Coordinates: 53°29′00″N 2°13′47″W / 53.483333°N 2.229722°W / 53.483333; -2.229722

Ancoats is an inner city area of Manchester, in North West England, next to the Northern Quarter and the northern part of Manchester's commercial centre.

Historically a part of Lancashire, Ancoats became one of the cradles of the Industrial Revolution, and has been called "the world's first industrial suburb". For many years, from the late 18th century onwards, Ancoats was a thriving industrial district. The area suffered accelerating economic decline from the 1930s and depopulation in the years after the Second World War, particularly during the slum clearances of the 1960s.

Since the 1990s Ancoats' industrial heritage has been recognised and this, along with its proximity to the city centre, has led to investment and the development of substantial regeneration plans. The southern region of the suburb is being branded as New Islington^{[by whom?]}, while the north retains the Ancoats name, with redevelopment centred around the Daily Express Building, Manchester.

Geoffrey Paul Barrow (born 9 December 1971) is an English producer, composer, disc jockey, and is the instrumentalist for the band Portishead.

Portishead—formed in 1991—was named after the small town near Bristol where Barrow grew up. On his intentions in forming Portishead, he has stated, "I just wanted to make interesting music, proper songs with a proper life span and a decent place in people's record collections."

Born in Walton in Gordano, Somerset, Geoff and his mother moved to the town Portishead when he was eleven after his parents divorced. After being involved in many local rock bands, playing drums and dj'ing in hiphop groups, Barrow got his first job at the Coach House Studios as a tape operator soon after it opened in 1989. In 1991, while he was assisting on Massive Attack's breakthrough album Blue Lines, the band allowed him spare studio time to get his own ideas on tape. A few years later, when the Portishead project had been assembled, the group came back to record "Sour Times" in that same studio. At the dawn of the '90s, Barrow was making a name for himself as a remixer, working with such artists as Primal Scream, Paul Weller, Gabrielle and Depeche Mode. In addition, Barrow had produced a track for Tricky and written songs for Neneh Cherry.

Tom Turner is an English landscape architect,garden designer and garden historian teaching at the University of Greenwich in London. He is the author of books and articles on landscape and gardens and is the editor of the Garden History Reference Encyclopedia CD and the online Gardens Guide. Educated at the Universities of St Andrews and Edinburgh, he studied landscape architecture under Frank Clarke.