Steven Dickens – författare

Sale History Tour offers an insight into the fascinating history of this town in Greater Manchester. Author Steven Dickens guides us around its well-known streets and buildings, showing how its famous landmarks used to look and how they have changed over the years, as well as exploring its lesser-known sights and hidden corners. With the help of a handy location map, readers are invited to follow a timeline of events and discover for themselves the changing face of Sale.

Flixton, Urmston and Davyhulme History Tour offers an insight into the fascinating history of the town of Urmston, including Flixton and Davyhulme, in Trafford, Greater Manchester. Author Steven Dickens guides us around its well-known streets and buildings, showing how its famous landmarks used to look, as well as exploring its lesser-known sights and hidden corners. With the help of a handy location map, readers are invited to follow a timeline of events and discover for themselves the changing face of Flixton, Urmston and Davyhulme.

The fascinating town of Sale in the Metropolitan Borough of Trafford, historically a part of Cheshire, has a rich and diverse history, which is extensively illustrated in the pages of this book. Old buildings, long forgotten, are recalled, such as the Brooklands Hotel, where famous comedians Laurel and Hardy stayed in 1947. There is the strange case of Doctor Charles White, of Sale Priory, who kept the embalmed body of Hannah Beswick at his home, where it stayed for 100 years. Sale Priory and grounds are now given over to modern housing. Sale has also had its fair share of successful and influential inhabitants, including Robert Bolt, who was born on Northenden Road and wrote 'A Man For All Seasons', several screenplays and won an Oscar for his work. Famous scientist and physicist, J. P. Joule, lived on Wardle Road. There is a monument to him in nearby Sale Park.

The Manchester Ship Canal was a huge engineering achievement. It included seven swing bridges and the aqueduct at Barton, and helped turn the cotton-producing capital of Great Britain into an inland seaport. This was a feat many at the time believed could not be achieved. One of the wonders of the modern industrial world, the Manchester Ship Canal, with its huge locks and ocean-going vessels, was a magnetic draw for enthusiastic Victorians who marvelled at its construction.This book looks at the changes and development of the Manchester Ship Canal through time, from its origins as a thriving economic hub in the late nineteenth century, to an important retail, leisure and media centre in the early twenty-first century and beyond. Join Steven Dickens as he explores the history of this 36-mile-long inland waterway in the north-west of England, which links Manchester to the Mersey Estuary and the Irish Sea.

The Lancashire town of Oldham was a boom town of the Industrial Revolution and among the first ever industrialised towns in England. At its peak it was the most productive cotton-spinning mill town in the world, producing more cotton than France and Germany combined. It was not until the last quarter of the eighteenth century that Oldham changed from being a cottage industry township producing woollen garments via domestic manual labour to a sprawling industrial metropolis of textile factories.The town’s population was greatly increased by the mass migration of workers from outlying villages, resulting in an explosion from just over 12,000 in 1801 to 137,000 in 1901.At its peak, in 1928, there were more than 360 mills operating night and day, but Oldham’s textile industry fell into decline in the mid-twentieth century and the town’s last mill closed in 1998. Today, Oldham is a predominantly residential town and a centre for further education and the performing arts. Oldham Through Timecharts these remarkable changes through a fascinating series of images of the town over the last century and a half.

The market town of Altrincham, historically part of Cheshire but now part of the Metropolitan Borough of Trafford, has a rich history dating back to its charter as a free borough and the establishment of a market in 1290. The buildings found in Old Market Place, the original centre of the town, are mainly from the sixteenth to the nineteenth centuries. They include the old town hall, once home to the Court Leet and now a public house, and several inns and restaurants. Old Market Place was a regular stopover point for stagecoaches on the turnpike road between Manchester and Chester. It remains busy today, and has been designated a Conservation Area in order to preserve its unique character. Although the market is now in a covered market hall, 1879–80, located on Market Street, Altrincham is still an important centre for trade. The buildings in Old Market Place echo the ‘black and white’ timber-framed constructions of Cheshire’s past. There are also more recent constructions, civic buildings – the town hall – dating from c. 1900 and the old Altrincham General Hospital, now replaced by a brand-new, purpose-built hospital in the town centre. Altrincham also boasts the medieval deer park at Dunham Massey and the expansive hall, the former seat of the Earls of Stamford and now in the stewardship of the National Trust. Latest developments include the new Altrincham Interchange building at Stamford New Road, its modern lines and graceful frontage a good example of function and design, while there are many examples of public buildings in Altrincham dating to the Victorian period.Altrincham in 50 Buildings celebrates Altrincham’s architectural heritage through history to the present day.