Manchester, in the first half of the nineteenth century, held great fascination to many as an example of a town being remade and transformed by the technological developments of the Industrial Revolution. The transformations experienced included the rapid physical expansion of the town and its population and the reordering of its society from a traditional, rigid class structure, involving a powerful aristocracy and working-class citizens, to a new social hierarchy with a numerous and influential middle class—an emerging ‘urban aristocracy’ of people involved in manufacturing, commerce and other professions. As these changes took place, the rest of England (and the Western world) looked on—horrified, shocked, awed, fascinated. It was a different world, and the rapid changes taking place in society created in observers a sense of urgency in describing the effects of those changes—particularly the social problems, which had been shaped by industrial life. / A trend in describing Manchester’s residents as ‘philistines’ and the town, generally, as a ‘cultural wasteland’ took hold at this time and has been perpetuated until fairly recently. This thesis explores this trend—Manchester’s nineteenth-century image—and the impact of contemporary opinion on constructions of social hierarchies and cultural reputations. It also aims to show that there was more to Manchester’s cultural life in the nineteenth century than is widely acknowledged, either by contemporaries from the period or by some scholars today, and that the pursuit and experience of music and certain noises was genuinely wanted by the manufacturing class for a number of key reasons. / Delving further, into studies of soundscapes and ‘noise,’ it becomes ever clearer that sound, and how individuals and societies interact with it and interpret it, acts as an important—though frequently overlooked—signifier of class relations and civic identity. Finally, this thesis aims to reconstruct how Manchester sounded in three principal regions of the town to show how a study of soundscapes helps to articulate how the town was psychologically constructed in the minds of inhabitants and visitors, and how it was sensed and experienced.

Manchester, in the first half of the nineteenth century, held great fascination to many as an example of a town being remade and transformed by the technological developments of the Industrial Revolution. The transformations experienced included the rapid physical expansion of the town and its population and the reordering of its society from a traditional, rigid class structure, involving a powerful aristocracy and working-class citizens, to a new social hierarchy with a numerous and influential middle class—an emerging ‘urban aristocracy’ of people involved in manufacturing, commerce and other professions. As these changes took place, the rest of England (and the Western world) looked on—horrified, shocked, awed, fascinated. It was a different world, and the rapid changes taking place in society created in observers a sense of urgency in describing the effects of those changes—particularly the social problems, which had been shaped by industrial life. / A trend in describing Manchester’s residents as ‘philistines’ and the town, generally, as a ‘cultural wasteland’ took hold at this time and has been perpetuated until fairly recently. This thesis explores this trend—Manchester’s nineteenth-century image—and the impact of contemporary opinion on constructions of social hierarchies and cultural reputations. It also aims to show that there was more to Manchester’s cultural life in the nineteenth century than is widely acknowledged, either by contemporaries from the period or by some scholars today, and that the pursuit and experience of music and certain noises was genuinely wanted by the manufacturing class for a number of key reasons. / Delving further, into studies of soundscapes and ‘noise,’ it becomes ever clearer that sound, and how individuals and societies interact with it and interpret it, acts as an important—though frequently overlooked—signifier of class relations and civic identity. Finally, this thesis aims to reconstruct how Manchester sounded in three principal regions of the town to show how a study of soundscapes helps to articulate how the town was psychologically constructed in the minds of inhabitants and visitors, and how it was sensed and experienced.