Venues

Meet the Bands

On Saturday 17th September, the United Pipers for Peace will perform at a host of locations around Manchester city centre.

At each venue, you will have the opportunity to enjoy a performance by each pipe band at regular times throughout the afternoon.

After each performance, you will have the opportunity to meet and exchange with the pipers and drummers.

Saturday Venues

The pipe bands will entertain you at all the locations shown below.
A detailed programme will be finalised over the coming weeks and published on this website and on our social media platforms.

Saint Peter's Square

St Peter's Square is a public square in Manchester city centre, England. The north of the square is bounded by Princess Street and the south by Peter Street. To the west of the square is Manchester Central Library, Midland Hotel and Manchester Town Hall Extension. The square is home to the Manchester Cenotaph, the Emmeline Pankhurst statue, and St Peter's Square Metrolink tram stop and incorporates the Peace Garden. In 1819, the area around the square was the site of the Peterloo Massacre.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/St_Peter%27s_Square,_Manchester

Central Library

Manchester Central Library is the headquarters of the city's library and information service in Manchester, England. Facing St Peter's Square, it was designed by E. Vincent Harris and constructed between 1930 and 1934. The form of the building, a columned portico attached to a rotunda domed structure, is loosely derived from the Pantheon, Rome. At its opening, one critic wrote, "This is the sort of thing which persuades one to believe in the perennial applicability of the Classical canon".

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Manchester_Central_Library

Cathedral Gardens

Cathedral Gardens is an open space in Manchester city centre. It comprises wide areas of grassy plots, surrounded by paved walking areas and stylised concrete sitting areas. On the west side, is a short water feature.

Until the Industrial Revolution, Manchester was a small market town, centred on the cathedral. During the Industrial Revolution Manchester expanded rapidly. Cathedral Gardens is overlooked by Chetham's Library, where Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels wrote.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cathedral_Gardens

Shambles Square

Shambles Square is a square in Manchester, England, created in 1999 around the rebuilt Old Wellington Inn and Sinclair's Oyster Bar next to The Mitre Hotel.

The building that is now The Old Wellington Inn was built in 1552 next to Manchester's market square. In 1554, it was purchased by the Byrom family and became part residence and part drapers shop. The writer John Byrom was born there in 1692. The premises were licensed in 1862 becoming the Vintners Arms and ultimately the Old Wellington Inn.

The name "Shambles" is derived from the Middle English word schamel, which meant a bench, as for displaying meat for sale. A shambles would have had blood, pieces of meat and offal running down the gutter, and although the original meaning of the word fell into disuse, it survived as a word meaning a scene of disorder.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shambles_Square,_Manchester

Manchester Town Hall

Manchester Town Hall is a Victorian, Neo-gothic municipal building facing Albert Square to the north and St Peter's Square to the south, with Manchester Cenotaph facing its southern entrance.

Designed by architect Alfred Waterhouse, the town hall was completed in 1877. The building contains offices and grand ceremonial rooms such as the Great Hall which is decorated with Ford Madox Brown's imposing Manchester Murals illustrating the history of the city. The exterior is dominated by the clock tower which rises to 280 feet (85 m) and houses Great Abel, the clock bell.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Manchester_Town_Hall

Unfortunately, Manchester Town Hall is currently closed for renovation and will not be available for United Pipers for Peace Manchester 2022. We couldn't, however, resist the temptation of showing off our beautiful centre of civic life!

By Cen2s2s - Own work, CC BY-SA 4.0, https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?curid=54488770

Manchester Gay Village (Canal Street)

Canal Street is a street in Manchester city centre in North West England and the centre of Manchester's gay village. The pedestrianised street, which runs along the west side of the Rochdale Canal, is lined with gay bars and restaurants. At night time, and in daytime in the warmer months, the street is filled with visitors, many of them LGBT tourists from all over the world.

Manchester's LGBT community are great supporters of the local pipe bands and we are keen to show them our appreciation.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Canal_Street_(Manchester)

Castlefield

Castlefield is an inner city conservation area. It was the site of the Roman era fort of Mamucium or Mancunium which gave its name to Manchester. It was the terminus of the Bridgewater Canal, the world's first industrial canal, built in 1764. The world's first passenger railway terminated here in 1830.

Castlefield has several bars and restaurants which are particularly popular during the summer months when people flock to the area to enjoy the large outdoor drinking areas and regular live music.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Castlefield

Saint Ann's Square

At the beginning of the 18th century, Manchester was a small rural town, little more than a village, with many fields and timber-framed houses. A large cornfield named Acres Field, which is now St Ann's Square, became the site for St Ann's Church. Acresfield was the site of an annual fair from the 13th century until 1823 when it was moved to Knott Mill.

Although the church stood between the market and the collegiate church, both towers could be seen from all directions. It is a neo-classical building, originally constructed from locally quarried, red Collyhurst sandstone although, due to its soft nature, much of the original stone has since been replaced with sandstone of various colours.

The tower of the church marks the centre of the city; surveyors used it as a platform to measure distances to other locations. Their benchmark remains visible at the tower door.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/St_Ann%27s_Church,_Manchester

Exchange Square

Exchange Square is civic square in Manchester, England. The square was created after the IRA 1996 Manchester bombing. This reconstruction included the structural relocation of two pubs to make room for the new Marks & Spencer store.

