john schofield manchester tours

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Jonathan Schofield

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Jonathan Schofield has been a Blue Badge Guide since 1996 and has taken 105 different nationalities around the North West of England.

He has featured on several TV productions and is a well-known commentator on Manchester and the NW through the online magazine, Manchester Confidential.

He has written several books including the Manchester:The Complete Guide. He conducts a huge number of general and specialist tours each year ranging from the academic to the popular, from radical politics to pubs and ghosts. His philosophy as a guide is have the knowledge but be entertaining and know the modern city as well.

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Jonathan's popular tours.

Jonathan Schofield Manchester Tours

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Jonathan Schofield Manchester Tours - All You Need to Know BEFORE You Go (2024)

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Jonathan Schofield Manchester Tours

Even if you’ve lived here all your life, you’ll likely learn something new on a Jonathan Schofield Manchester Tour. And if you’re visiting from further afield, they’re one of the best ways to discover the city’s stories, secrets and hidden gems.

Journalist, editor and writer Jonathan has an in-depth knowledge of Manchester history and culture. Through anecdotes and surprising facts, he’ll bring its past to life and give you a brilliant insight into the city as it is today.

The calendar of walking tours covers everything from the love story behind Heaton Hall to the industrial history of Ancoats. Look out for specialist tours on Marx and Engels, Manchester’s hidden rivers, and fascinating buildings such as the Kimpton Clock Tower and Mayfield Station.

The Saturday Walkabouts are particularly popular and make for a great group activity. Choose from the Manchester Music Tour, the Manchester Pub Tour and the Manchester Ghost Tour. There are also occasional tours of nearby towns such as Stockport and Knutsford.

Most tours are by foot and last between ninety minutes and two hours. Dogs are welcome on outdoor tours.

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Jonathan Schofield Manchester Tours

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Most Recent: Reviews ordered by most recent publish date in descending order.

Detailed Reviews: Reviews ordered by recency and descriptiveness of user-identified themes such as waiting time, length of visit, general tips, and location information.

Jonathan Schofield Manchester Tours - All You Need to Know BEFORE You Go (2024) - Tripadvisor

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Manchester Tour Guide Jonathan Schofield Launches Zoom Tour Series

Manchester tour guide Jonathan Schofield has launched the 'The Manchester Zoom Tour Series', allowing you to enjoy the story of the city and its extraordinary characters and buildings without leaving your home.

Participants are asked to buy a ticket for the corresponding tour, and they will receieve an email that includes a secure invitation. The sessions are due to last 1 hour, and will include a number of images, some of which have never been shown in print or digitally before, which are designed to get you under the skin of the city. There will also be a Q&A session at the end of the tour. The tours will also be available aftewards, allowing you to revisit it as many times as you want. 

Sessions will take place on Tuesdays at 6.30pm and Saturdays at 5pm. The tours have an introductory price of £6 each, or you can buy 6 tours for just £25, saving £11. 

The tours currently on sale are: 

The Secrets of Cross Street The Secrets of London Road Fire Station Manchester's Amazing Tunnels The Secrets of Old Trafford 80s Manchester from Joy Division to New Order Chetham's Extraordinary Medieval Buildings The Secrets of Oxford Street The Secrets of Castlefield and St John's Manchester, the American Link 60s & 70s Manchester The Secrets of Chapel Street and Peel Park The Ghosts of Manchester The Secrets of the Refuge Building (Kimpton Clock Tower Hotel) The Secrets of the Northern Quarter The Pubs and Lost Pubs of Manchester  The Secrets of Didsbury

Tickets are available from:  www.jonathanschofieldtours.com/the-zoom-tours-series .

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Jonathan Schofield presents Manchester: a pioneering and changing city

30 Jun - 6 Jul 2023

The tour started at the Ticketing Hub at Aviva Studios, located just outside the venue. Find full access and travel information below.

Access information

The tour started at the Ticketing Hub just outside Aviva Studios and has step-free access. The tour covered a maximum distance of 2.5km. Further information on access provision is listed below.

Age Guidance: Under 16s to be accompanied by an adult over 18 Running time: 1.5 - 2 hours approx.

Fusing the past, present and future, this tour covered Manchester’s iconic architecture, from civil engineering and skyscrapers to pioneering railways and canals, all rich with history.

