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Articles
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Theatre in North Western England: IntroductionDateline: 11th February, 2001 The area covered by North West Arts is a large one, taking in Lancashire, Cheshire, Merseyside, Manchester and the High Peak area of Derbyshire. It borders Cumbria in the north, Yorkshire in the east, Derbyshire and Staffordshire in the south, and North Wales in the west. It is a very varied area, too, from two of the biggest conurbations in the UK, Manchester and Liverpool, to the wild and bleak countryside of Derbyshire's High Peak. It includes the place that used to be Britain's favourite holiday destination, Blackpool, and the city that had the reputation of being the wettest place in England, Manchester, the butt of many comics' jokes in the fifties. (It isn't actually true: the wettest place in England is a tiny village - little more than a couple of farms really - in Borrowdale in the Lake District: Seathwaite, where some of England's most exciting mountain walks start - Scafell Pike, Great Gable, the Borrowdale-Wasdale crossing.) The mills of Lancashire were, at one time, a major part of England's industrial economy and, for quite some time, Liverpool was the biggest port in the UK, outstripping its closest rivals, London and Bristol, in the tonnage shipped. In the late eighteenth century it was, in fact, the centre of the slave trade, for, although slavery had been banned in Britain for centuries, it was from Liverpool that the majority of slave ships began their voyages as part of the Triangular Trade (Liverpool-West Africa: manufactured goods; West Africa-West Indies: slaves; West Indies-Liverpool: tobacco, sugar, rum etc.). As you might expect, such a diverse region has a very diverse theatre provision, as we will see in the next few pages. NEXT>> Liverpool and Manchester Articles Indices: |
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