It has been extensively used for other sporting pursuits, military manoeuvres and public gatherings such as the Great Chartist Meeting of 1838, prompting the political theorist Friedrich Engels to dub it "the Mons Sacer of Manchester".

With the increasing industrialisation and urbanisation of Manchester and Salford during the 18th and 19th centuries, the moor became one of the remaining areas of natural landscape of interest to amateur naturalists, one of whom collected the only known specimens of the now extinct moth species Euclemensia woodiella.

"[nb 1][7] This deposit is overlaid with a thin topsoil supporting a range of mosses, heathers, grasses, ferns,[8] common broom, gorse and some trees, which are predominantly oak with some rowan, cherry and other broadleaved species.

From this elevated position there are views across Manchester to the Derbyshire hills in the south, to the Pennines in the north east and across the Irwell Valley and Salford in the west.

The land falls away to the north, ending with two drumlin-shaped hills on the northern edge, which were probably formed by sediment from the meltwater of the receding glaciers, in a process known as sedimentary fluting.

Flint scrapers, knives and other materials associated with neolithic humans were discovered on the moor in the late 19th and early 20th century by local antiquarians such as Charles Roeder.

[11] The 18th century historian John Whitaker said of the moor: "The moor of Kersal was in the time of the Romans, perhaps in that of the Britons before them, and for many ages after both, a thicket of oaks and a pasture for hogs; and the little knolls, that so remarkably diversify the plain, and are annually covered with mingled crowds rising in ranks over ranks to the top, were once the occasional seats of the herdsmen that superintended these droves into the woods.

[19]By 1830, however, archery had become the sport of gentlemen and an exclusive club called the "Broughton Archers" was formed, the membership of which included some of the most influential men in the town.

Armed patrols were placed around the neighbourhood to little effect until, at last, a man named James Macnamara was arrested with three others for burglary at the Dog and Partridge Inn on Stretford Road.

[14] The Stockport, Bolton and Rochdale Volunteers were reviewed on Kersal Moor on 25 August 1797[26] and in June 1812, 30,000 troops from the Wiltshire, Buckinghamshire, Louth and Stirling regiments were camped there ready for action to suppress the Luddites.

[30] In 1848, the moor was used as an encampment for the East Norfolk Regiment as part of an increased military presence in Lancashire brought about by the unrest caused by Chartist agitation.

The meeting, which was planned as a show of strength and to elect delegates for the Chartist national convention, attracted speakers from all over the country and a massive crowd, which was estimated at 30,000 by the Manchester Guardian and 300,000 by the Morning Advertiser.

The morning was a lowering one but, notwithstanding this, crowds of persons began to assemble in the streets shortly after daybreak and many processions from the country had arrived by nine o'clock.

As the various speakers arrived upon the hustings they were loudly cheered ... – Freeman's Journal and Daily Commercial Advertiser (Dublin, Ireland) [31]The Chartists were active for the next eight months but the poor attendance at a second meeting, held on the moor at the same time as a racing fixture on 25 May 1839, signalled the end of the movement.

[14] In 1829 an amateur insect collector named Robert Cribb collected a series of about fifty small yellow and brown moths from a rotting alder on the moor.

These turned out to be a previously unknown species of moth, but they were mistakenly attributed to a friend of Cribb's, the collector R. Wood, who had asked an expert to identify them.

The only specimen I have seen of this beautiful Moth, which is larger than the others, is a female; it was taken on Kersall-moor the middle of last June by Mr. R. Wood, of Manchester, to whom I have the pleasure of dedicating it;—a most zealous and successful naturalist, to whose liberality I am indebted for many valuable insects.

Towards the end of the 19th century, a Mr. Cosmo Melvill contributed an article to the Journal of Botany in which he gave a list of more than 240 plants and flowers, not including mosses, that he had found on the moor.

[14] Shortly after 6:00 pm on 10 September 1848, the "celebrated aeronaut" George Gale ascended in a hot air balloon from Pomona Gardens in Hulme.

He had seen him at Knott Mill Fair and Dirt Fair (so called from its being held in muddy November), or at Kersal Moor Races, with more money to spend in pop, nuts, and gingerbread, shows and merry-go-rounds, flying boats and flying boxes, fighting cocks and fighting men, than he could possibly have saved out of the sum his father allowed him for pocket-money, even if he had been of the saving kind; and, coupling all these things together, Jabez was far from satisfied.

Lines to Mr. Isaac Holden by Philip Connell on his Drawing of the Prestwich Lunatic Asylum: And Southward at due distance the huge hive, Of busy Manchester is all alive, Its towering chimnies, domes and steeples rise, In strange confusion thro' the hazy skies; There Broughton glimmers in the evening sun; Here Cheetham Hill o'ertops the vapours dun; There Kersal Moor the same bleak front doth shew, That met the view Eight hundred years ago, Where Clunian Monks there with their God did dwell, Within the precincts of its holy cell.

Oft have I roved you craggy steeps, Where the tinkling moorland rills, Sing all day long their low sweet song, To the lonely listening hills; And croon at night In the pale moonlight

[43] ...Oh lay me down in moorland ground, And make it my last bed, With the heathery wilderness around, And the bonny lark o'erhead: Let fern and ling around me cling, And green moss o'er me creep; And the sweet wild mountain breezes sing,