MANCHESTER

town (township), which includes Manchester Village, Manchester Center, and Manchester Depot in southwestern Vermont, U.S. It lies near the Batten Kill River between the Taconic Range and the Green Mountains. Manchester Village is one of the seats (the other is Bennington) of Bennington county. The site was settled about 1764 and laid out in 1784. The Vermont Council of Safety (where Ira Allen proposed footing the bill for Vermont's Revolutionary activities by confiscating Tory property) met in Manchester in 1777. The private Burr and Burton Seminary was established there in 1829. Manchester is a year-round resort community, and its economy depends almost entirely on resort-related activities. The manufacture of fishing rods is important, and the American Museum of Fly Fishing is there. Nearby Bromley Mountain and Stratton Mountain attract skiers. Mount Equinox (3,816 feet [1,163 metres]) is to the west. Hildene, the summer home of Robert Todd Lincoln, Abraham Lincoln's son, has been preserved. Summer film and art festivals are held at the town's Southern Vermont Art Center. Area 42 square miles (109 square km). Pop. (1990) 3,622; (1996 est.) 3,722. city and metropolitan borough in the metropolitan county of Greater Manchester, northwestern England. Most of the city, including the historic core, is in the historic county of Lancashire, but it includes an area south of the River Mersey in the historic county of Cheshire. Manchester is the nucleus of the largest metropolitan area in the north of England, and it remains an important regional city, but it has lost the extraordinary vitality and unique influence that put it at the forefront of the Industrial Revolution. Manchester was an urban prototype: in many respects it could claim to be the first of the new generation of huge industrial cities created in the Western world during the past 250 years. In 1717 it was merely a market town of 10,000 people, but by 1851 its textile (chiefly cotton) industries had so prospered that it had become a manufacturing and commercial city of more than 300,000 inhabitants, already spilling out its suburbs and absorbing its industrial satellites. By the beginning of the 20th century, salients of urban growth linked Manchester to the ring of cotton-manufacturing townsBolton, Rochdale, and Oldham, for examplethat almost surround the city, and a new form of urban development, a conurbation, or metropolitan area, was evolving. By 1911 it had a population of 2,350,000. In the following years, however, the pace of growth slowed dramatically. If the 19th century was Manchester's golden age, when it was indisputably Britain's second city, the 20th century was marked by increasing industrial problems associated with the decline of the textile trades (the result of foreign competition and technological obsolescence). Area city, 45 square miles (116 square km); metropolitan area, 497 square miles (1,287 square km). Pop. (1998 est.) city, 429,800; metropolitan area, 2,577,400. city and district in the area of Greater Manchester, northwestern England. Manchester is often considered the prototypical city of the Industrial Revolution. By the mid-19th century its textile (chiefly cotton) industry had made Manchester Britain's second city. In the 20th century, however, beset by urban and industrial problems, the city lost much of its economic vitality. Manchester lies 180 miles (290 km) northwest of London and 35 miles (56 km) east of Liverpool. It stands at the junction of the Rivers Irwell, Irk, and Medlock and is separated from the adjacent city of Salford by the Irwell. The Manchester Ship Canal brings Mersey River traffic to the metropolitan area from the river's mouth to the west. Manchester is the nucleus of the 10-district area of Greater Manchester. Two large districts, Salford and Trafford, adjoin Manchester on the west and southwest; together the three form the chief concentration of commercial employment. The most important industrial zone bisects the metropolitan county from east to west. There has long been a contrast between the economies of the core city (Manchester itself, together with the industrial areas of Salford and Stretford) and the textile towns that form the northern and eastern margins of the urban cluster. The core city has had a more diverse and stable economy, with more varied manufacturing (including printing and the production of engineering and electrical products, chemicals, and clothing), as well as a broad range of service activities. Manchester is a regional banking and financial centre housing the Northern Stock Exchange, the Co-operative Wholesale Society, and a branch of the Bank of England. The University of Manchester (founded as Owens College in 1851) has prospered and grown to become one of the more prominent institutions of higher education in Britain. The university's faculty of technology has become autonomous as the University of Manchester Institute of Science and Technology (1956). Manchester Metropolitan University (founded in 1970; university status in 1992) and the University of Salford (founded in 1896 as the Royal