pages 120-121

120                Illustrations of Lancashire

A great treat awaits the stranger also in the Catholic "Church of the Holy Name," a few steps beyond the Owens College. For a passer-by to help noting the beautiful western front and the maze of lofty buttresses and pinnacles is impossible. Ornament has been expended with a lavish but not indiscriminate profusion, the general effect being one of perfect symmetry - a character possessed equally by the interior. The style is geometric Gothic of the thirteenth century, to the capacities of which, all will acknowledge, Mr. Hanson has done full justice. The very gracefully designed Tudor buildings at Old Trafford, well known as the Asylums for the Blind and the Deaf and Dumb, were erected in 1838.
Manchester is much less of a manufacturing town at present, in proportion to its extent and the entire breadth of its business life, than when the cotton trade was young. Now, as described in the preceding chapter, the towns and villages outside are all devoted to spinning and weaving. While Liverpool is one great wharf, the middle of Manchester is one great warehouse - a reservoir for the production of the whole district. The trade falls under two principal heads - the Home and the Export. In either case, the produce of the looms, wherever situate, is bought just as it flows from thern -

Manchester                 121

rough, or, technically, "in the grey." lt is then put into the hands of bleachers, dyers, or printers, according to requirement, and afterwards handed to auxiliaries called "makers-up. "Very interesting is it to observe, in going through a great warehouse, not only how huge is the quantity waiting transfer, but how differently the various fabrics have to be folded and ornamented so as to meet the taste of the nations and foreign countries they are intended for. Some prefer the absolutely plain; others like little pictures; some want bright colours, and embellishment with gold and silver. The uniformity of the general business of Manchester allowed of agreement, in November 1843, to shut all doors upon Saturdays at one o'clock. The warehouse half-holiday movement soon became universal, and now, by four or five p.m. on Saturdays large portions of the middle of the town are as quiet as upon Sundays.
The composition of the Manchester community is extremely miscellaneous. A steady influx of newcomers frvm all parts of Great Britain· - Sc0tland very particularly - has been in progress for eighty or ninety years, and seems likely to continue. Not very long ago the suburb called Greenheys was regarded as a German colony. Many Levantine Greeks