Access to the 4ft wide lump of granite is temporarily available while workmen repair the railway bridge in Castlefield.

This is all that remains of Manchester’s last Roman fort from around 200AD. Not the fake tourist stuff visible from Liverpool Road, but the real deal, usually impenetrable behind huge blue locked doors at the end of Collier Street.

Simply head down the street, wander through the doors (open as of Wed 1 Feb), politely ask any workmen hovering around for permission, turn left where the usual sturdy metal fence is for once unlocked and under Arch 95 of the railway there it is.

The lump of stone was preserved thanks to the good sense of the Earl of Ellesmere who held up construction of the railway in the 1840s to save it. For over a hundred years it was surrounded by a timber yard. When that closed in the 1970s there were plans to turn the block into a tourist attraction but the council felt that being in so obscure a location it might be damaged, and so the now defunct timber yard was securely and frustratingly locked up.

So hurry on down to see what revered historian A. J. P. Taylor once sarcastically labelled “the least interesting Roman remains in Britain” while you can!

* Stop press, Sun 5 Feb, doors boarded up, alas…no access!

Meet: Gorton Monastery (in the cafe), 11.30am.

Cost: £7.50 (which mostly goes to the Monastery).

Gorton was once the workshop of the world. Here the first locomotives taking trains across South Africa, New Zealand and Palestine were built at Gorton Tank, Gorton Foundry, Beyer Peacock. Here the world’d first commercial computer, Ferranti’s Mark 1, was created.

All that’s gone, but what remains is extraordinary – the world heritage site that is the church and friary of St Francis, now deconsecrated and known as Gorton Monastery. It’s one of the most startling Gothic revival buildings in Britain; powerful, awe-inspiring, exquisite and expertly detailed by E. W. Pugin, son of the Houses of Parliament designer A. W. Pugin.

It deteriorated alarmingly a few decades ago; like Gorton after de-industrialisation. Much of the site was wrecked. But thanks to a dedicated team of volunteers it has been lovingly restored, although the project is far from complete. The building was even on the World Monuments Fund Watch List of 100 Most Endangered Sites in the World in 1997 alongside Pompeii, Macchu Picchu, The Valley of the Kings and the Taj Mahal.

Gorton Monastery recently reopened as a venue. Concerts, weddings, conferences take place there regularly, but Sunday is a day for the community, and the building is then often open to the public.

It is where we begin and end the tour. Not only do we examine this sacred space in detail, with a talk and a tour, but we also venture outside to find the remains of Gorton’s industrial hey-day; great stories of love, labour and lore. At the end we return and flop into the café for much needed sustenance.

Meet: tbc

Meet: Gorton Monastery (in the cafe), 11.30am.

Cost: £7.50 (which mostly goes to the Monastery).

Gorton was once the workshop of the world. Here the first locomotives taking trains across South Africa, New Zealand and Palestine were built at Gorton Tank, Gorton Foundry, Beyer Peacock. Here the world’d first commercial computer, Ferranti’s Mark 1, was created.

All that’s gone, but what remains is extraordinary – the world heritage site that is the church and friary of St Francis, now deconsecrated and known as Gorton Monastery. It’s one of the most startling Gothic revival buildings in Britain; powerful, awe-inspiring, exquisite and expertly detailed by E. W. Pugin, son of the Houses of Parliament designer A. W. Pugin.

It deteriorated alarmingly a few decades ago; like Gorton after de-industrialisation. Much of the site was wrecked. But thanks to a dedicated team of volunteers it has been lovingly restored, although the project is far from complete. The building was even on the World Monuments Fund Watch List of 100 Most Endangered Sites in the World in 1997 alongside Pompeii, Macchu Picchu, The Valley of the Kings and the Taj Mahal.

Gorton Monastery recently reopened as a venue. Concerts, weddings, conferences take place there regularly, but Sunday is a day for the community, and the building is then often open to the public.

It is where we begin and end the tour. Not only do we examine this sacred space in detail, with a talk and a tour, but we also venture outside to find the remains of Gorton’s industrial hey-day; great stories of love, labour and lore. At the end we return and flop into the café for much needed sustenance.

Meet: 10am, 11.30am, 1pm, 2.30pm, 4pm.

L. S. Lowry painted it, Alfred Waterhouse designed it, Great Abel hangs from it and soon you’ll be able to go up it regularly. But for now Manchester Town Hall’s clock tower tours have returned just for the 2012 Histories Festival.

The tour takes you up way beyond the normal confines of the Town Hall, through an enticing wooden door to the bottom of 173 spiral steps stretching up the famous clock tower. Every so often we stop to explore this magical horological world, to see the huge mechanism whirring round on the quarter-hour, to stand behind the giant clock faces usually only visible from way below in Albert Square, to roam around the open parapet near the top (with the best outside views in Manchester) and to hover under the 8 ton bell – Great Abel itself – possibly while the hammer is smashing against the gunmetal to set all your senses off into a frenzy.

But we do more than simply climb and clamber around the bits of clock. We explain Manchester’s connections with the very notion of time, for until the passenger railway system was invented (in Manchester) no one thought too deeply about the fact that when it was noon here it wasn’t in Liverpool, Leeds or London. How this was sorted and how it affected Manchester will be unveiled in time.

* Booking details to be confirmed. Watch this space. Well, not literally.

An article in the Manchester Evening News today (30 January 2012) reveals that one of the items on display will be the replica of the best known World Cup – the Jules Rimet trophy – the very one that Manchester United’s Nobby Stiles can be seen cavorting with after England won the cup in 1966.

