MANCHESTER has been full of over-achieving Scots for over 300 years.
The story of this city and region is utterly entwined with the story of Scotland
An early recorded Scot to make an impact on Manchester under-achieved. This was Bonnie Prince Charlie, real name Charles Edward Stuart, who with his tartan army passed through in an attempt to wrest the crown from George II in 1745. Artillery Street in the city centre, off Quay Street and Byrom Street, marks the spot where he practised his canon. He failed miserably although several foolish Manchester men who joined him would be hanged, drawn and quartered.
A little later Aytoun Street got its name from Roger Aytoun, a Scot who came down to Manchester in the 1760s and swept Barbara Minshull (hence the parallel Minshull Street) off her feet. He was in his twenties, she was in her sixties. She was also the richest widow in the town. Tongues wagged. Aytoun was famous for scrapping in pubs and his nick-name was Spanking Roger. Eventually he drank and gambled the money he inherited from his venerable wife away and returned to Scotland.
Bonnie but never a king - Charles Edward Stuart got a lot of Manchester men in trouble
But the real Scottish influence began when a legion of businessmen and engineers came south to seek their fortune in Manchester in the early nineteenth century. The city had become a magnet for entrepreneurs.
Four such Scots were William McConnel, John Kennedy and brothers Adam and George Murray, businessmen who seemed to make money wherever they turned.
Their surviving cotton mills along Redhill Street and the Rochdale Canal in Ancoats have now been converted into offices and apartments. These structures amazed the world when first built, defining a new direction for urban society. German architect Schinkel when he visited in 1825, wrote, 'Here are buildings, seven to eight stories high, and as big as the Royal Palace in Berlin.' French writer Alexis de Toqueville commented in the 1830s about the McConnel and Kennedy factories: ‘1,500 workers labouring 69 hours a week…three quarters of the workers in (the) factory are women and children.’
Scottish energy in Manchester - the surviving McConnel mills in Ancoats
One of the greatest British engineers of all time also settled in Manchester from Scotland. Sir William Fairbairn, the engineer who perfected boilers so they didn't blow up every few years, also designed factory machinery and claimed to have been the engineer behind nearly a thousand bridges including the famous tubular Menai Straits bridge connecting Anglesey with mainland Wales.
Much of the success of his civil engineering was down to his collaboration with Englishman Eaton Hodgkinson with the pioneering of an efficient H-girder, which altered and adapted, still holds up the world’s buildings.
Another Scot boiler-maker, engineer and industrial pioneer was William Galloway. His company’s collaboration with Henry Bessemer at their foundry in Knott Mill, Manchester, led to the Bessemer Process, perfecting the manufacture of steel. As with the H-girder, this helped create much of the modern world.
As a commentator said in the early nineteenth century: ‘It was rather remarkable that nearly all the original millwrights in Manchester came from the neighbourhood of the Tweed... All were Scotchmen – quiet, respectable and mostly middle aged, with experience, for in those days a man was not put to mind one machine year after year. He had to understand pretty nearly the whole process, from taking particulars and making patterns, to fixing machinery in the mill.’
Fairbairn, an engineering giantAnother of these 'Scotchmen' was James Nasmyth who made his mark as the inventor of the steam hammer at his factory in Patricroft.
Many of these engineers and industrialists played a major part in the cultural life of the city. Fairbairn for example was the president of the Manchester Literary and Philosphical Society. Another member of the society was James Young, a Manchester-based Scot, who became well-known for distilling paraffin from coal and oil shales: a sort of proto-fracker.
Charles Mackintosh of Glasgow formed an alliance with Mancunian Thomas Hancock in 1830 and together they started to manufacture the Mackintosh on Cambridge Street in the city, spreading the popularity of the waterproof, rubberised coat across the globe.
A baleful discovery by a Manchester Scot came from Robert Angus Smith who was on the point of becoming a priest when he chose to be come a scientist instead. In 1852 he was the first to describe 'acid rain'. Indeed he is sometimes referred to as the 'Father of Acid Rain', which is a bit harsh but has something of a priestly air to it.
There were big Manc Scots in medicine too.
James Braid lectured in the Athenaeum on Princess Street, now part of Manchester Art Gallery in 1841, and introduced the word ‘hypnotism’ to the world. This led from his studies of what had been called 'mesmerism'. He was also an innovator in the treatment of club foot.
Earlier John Ferriar from Jedburgh had been a pioneer in improving sanitation across the city and within medical institutions. He fought against child-labour, advocated the use of foxglove in medicine and the opening of public baths. He wrote a four volume history of medicine.
John Alcock and Arthur Whitten Brown were the first men to fly across the Atlantic non-stop in 1919. Brown was born in Glasgow but was raised in Manchester and considered himself Mancunian. He has a plaque marking this on his old family home at 6 Oswald Road, Chorlton.
Brown on the left, Alcock on the right - intrepid aeronauts
Latterly the achievement of Scots in Manchester sport has been notable, especially in football and especially at Manchester United.
Manchester City line-ups have featured Scots such as Willie Donaghie, Denis Law and Sir Matt Busby - but the latter two were always more associated with United.
MUFC have featured Scots footy players such as Willie Morgan, Pat Crerand, Martin Buchan, Joe Jordan, Gordon McQueen, Lou Macari, Gordon Strachan, Brian McClair and Darren Fletcher. Tommy Docherty was the Scottish manager who won the FA Cup in the seventies.
In recent years the dominant United Scot has been Sir Alex Ferguson, the most successful manager in British history and a man who’s also been actively involved in the city’s social and cultural scene. Apparently there was a Scot called David Moyes who did something somewhere - anybody remember him?
A calm Scot makes his point
Finally in sport it was Chris Hoy in Manchester who did so much to make British track cycling our most gold-heavy Olympic sport of recent years.
The Scots have been lead performers in cultural life too. Alex Poots is the recently departed Director of Manchester International Festival. Since 2007, he masterfully crafted a critically acclaimed biennial with global-pulling power.
Another cultural contemporary is the current Poet Laureate, Carol Ann Duffy. As one of her biographical references describe, she is 'the first woman, the first Scot, and the first openly gay person to hold the position'. She is a Professor of Contemporary Poetry at Manchester Metropolitan University.
Carol Ann Duffy - wordsmith and wit
Nor should Dr Jimmy Grigor be forgotten, who as the chair of Central Manchester Development Company in the 1980s kickstarted the regeneration and active use of a huge area of central Manchester strung along the Rochdale Canal from Castlefield to Piccadilly.
The story of this city and region is utterly entwined with the story of Scotland - or rather, it could be said that as one nation the two have been cooperative - as you'd expect between compatriots. The cultural links go very deep and seem in their most ancient to have a musical element.
What is the musical instrument most closely associated with Scotland? The bagpipe of course. Close to the nave roof in Manchester Cathedral there's an orchestra and choir of twelve angels fashioned in wood. Two of this celestial band are playing bagpipes. These heavenly hipsters date from the late 1400s. Manchester, England, and Scotland with a clear and tuneful bond.
