Various music archives relating to Manchester or collected by Manchester residents. The material spans from the 14th century to the 20th. The collection is not listed comprehensively or consistently but is a mix of library-style cataloguing, accessioning and archive-style cataloguing. So the listing you see here is very brief. Please do contact the Henry Watson Music Library for more information on its holdings. Please bear with us while we work on building up these lists.

Starting in mid-2026, CMMA won a grant from the National Archives programme Archives Revealed to support the cataloguing of the local history collections in this Special Collections holdings. The finalised catalogue will be uploaded early 2028. The Archives Revealed programme is funded by The National Lottery Heritage Fund, the Pilgrim Trust, the Wolfson Foundation and The National Archives.

Find out more about the library and consult its special collections here
Henry Watson Music Library