Did You Know?

The city of Salford, part of Greater Manchester, incorporates the districts of Salford, Eccles, Worsley, Irlam and Cadishead, Swinton and Pendlebury.

With plenty of green spaces, Salford is also a thriving business centre attracting many of the country’s brightest media minds, musicians and innovative thinkers. The city covers some 37 square miles and is home to around quarter of a million people.

The City of Salford is bounded to the north by the boroughs of Bolton and Bury, to the south by Trafford, to the west by Wigan and to the east by Manchester. The natural mossland of Chat Moss lies in the south western corner of the city.

The birth of vegetarianism was in Salford. More than 200 years ago the Reverend William Cowherd (you heard correctly!) preached the virtues of a vegetarian diet at a chapel in Salford. His followers then went on to form the Vegetarian Society.

Guy Fawkes’ infamous plot to blow up the Houses of Parliament was supposedly planned in Salford’s Ordsall Hall, a historic house and former stately home dating back more than 750 years.

In 1974 when Greater Manchester was first formed, Salford was nearly called Irwell. After protests, the name was dropped – due to the fact the River Irwell flowed through two other boroughs and not through Worsley.

Although the metropolitan borough of the City of Salford was a 20th-century creation, the area has a long history of human activity, extending back to the Stone Age. Neolithic flint arrow-heads and tools, and evidence of Bronze Age activity has been discovered in the city.

Salford has many famous musical links, and folk singer Ewan MacColl, whose famous song “Dirty Old Town” was inspired by Salford, he denied his roots for many years, saying that he moved to the city in 1922 from Scotland.

Salford has a history of human activity stretching back to the Neolithic age. There are over 250 listed buildings in the city, including Salford Cathedral, and three Scheduled Ancient Monuments.

Half of Salford is made up of forests, nature reserves, mosslands, parklands and quaint villages. It boasts hundreds of acres of parkland and wildlife habitats.

Of Salford's six Grade I listed buildings, three are churches. St Augustine's Church, in Pendlebury, was built in 1874 by George Frederick Bodley. The Church of St Mary the Virgin, in Eccles, was originally built in the 13th century but was expanded in the 15th. A church has been on the site since at least the Norman period

Some parts of the city, which lies directly west of Manchester, are highly industrialised and densely populated, but around one third of the city consists of rural open space. This is because the western half of the city stretches across an ancient peat bog known as Chat Moss.

Salford lays claim to being the home of the first free public library. In 1849, The City Council sanctioned the use of Lark Hill Mansion as an educational site and planned to turn the mansion into a public museum and library.

There are three Scheduled Ancient Monuments in the city. The oldest is an Iron Age promontory fort occupied from 500 BC–200 AD. Also scheduled is Hanging Bridge on the border with Manchester, dating to the 14th century, and an underground section of the Bridgewater Canal in Swinton built in 1759.