Technical Institute) also are important centres of higher learning. Manchester's Hall Orchestra has an international reputation. Local transportation is provided by bus and commuter rail services. Railway lines radiate in all directions. Changing maritime trade and increases in the size of commercial ships have led to a decline in use of the Manchester Ship Canal, but the canal's lower reaches remain open. Manchester's international airport is located 10 miles (16 km) south at Ringway. Area city (district), 45 square miles (116 square km). Pop. (1991) city (district), 402,889; (1993 est.) city (district), 440,000. urban town (township), Hartford county, central Connecticut, U.S. It lies east of Hartford on the Hockanum River. The area was settled in 1672, when it was purchased from the Mohegan Indians by the Puritan clergyman Thomas Hooker and his company. Originally a part of Hartford (after 1694 in East Hartford) and called the Five-Mile Tract, it was organized as an ecclesiastical society called Orford Parish in 1772. In 1823 it was incorporated as a town and named for Manchester, Eng. It had sawmills and paper mills before the American Revolution. Subsequently, the Pitkin Glass Works, cotton mills, and especially silk mills (established in 1838 by the Cheney brothers) became important to the town's economy, along with the manufacture of grandfather clocks, soap, farm implements, and carriages. The town's modern industrial development is greatly diversified and includes aerospace and defense industries. Manchester Community-Technical College was opened in 1963. Area 27 square miles (71 square km). Pop. (1990) 51,618; (1996 est.) 51,666. city, Hillsborough county, southern New Hampshire, U.S. It lies along the Amoskeag Falls (named for the Amoskeag Indians who once inhabited the area) of the Merrimack River, the 55-foot (17-metre) drop of which provides hydroelectric power. Manchester is the state's largest city and the centre of a metropolitan area that includes Goffstown, Bedford, Londonderry, and Hooksett. Settled in 172223, it was early known for its fisheries. First called Old Harry's Town, it became Tyngstown after 1735, when it was granted to Captain William Tyng's men by the Massachusetts Bay colony. In 1751 it was incorporated as the town of Derryfield. It developed after one of America's first textile mills was built there in 1805 by Benjamin Prichard. The community was apparently renamed Manchester (1810) at the suggestion of Samuel Blodget, who had seen the barge canals at Manchester, Eng., and who constructed (17941807) the first canal around the falls. That canal, together with the Middlesex Canal in Massachusetts, opened navigation to Boston. Until the late 1930s the city's economy depended mainly on the Amoskeag Manufacturing Company's cotton-milling operations. The decline of the textile industry spurred planned industrial rehabilitation. Although financial services are now the city's main economic activity, Manchester's manufactures include textiles, aircraft engine parts, automobile accessories, and electrical instruments. The city's educational and cultural institutions include St. Anselm College (founded 1889), Notre Dame College (1950), New Hampshire College (1932), the University of New Hampshire at Manchester (formerly Merrimack Valley College), the Manchester Institute of Arts and Sciences, the Currier Gallery of Art (1929), and the Manchester Historic Association museum and library. The home of General John Stark, hero of the Battle of Bunker Hill during the American Revolution, is preserved. Inc. city, 1846. Pop. (1990) city, 99,332; Manchester PMSA, 173,783; (1996 est.) city, 100,967; (1996 est.) Manchester PMSA, 182,173. Additional reading Historical studies include Alan J. Kidd and K.W. Roberts (eds.), City, Class, and Culture: Studies of Social Policy and Cultural Production in Victorian Manchester (1985); John H.G. Archer (ed.), Art and Architecture in Victorian Manchester (1985); Gary S. Messinger, Manchester in the Victorian Age (1985), a popular work; Nicholas J. Frangopulo (ed.), Rich Inheritance: A Guide to the History of Manchester (1962, reissued 1969), particularly strong as a survey of sources for the city's history; D.A. Farnie, The Manchester Ship Canal and the Rise of the Port of Manchester, 18941975 (1980), on the development of the port and its regional impact; and Shena D. Simon, A Century of City Government: Manchester, 18381938 (1938), a readable and well-informed account of the development of local government in the city. For Manchester in its regional context, see C.F. Carter (ed.), Manchester and Its Region (1962), a collection of articles on geology, history, geography, industry, and cultural life; T.W. Freeman, H.B. Rodgers, and R.H. Kinvig, Lancashire, Cheshire and the Isle of Man (1966), a general geography of northwestern England; L.P. Green, Provincial Metropolis (1959), on the city and conurbation as a major urban region; and H.P. White (ed.), The Continuing Conurbation: Change and Development in Greater Manchester (1980), an analysis of social and economic conditions. H.B. Rodgers