The Industrial Growh of Manchester, UK to the present day

Manchester rapidly rose from obscurity to become the premier centre of cotton manufacture in England. Its famously damp climate was better for cotton manufacture than the drier climate of the older eastern English cloth manufacture centres. It was close to the Atlantic port of Liverpool and was eventually connect by one of the earliest rail tracks, as well as the Ship Canal and, although thirty miles inland, Manchester became major port. It was also close to power sources - first the water power of the Pennine mountain chain, and later the coal mines of central Lancashire. As a result, Manchester became perhaps the first modern industrial city.
Manchester saw substantial population growth during the early 19th century - while London's population doubled, Manchester's trebled! (See charts on the next page).
The vast waterways network enabled Manchester to receive incoming raw materials from all over the United Kingdom, and to despatch and export finished manufactured goods v...