John,

On Carrie's 2nd point first!  The general law in the UK allows admission
at the discretion of the landlord from age 14 to public bars etc., and
many pubs now have "family rooms" for accompanied children of all ages.

The permitted minimum alcoholic drinks age for licenced premises is 18 (16
for drinking ordinary strength beers or (apple) ciders only when served
with a full meal). However, faced with widespread under-age drinking and
the problem of trying to guess whether the over-18 friend buying drinks
for a youngster has bought e.g. a double Bacardi separately to be slipped
into a glass of Coke or whatever (possibly costing them their licences
(and therefore their jobs) quite a lot of licensees take the easy way out
and put an 18 minimum age for admission, though accompanied by parents
(yuk! will she stand for that?!! - I've a 16 year old...) in my experience
there are usually few problems in practice.

On Manchester: there are a wide range of leading museums in the city
itself including the City Art Gallery and its branches - one of the top
half-dozen public collections in the UK, the quasi-national Museum of
Science and Industry - very large scale but centred on the world's first
railway station (1830 - and still surviving), the large-scale Manchester
Museum run by the Univresity (includes internqtionally important natural
history and antiuqities collections etc.), and the Whitworth Art Gallery
(also a University museum).  About 30 minutes away by rail you also have
the National Museums and Galleries on Merseyside in Liverpool - another
half dozen international class museums.

All of these (plus some others, e.g. Manchester Jewish Museum) have
substantial web sites with information on forthcoming special events as
well as on the permanetn exhibtions, servicves etc. These are accessible
as usual through the Virtual Library Museum Pages on the ICOM web site
(incidentally, much the most comprehensive coverage anywhere of museums on
the web worldwide):

        http://www.icom.org/vlmp/

Patrick Boylan

====================

On Fri, 12 Dec 1997, Lavarnway, Carrie AgHerMus wrote:

> Subject: Museums in Manchester, UK
>
> Our director and his family will be traveling to the UK in March as part of
> our internship program.  He asked if pubs in Manchester allow 17 year olds
>  -- it's pretty important -- his daughter is really into British music.
>  Anyone know ?  Also advice on what might be happening on the museum scene
> in Manchester and environs in March 1998 would be appreciated.  Contact him
> off list at John Awald <[log in to unmask]>  Thanks.    Carrie Lavarnway,
> Ag Heritage Museum
>

k