley, Marple Bridge, Broadbottom, and beyond. It was one of these entries that caught my eye:
It was one of these entries that caught my eye:
3rd May 1832
A Stone to commemorate Matlock’s Leap was fastened in the wall by the river side a little above Marple Bridge on the Derbyshire side, on this occasion there was a Mare [Mayor] chosen (I suppose the first Mare there ever was at Marple Bridge of this sort) and a regular Mare’s Walk consisting of the Mare (John Kirk) and a great many of the neighbouring Gentlemen after the walk the partook of a good Dinner at one of the Inns. which was paid for out of a subscription raised for that purpose this took place last Easter Monday.