So why won’t the museum be displaying the real Jules Rimet trophy? Ah, that’s because no one knows where it is. This sad state of affairs dates back to the infamous event that took place a few months before England held the tournament, to March 1966 when the trophy, was stolen from an exhibition at Westminster’s Central Hall. The FA’s secretary, Denis Follows, visited the workshop of a silversmith, George Bird, in Fenchurch Street, before news of the theft was made public, and hired him to make a replica from the same solid gold as the original. The work was to be hush-hush; not even Stanley Rous, head of football’s governing body, FIFA, was told.

Within a week the stolen Cup was found, by Pickles the dog in Norwood. But from now on Bird’s replica trophy, not the real cup, which was safely ensconced at FA headquarters, was taken from exhibition to exhibition by Bird on his bike, concealed only by a cloth.

On the day of the Final, Saturday 30 July 1966, the police took the real trophy from the FA’s Lancaster Gate headquarters to Wembley, where it was given to the Queen who later presented it to the victorious England captain, Bobby Moore. Minutes later on the pitch Bird’s replica was given to the England players for their celebrations, and it was that cup, not the real Jules Rimet trophy, which was taken to the Royal Garden Hotel in Kensington for the post-match celebrations. Not that anybody in the crowd would have been able to notice the difference.

When it came to the next finals, in Mexico in 1970, it was time for the FA to return the trophy to FIFA, who run the game internationally. But which trophy did the FA send back? After all, there were now two. The FA handed FIFA the replica. In Mexico Brazil won the World Cup for the third time, and FIFA honoured the achievement by allowing Brazil to keep the Jules Rimet Trophy outright.

Thirteen years later it was stolen again, never to be found again, this time in Brazil, which was ironic given that back in 1966 when it first went missing Brazil said that the theft was a sacrilege that would never have happened in their country, where even the thieves loved football too much.

By then the real World Cup was hidden under George Bird’s bed. Twice his house was burgled, and twice the thieves failed to come across the trophy. After Bird died in 1995 his family auctioned the Cup, which was described in Sotheby’s catalogue as a replica. It should have had a scrap value of around one-and-a-half thousand pounds, yet it sold for £254,500. The successful buyer? FIFA.

Officials from the world governing body then brought in experts to examine their expensive acquisition, only to discover that they had indeed bought a replica – made of bronze! As Simon Kuper explained in the Financial Times in 2006, no one really knows what has happened to the original. Perhaps it has been melted into gold bars, or perhaps it is hidden away under a bed; maybe in Latin American, maybe somewhere in the Home Counties. Or maybe the new football museum will come across it when they unpack their boxes.

Booking will be through the Histories Festival. More details to follow.

Meet: Victoria Station wallmap, 2.30pm.

Horrors? Most certainly. Towards the end of the 19th century the Ministry of Health conducted a survey of local milk. Of 62,133 samples tested, 4,773 were found to be impure. In one case the milk contained one heaped-up teaspoonful of cow dung per gallon. They also found that self-raising flour contained traces of lead and arsenic, and jam small pieces of ham bone.

Until the late 19^th century all sorts of nasty things went into beer. A typical pint of the time might contain a pinch of fox-glove, a plant with large purple flowers and a bitter taste which taken in quantity induces nausea and giddiness. Or it might include a trace of green copperas, an iron-based compound which gave porter a frothy head and was therefore a must for the enterprising landlord.

No wonder everyone died a painful death at a young age!

And we haven’t even got political yet. The Irish starved in the 1840s due to the potato crop failure, so must have found Irish Town in central Manchester (now Angel Meadow) a paradise of cow heels, black pudding and tripe when they arrived to man the factories for a pittance.

By 1900, there were 206 tripe shops in Manchester alone. “Creamy white, bleached blanket, honeycomb, bible or raggy tripe was eaten cold with vinegar or hot with milk and onions”, as Laura Mason has put it.

These are the horrors we will be relating on this appetising tour. We will end of the tour at the Marble Arch pub. Sumptuous 21st century alum-free food and proper beer with not a hint of foxglove.

Bon appetit!

Meet: Star & Garter pub, Fairfield Street, by Piccadilly Station.

Need we say more!

Meet: Visitor Centre, Piccadilly Plaza, 2.30pm.

The second world war began in September 1939 but for months nothing much happened. It’s become known as the Phoney War. But the authorities were taking no chances. They built a mock-up version of Manchester in the moors at Burnley out of plywood. At night oil drums were lit to make it look as if “Manchester” had already been bombed!

After the surrender of France on 20 June 1940 the first Manchester air-raid sirens were heard and there were minor German raids on Lancashire, and on 29 July 1940 the first bomb fell locally. It dropped on a hut in Salford at the corner of Trafford Road and Ordsall Lane. Two weeks later, on 8 August 1940 an aircraft rained on Salford not bombs but Nazi propaganda leaflets, “A last appeal to reason,” a translation of a Hitler speech. One bundle hit a policeman at Castle Irwell.

It was not until 22 December 1940 that the first serious attacks on Manchester began. This was the Christmas Blitz of Sunday 22 December to Tuesday 24 December 1940. On the first night 270 aircraft released 272 tons of high explosive and 1,032 incendiary bombs. On the next night 171 aircraft dropped another 195 tons of high explosive and 893 incendiaries on central Manchester and Salford. More than 650 people were killed; more than 2,300 injured.

Many major buildings were wrecked or destroyed: the Free Trade Hall, Cross Street Chapel, the Corn Exchange and Smithfield Market. Within days the mediaeval pubs of the Shambles, apart from the still surviving Wellington Inn and Sinclair’s had been wiped out. Only one English cathedral – Coventry – took more bombardment than Manchester’s.

Manchester would never look the same again.