The Manchester Ship Canal opened in 1894, creating the Port of Manchester and linking the city to the Irish Sea, 36 miles (58 km) to the west. Manchester's unplanned urbanisation was brought on by a boom in textile manufacture during the Industrial Revolution, and resulted in it becoming the world's first industrialised city. Throughout the Middle Ages Manchester remained a manorial township, but began to expand 'at an astonishing rate' around the turn of the 19th century. Historically part of Lancashire, areas of Cheshire south of the River Mersey were incorporated into Manchester in the 20th century, including Wythenshawe in 1931. The history of Manchester began with the civilian settlement associated with the Roman fort ( castra) of Mamucium or Mancunium, established in about AD 79 on a sandstone bluff near the confluence of the rivers Medlock and Irwell. The two cities and the surrounding towns form a large continuous conurbation. It is fringed by the Cheshire Plain to the south, the Pennines to the north and east and the neighbouring city of Salford to the west.
Manchester ( / ˈ m æ n tʃ ɪ s t ər, - tʃ ɛ s-/) is a city in Greater Manchester, England, with a population of 547,627 in 2018. Manchester Cathedral, a grade I listed building which is the Anglican cathedral and parish church of Manchester and the mother church of the Diocese of Manchester
