City in Greater Manchester, England
Salford
Salford gave Britain its first unconditionally free public library, a painter of matchstick men and a folk song about a dirty old town, all beside the Irwell.
Key information
- County
- Greater Manchester
- Nation
- England
- Population
- about 270,000, 2021 Census
- Known for
- Salford Quays, The Lowry, MediaCityUK, Salford Red Devils, L.S. Lowry
- What locals are called
- Salfordians
- Famous people
- L.S. Lowry, Ewan MacColl, Albert Finney, Shelagh Delaney
About Salford
The city that gave Britain its first free library
Salford has a habit of doing things first. Salford Museum and Art Gallery opened in 1850 and is generally regarded as Britain's first unconditionally free public library. The idea was simple and radical: anyone could walk in and read. It was a very Salford sort of gesture, born in a booming industrial town that wanted its workers to better themselves. The museum sits in Peel Park, which opened in 1846 as one of the first public parks in England. Salford sits just across the River Irwell from Manchester, and for centuries the two have been close neighbours with very different identities. Salford is older as a royal manor, and it held its own market rights long before the cotton boom.
Cotton, canals and a ship canal with a twist
The Industrial Revolution turned Salford into a place of mills, dye works, ironworks and packed terraces. Friedrich Engels studied the conditions of working families in this part of the world, and his findings fed into his 1845 book The Condition of the Working Class in England. Then came an engineering marvel. The Manchester Ship Canal opened in 1894, turning inland Manchester into a seaport some 36 miles from the sea. Much of the docklands sat in Salford, and ocean-going ships tied up at what became Salford Docks. By the 1980s the docks had closed, leaving a huge expanse of still water and rusting wharves. That emptiness became the canvas for the city's next act.
From derelict docks to Salford Quays
Redevelopment turned the old docks into Salford Quays, a waterfront of apartments, offices and cultural buildings. The Lowry opened in 2000, a theatre and gallery complex that holds the world's largest public collection of works by L.S. Lowry. A few steps away, Imperial War Museum North, designed by Daniel Libeskind and opened in 2002, is made of three curved shards meant to represent a world shattered by conflict. Then in the 2010s the BBC moved a large part of its operation north to MediaCityUK. Programmes from sport to children's television are now made on the quayside, which makes Salford an unlikely centre of British broadcasting.
Lowry's matchstick men and the poets of Salford
Laurence Stephen Lowry lived in Pendlebury, in Salford, for decades, and painted the mills, chimneys and crowds of the industrial north. His figures, known affectionately as matchstick men, are among the most recognisable images in British art. The city's cultural pedigree runs deeper than paint. Shelagh Delaney, born in Salford, wrote A Taste of Honey as a teenager in the 1950s. Ewan MacColl, the folk singer who wrote The First Time Ever I Saw Your Face, was born here too, and actor Albert Finney grew up in the city. Salford-born poet John Cooper Clarke became a punk-era star through his rapid-fire performance poetry.
Red Devils and a football club with famous owners
Rugby league is the traditional passion. Salford Red Devils, founded in 1873, have played at the Willows and now at the Salford Community Stadium in Barton. The club's red shirts and rich Super League pedigree mark them out as one of the sport's best-known names. In football, Salford City made headlines when a group of former Manchester United players, including Gary Neville, Paul Scholes, Ryan Giggs, Nicky Butt and Phil Neville, bought the club in 2014. Later investment from Singapore businessman Peter Lim added to the story. The club rose through the non-league ranks and into the Football League in 2019. Salford is also home to the University of Salford, whose students add youthful energy to the city.
What Salfordians eat, sing and remember
Salford shares the north-west's love of hearty food: hotpot, meat and potato pie, chips with gravy and, for a sweet fix, the Manchester tart with its jam, custard and coconut. Wet nelly, a Merseyside treat, has never quite displaced these. Ewan MacColl's Dirty Old Town, written in 1949 about Salford, is one of the city's best-known cultural associations. Walter Greenwood's novel Love on the Dole drew on Hanky Park, the real working-class district of Salford where he grew up. Today Salfordians are proud of their separate identity. Ask one if they come from Manchester and you will get a polite but firm correction.