This article: After the Ashton Canal closed in the 1960s, it was decided to turn the Portland Basin warehouse into a museum. In 1985, the first part of the Heritage Centre and Museum opened on the first floor of the warehouse. The restoration of building was complete in 1999; the museum details Tameside's social, industrial, and political history. The basin next to the warehouse is the point at which the Ashton Canal, the Huddersfield Narrow Canal and the Peak Forest Canal meet. It has been used several times as a filming location for Coronation Street, including a scene where the character Richard Hillman drove into the canal.The earliest parts of Ashton Town Hall, which was the first purpose-built town hall in what is now Tameside, date to 1840 when it was opened. It has classical features such as the Corinthian columns on the entrance facade. Enlarged in 1878, the hall provides areas for administrative purposes and public functions. Meanwhile, the Old Street drill hall was completed in 1887. There are five parks in the town, three of which have Green Flag Awards. The first park opened in Ashton-under-Lyne was Stamford Park on the border with Stalybridge. The park opened in 1873, following a 17-year campaign by local cotton workers; the land was bought from a local mill-owner for 15,000 (1.4 million as of 2019) and further land was donated by George Grey, 7th Earl of Stamford. A crowd of between 60,000 and 80,000 turned out to see the Earl of Stamford formally open the new facility on 12 July 1873. It now includes a boating lake, and a memorial to Joseph Rayner Stephens, commissioned by local factory workers to commemorate his work promoting fair wages and improved working conditions. A conservatory was opened in 1907, and Coronation gates installed at both the Ashton-under-Lyne and Stalybridge entrances in 1953.Hartshead Pike is a stone tower on top of Hartshead Hill overlooking Ashton and Oldham. The current building was constructed in 1863 although there has been a building on the site since at least the mid-18th... contains an answer for the question: What is the name of the stone tower that may have been the site of a beacon in the late 16th century?, what is it ?
Ans: Hartshead Pike

This article: Holst was given a spectacular send-off. The conductor Adrian Boult recalled, "Just before the Armistice, Gustav Holst burst into my office: 'Adrian, the YMCA are sending me to Salonica quite soon and Balfour Gardiner, bless his heart, has given me a parting present consisting of the Queen's Hall, full of the Queen's Hall Orchestra for the whole of a Sunday morning. So we're going to do The Planets, and you've got to conduct'." There was a burst of activity to get things ready in time. The girls at St Paul's helped to copy out the orchestral parts, and the women of Morley and the St Paul's girls learned the choral part in the last movement.The performance was given on 29 September to an invited audience including Sir Henry Wood and most of the professional musicians in London. Five months later, when Holst was in Greece, Boult introduced The Planets to the general public, at a concert in February 1919; Holst sent him a long letter full of suggestions, but failed to convince him that the suite should be played in full. The conductor believed that about half an hour of such radically new music was all the public could absorb at first hearing, and he gave only five of the seven movements on that occasion.Holst enjoyed his time in Salonica, from where he was able to visit Athens, which greatly impressed him. His musical duties were wide-ranging, and even obliged him on occasion to play the violin in the local orchestra: "it was great fun, but I fear I was not of much use". He returned to England in June 1919. contains an answer for the question: What is the full name of the person who gave only five of the seven movements when The Planets was performed at its first hearing?, what is it ?
Ans: Adrian Boult

This article: Sir John Barbirolli, CH (2 December 1899 29 July 1970), ne Giovanni Battista Barbirolli, was a British conductor and cellist. He is remembered above all as conductor of the Halle Orchestra in Manchester, which he helped save from dissolution in 1943 and conducted for the rest of his life. Earlier in his career he was Arturo Toscanini's successor as music director of the New York Philharmonic, serving from 1936 to 1943. He was also chief conductor of the Houston Symphony from 1961 to 1967, and was a guest conductor of many other orchestras, including the BBC Symphony Orchestra, London Symphony Orchestra, the Philharmonia, the Berlin Philharmonic and the Vienna Philharmonic, with all of which he made recordings. Born in London of Italian and French parentage, Barbirolli grew up in a family of professional musicians. After starting out as a cellist, he was given the chance to conduct, from 1926 with the British National Opera Company, and then with Covent Garden's touring company. On taking up the conductorship of the Halle he had less opportunity to work in the opera house, but in the 1950s he conducted productions of works by Verdi, Wagner, Gluck, and Puccini at Covent Garden with such success that he was invited to become the company's permanent musical director, an invitation he declined. Late in his career he made several recordings of operas, of which his 1967 set of Puccini's Madama Butterfly for EMI is probably the best known. Both in the concert hall and on record, Barbirolli was particularly associated with the music of English composers such as Elgar, Delius and Vaughan Williams. His interpretations of other late romantic composers, such as Mahler and Sibelius, as well as of earlier classical composers, including Schubert, are also still admired. contains an answer for the question: What is the last name of the person who is remembered above all as a conductor of the Halle Orchestra in Manchester?, what is it ?
Ans: Barbirolli