Imperial War Museum North

Imperial War Museum North stands on Trafford Wharf Road in Trafford Park, Greater Manchester. It overlooks the Manchester Ship Canal in an area once at the heart of Britain’s war effort. Trafford Park factories built Avro Lancaster bombers and Rolls-Royce Merlin engines during the Second World War. The site was heavily bombed in December 1940 during the Manchester Blitz, when 684 people were killed in two nights. Today the museum shares the skyline with the Lowry cultural centre and MediaCityUK across the water. It is one of five branches of the Imperial War Museum and the first in northern England. The building was designed by Daniel Libeskind and opened in July 2002. In its first year it welcomed 470,000 visitors and won awards for its architecture. Libeskind described the structure as three shards from a shattered globe, representing air, earth and water. The 55-metre air shard forms the entrance and once offered a viewing balcony above the canal. The earth shard contains the main galleries, while the water shard houses a café with canal views. The project was funded by local, national and European agencies, with a £12.5 million contribution from the Peel Group. Inside, the main gallery runs 200 metres around the curved floor of the earth shard. Large exhibits include a Russian T-34 tank, a US Marine Corps AV-8A Harrier jet and a 13-pounder field gun. Smaller artefacts travel on vertical conveyors called timestacks, some of which visitors can handle. Hourly audiovisual shows called the Big Picture use up to 1,500 images and personal accounts to explore modern conflict. The museum also displays war art by artists such as Flora Lion, Anna Airy and L. S. Lowry. Outside, landscaped grounds completed in 2009 frame views of the canal and the Manchester skyline.