Led by writer and guide Jonathan Schofield , this tour looked at the dawn of the canal and railway ages, Manchester’s fabled music scene and the political city – taking in Friedrich Engels, Emmeline Pankhurst and the Free Trade movement – while also touching on modern radicalism. During the tour, we stepped inside a couple of Manchester institutions where we gathered for a poetry recital and to listen to music.

This was an opportunity to have your eyes opened to the city's globally significant history, with a pinch of humour along the way.

Ticketing Hub-Liverpool Road Station/MSIM-Castlefield Bowl-Bridgewater Canal Basin-Deansgate Square-HOME-Bridgewater Hall-Manchester Central-St Peter's Square-Peter Street-Quay Street-St John’s Gardens-Ticketing Hub.

Here you can find access information about the venue, our access performances and advice on content. For more information about the different types of access performances we offer, please visit our Access page. If you have specific access needs that aren’t yet addressed, please email [email protected] and we’ll do our best to help.

The tour began at our Ticketing Hub, located in the outdoor spaces at Factory International's new home, Aviva Studios. The full address is Aviva Studios, Water Street, Manchester M3 4JQ and what3words is chop.feeds.chase .

https://what3words.com/chop.feeds.chase

Venue information

There is step-free access to all our outdoor areas. There are a range of seating options around the space, including wheelchair accessible tables. The bars have a lowered accessible service area.

Toilets are available in Aviva Studios. Accessible toilets (a mixture of wheelchair accessible cubicles with right- or left-hand transfer, as well as ambulant accessible cubicles with grab rails) are located in the brick arches in the Social.

There are additional accessible toilets located in both the Hall Foyers.

You do not need a key to use the accessible toilets.

Assistance dogs

Assistance dogs are welcome and we can provide mats and water bowls on request.

Travel information

Below you can find information on how to get to the venue.

The Ticketing Hub at Aviva Studios can be approached along Water Street (coming from Quay Street) or along Liverpool Road (coming from Deansgate or Castlefield).

Train and Metrolink

Our closest stations are:

Salford Central station: 0.4 miles

Deansgate station and Deansgate-Castlefield tram: 0.6 miles

St Peter’s Square tram: 0.6 miles

Manchester Victoria station is approximately one mile from Aviva Studios

Manchester Piccadilly station is approximately 1.3 miles from Aviva Studios

Click on the links above to find detailed access information for each station.

Free bus services stop at all city-centre stations, and near to Aviva Studios along Deansgate, Bridge St and Quay St. Buses on these free routes are wheelchair accessible. For full details of the free bus routes, please visit the TfGM website .

There is a car park approximately 0.6 miles from the event entrance at Water Street Car Park, New Elm Rd, Manchester, M3 4JH.

There is also a NCP car park (Manchester Spinningfields) approximately 0.5 miles away from the venue at Spinningfields, New Quay Street, Manchester, M3 3BE. It has 35 accessible bays.

There are a small number of Blue Badge spaces along Water St and Quay St. Otherwise head towards Liverpool Road, Great John St and Lower Byrom St – close to our neighbours, the Science and Industry Museum where there are a small number of additional Blue Badge spaces.

For a list of other parking bays available in the area, visit Manchester City Council website .

Performances

• 3 pm Currently unavailable

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Jonathan Schofield Manchester Tours

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Similar Experiences

Most Recent: Reviews ordered by most recent publish date in descending order.

Detailed Reviews: Reviews ordered by recency and descriptiveness of user-identified themes such as waiting time, length of visit, general tips, and location information.

JONATHAN SCHOFIELD MANCHESTER TOURS - All You Need to Know BEFORE You Go

Jonathan Schofield Manchester Tours

• See all photos

Similar Experiences

Most Recent: Reviews ordered by most recent publish date in descending order.

Detailed Reviews: Reviews ordered by recency and descriptiveness of user-identified themes such as waiting time, length of visit, general tips, and location information.

