As someone who has spent most of their life in the cotton industry, I had penciled in Manchester as a place to visit one day (along with the Liverpool Cotton exchange!). However on arrival, this town could not organise a chook raffle. The chaos at the airport was indescribable (after a similar situation in Amsterdam where the customs computers stopped working and we were stuck with two hour queues). It took well over an hour to get my checked bag - (no wonder I try to travel with carry on)! and then another few hours to get my hire car. Anyhow, I eventually made it to my AirBnB and then took a drive into Manchester city to see the the Royal Exchange, where thousands of cotton traders would meet on Tuesdays and Fridays to do cotton business. Over a billion tons of raw cotton were processed here in 1914. The trade in cotton amounted to 50% of British exports in the 1830s, and stood at 80% of global cotton goods in the 1880s. But today the exchange is a tacky shopping mall with a horrible steel "theatre" inside, in what was once described as the "biggest room in the world". It was kind of interesting but sad to see the original cotton commodity trading boards reflecting the cotton price of the time (which I think for the December 1931 delivery was 27 pence per pound?), but I think that most of the visitors here would have no idea of the importance of this building in the worlds cotton trade. In fact, most of the cities cotton mills have been converted to modern apartments.
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