The ship in full sail records Manchester as a commercial city, trading with the world, linked with the free trade movement of the time. The bees on the globe relate to the bee being the chosen Manchester animal in this hive of industry (see “B is for Bee” above). The Manchester Coat of Arms was devised in 1842 following the creation of the borough. his other great works include Strangeways prison, Manchester university and the Natural History Museum. Manchester Town Hall is Alfred Waterhouse’s masterpiece. Below the Great Hall is the atmospheric, ancient-looking courtyard (often used as a Victorian setting in TV dramas), while throughout the profusion of cloister-like corridors, spiral staircases, bridges and stairwells creates a wonderful sense of drama. In the panels of the Great Hall’s hammerbeam roof are gilded costs of arms of the nations with which Manchester traded, and on the walls are Ford Madox Brown’s 12 murals which illustrate episodes in Manchester’s history. On the first floor are the Lord Mayor’s rooms, the Conference Hall (the original council chamber), which contains a huge Gothic chimney-piece, oak screen and wrought-iron galleries where the press and public sat, and the Great Hall, the building’s tour de force, which John Ruskin called “the most truly magnificent Gothic apartment in Europe”. Seven staircases lead up from the ground floor some grand and imposing, others spiraling mysteriously at the corners of the building. Inside, Waterhouse’s skill becomes apparent. Waterhouse built in brick faced with stone from the West Yorkshire Spinkwell quarries for the exterior, ashlar for the interior, and placed above the main entrance a 286-foot high clock tower. The Corporation had given no preference for the building’s architectural style, but to emphasise Manchester’s newly found wealth from textiles Waterhouse chose as his model the 13th century Gothic cloth halls of Flanders, from where weavers had aided the local textile economy in the 14th century. He beat off over 130 competitors including Thomas Worthington (responsible for the Albert Memorial outside the building), and Edward Salomons (the Reform Club on King Street), not just on account of his masterful submission, but through the expert use he made of the site, with its awkward triangular shape, and his ideas regarding light and ventilation. Alfred Waterhouse won the commission to design Manchester Town Hall, which was built between 18.
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