Jonathan Schofield Manchester Tours - Things You Need to Know BEFORE You Go (2024)

Jonathan Schofield Walking Tours

21 September 2020 — 31 July 2023 Tickets from £6 — Book now

Jonathan Schofield is no stranger to the history of Manchester, he literally wrote the book on it. After years of revealing Manchester’s rich cultural heritage to visitors from far and wide, Schofield is now offering the widest selection of subject specific tours. These ventures into Roman, Victorian, Political and Modern histories are a fascinating look into Manchester’s past for residents and visitors alike.

Join Jonathan, and explore Castlefield, Old Trafford, Chorlton , Chapel Street, the secret tunnels and more as he recounts the lives of those who’ve shaped these areas. Jonathan’s particular style of tour makes these stories very accessible, telling anecdotes and tales from centuries ago as if they’re pub gossip, letting you relate and empathise with their protagonists. He also looks ahead to the future of the city. With new developments constantly springing up, it’s fascinating to hear and see what the city might look like in years to come.

For those who are unable to make any of the live tours, be sure to check out the recorded online videos on the link below. These short documentary style clips are bite sized chunks of local history and free to access online.

Be sure to check Jonathan’s website for when free tours are available. As the city’s go-to guide he often is supported by the National Trust and other organisations to offer free tours, making local history more accessible than ever.

fall in love with this fascinating city through the filter of Mr Schofield’s extensive knowledge

No matter which tour you join Jonathan on, you can be sure to learn something. There isn’t a post box or pub basement in Manchester without an intriguing past and Jonathan knows them all. Let yourself fall in love with this fascinating city through the filter of Mr Schofield’s extensive knowledge.

21 September 2020 — 31 July 2023 Tickets from £6 Book now

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Q&A: Manchester international festival tour guide Jonathan Schofield

Need a guide to Manchester during this year’s Mif? Joining the dots between Marx and Engels and the festival’s themes, one resident expert explains how the city “holds up a mirror to the world” ...

The Guardian is Manchester international festival’s media partner

Why get into guided touring? It’s self-expression. You can take a theme and run with it; Manchester can be Marx and Engels [who began writing The Communist Manifesto in the city’s Chetham’s Library], it can be a radical city, an artistic city – and when you’re engaging an audience, it’s like being an actor with facts.

How has the Mif touring programme evolved? This year, Mif wanted a walk which would tie in with some of the major themes of the festival. I’ve tried to knit together the things that are happening within the context of Manchester.

You’ve called it Radicals, Pioneers and Rabbit Holes. What’s the narrative behind it? Simply, it’s the fantasy and reality that is Manchester. There’s always been escapism involved in the north-west of England: take Lewis Carroll, who came from Daresbury near Warrington, or The Smiths. But there’s also Manchester’s hard, cruel reality. We’ll be weaving ideas of radicalism and fantasy with the industrialised and post-industrialised world – I don’t want to give too much away, but and we’ll be going into the dark and scaring the whatnots off you.

And how does the rest of the festival’s programme come into it? The theme throughout is the despoilation of the planet by the human race. Manchester holds up a mirror to the world; we were the first people to completely destroy a natural environment. In the space of 50 years, we went from somewhere that looked like Ludlow to an industrialised hellhole – but one full of humanity and ideas. I’ll be referring directly to Damon Albarn, Moira Buffini and Rufus Norris’s wonder.land and The Skriker with Maxine Peake.

Can you tell us your personal favourite stops on the tour? No way! All I’ll say is: we’ll go up, we’ll down and we’ll go to the river.

Were there any particularly staggering facts or stories you came across while researching the tour? The theme is a north-west-based Alice who falls down a hole and wakes up to an industrial maelstrom. The world changes in that moment – and so the staggering fact, I suppose, is that before the industrial revolution, we were the least populated major county in terms of size and scale. Within 50 years we were more populated than Middlesex and London.

What’s the best secret place in Manchester you’ve discovered during your time as a tour guide? For a long time, I had no idea that we had one of Britain’s finest medieval structures within the city. It was the library in Chetham’s School of Music. People can go in there and put their hand on a Samuel Johnson dictionary or a Matthew Paris manuscript. There’s a table that the public can sit around and it could be a seat Benjamin Franklin sat in, or Benjamin Disraeli, or William Gladstone. That’s a beautiful moment. It’s not like going to something such as the Tower of London, which is seen everywhere on pictures and TV; it’s about being surprised and delighted.

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