Today the square is a major shopping area including a branch of Selfridges, New Cathedral Street, the Corn Exchange and an entrance to the Manchester Arndale, one of the most-visited shopping centres in the United Kingdom.

To the north lies the Printworks and Urbis, now home to the National Football Museum. To the west lies Shambles Square (with The Old Wellington Inn) and Manchester Cathedral. To the south is New Cathedral Street and the Royal Exchange.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Exchange_Square,_Manchester

The Printworks

The Printworks is an urban entertainment venue offering a cinema, clubs and eateries, located on the revamped Withy Grove site of the business premises of the 19th century newspaper proprietor Edward Hulton, established in 1873 and later expanded. Hulton's son Sir Edward Hulton expanded his father's newspaper interests and sold his publishing business based in London and Manchester to Lord Beaverbrook and Lord Rothermere when he retired in 1923.

In 2000 the Printworks was opened by Sir Alex Ferguson and Lionel Richie as the venue for a variety of clubs and eateries.The new 365,000-square-foot facility is set over four floors.The new building features a twenty-screen UCI cinema complex (subsequently bought by Odeon and, in 2017, by Vue Cinemas [25]) which includes North West England's first IMAX screen, a Nuffield Health fitness club, a Hard Rock Cafe restaurant and a Eden nightclub. The external lighting facing Exchange Square has been changed numerous times since opening

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Printworks_(Manchester)

Sunday Venues

The Grand Parade of Pipe Bands will begin from 11 am on Deansgate, from Liverpool Road to Manchester Cathedral.

At 1.30 pm, the Service for Peace will begin at Manchester Cathedral, followed by a laying of wreaths in the Cathedral Gardens.

Deansgate

Deansgate is one of the city's oldest thoroughfares. In Roman times its route passed close to the Roman fort of Mamucium and led from the River Medlock where there was a ford and the road to Deva (Chester). Along its length were several civilian buildings and a mansio in the vicinity of the Hilton Hotel. Part of it was called Aldport Lane from Saxon times. (Aldport was the Saxon name for Castlefield.) Until the 1730s the area was rural but became built up after the development of a quay on the river.

The road is named after the lost River Dene, which may have flowed along the Hanging Ditch connecting the River Irk to the River Irwell, at the street's northern end. ("Gate" derives from the Norse gata, meaning way).

By the late 19th century, Deansgate was an area of varied uses: its northern end had shopping and substantial office buildings while further south were slums and a working class area around St John's Church (St John Street remaining upper middle class). The Wood Street Mission began to address the social problems in 1869 and its work continues in a very different form. From Peter Street southwards, the eastern side was dominated by the viaducts of the Great Northern and Manchester South Junction Railways, while the Rochdale Canal crossed below Deansgate to connect with the other waterways beyond. In the late 20th century, Deansgate was home to the head office of the Manchester Evening News newspaper, now replaced by part of the Spinningfields development.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Deansgate

Cathedral Gardens

Manchester Cathedral

Manchester Cathedral, formally the Cathedral and Collegiate Church of St Mary, St Denys and St George, in Manchester, England, is the mother church of the Anglican Diocese of Manchester, seat of the Bishop of Manchester and the city's parish church It is on Victoria Street in Manchester city centre and is a grade I listed building

The former parish church was rebuilt in the Perpendicular Gothic style in the years following the foundation of the collegiate body in 1421 Then at the end of the 15th century, James Stanley II (warden 1485–1506 and later Bishop of Ely 1506–1515) was responsible for rebuilding the nave and collegiate choir with high clerestory windows; also commissioning the late-medieval wooden internal furnishings, including the pulpitum, choir stalls and the nave roof supported by angels with gilded instruments

The collegiate church became the cathedral of the new Diocese of Manchester in 1847 It was extensively refaced, restored and extended in the Victorian period, and again following bomb damage during World War II It is one of fifteen Grade I listed buildings in Manchester

The origins of Manchester's first churches are obscure The Angel Stone, a small carving of an angel with a scroll is preserved in the cathedral It was discovered in the wall of the cathedral's south porch providing evidence of an earlier, possibly Anglo-Saxon, church It has been dated to around 700 AD, however the Corpus of Anglo-Saxon sculpture dates the sculpture to the twelfth century Its Latin inscription translates as "into thy hands, O Lord, I commend my spirit"[4][3] The first church, possibly sited on or near the site of St Ann's Church, was destroyed by Danish invaders in 923 and a church dedicated to St Mary, built by King Edward the Elder, possibly where St Mary's Gate joins Exchange Street, was mentioned in the Domesday Book in 1086 The Domesday Book entry for Manchester reads "the Church of St Mary and the Church of St Michael hold one carucate of land in Manchester exempt from all customary dues except tax"

https://enwikipedia.org/wiki/Manchester_Cathedral

17th & 18th September 2022

United Pipers for Peace
Manchester 2022

proudly hosted by

Fianna Phádraig Pipe Band

Venues

Meet the Bands

Saturday Venues

Sunday Venues

Manchester Cathedral

17th & 18th September 2022

proudly hosted by Fianna Phádraig Pipe Band

Venues

Meet the Bands

Saturday Venues

Sunday Venues

Manchester Cathedral

proudly hosted by

Fianna Phádraig Pipe Band