It was the seat of the large Hundred of Salford in the historic county of Lancashire and was granted a market charter in about 1230, which gave it primary cultural and commercial importance in the region.

The name of Salford derives from Old English: Sealhford, meaning a ford by the willows, (also known as sallows), in reference to the trees growing on the banks of the River Irwell.

[14] The earliest known evidence of human activity in what is now Salford is provided by the Neolithic flint arrow-heads and workings discovered on Kersal Moor and the River Irwell, suggesting that the area was inhabited 7–10,000 years ago.

Other finds include a neolithic axe-hammer found near Mode Wheel, during the excavation of the Manchester Ship Canal in 1890, and a Bronze Age cremation urn during the construction of a road on the Broughton Hall estate in 1873.

He entered the town at the head of his army and was blessed by the Reverend John Clayton before leaving "in high spirits" to march on London; he returned to Salford in defeat just nine days later.

These relied on strong falls of water, but Salford is on a meander of the Irwell with only a slight gradient and thus mills tended to be built upstream, at Kersal and Pendleton.

[30] Salford Docks, a major dockland on the Ship Canal 35 miles (56 km) east of the Irish Sea, brought employment to over 3,000 labourers.

As its cotton spinning industries faltered its economy turned increasingly to other textiles and to the finishing trades, including rexine and silk dyeing, and fulling and bleaching, at a string of works in Salford.

In The Condition of the Working Class in England in 1844, Engels described Salford as "really one large working-class quarter ... [a] very unhealthy, dirty and dilapidated district which, while other industries were almost always textile related is situated opposite the 'Old Church' of Manchester".

It is the type of chain most commonly used for transmission of mechanical power on bicycles, motorbikes, to industrial and agricultural machinery to uses as varied as rollercoasters and escalators.

[43] Rising unemployment during the Great Depression of the 1920s and 1930s,[44] and a significant economic decline in the decades following the Second World War contributed toward a fall in Salford's population.

[49] Large areas of the city were redeveloped in the 1960s and 1970s, with Victorian era terraced housing estates that inspired painter L. S. Lowry and soap opera Coronation Street giving way to concrete tower blocks and austere architecture.

[52] In early 2005, the Government of Latvia appealed to the European Union to advise people against travelling to Salford after a Latvian man was stabbed in the head in Lower Broughton.

[53] In August 2005, a survey by Channel 4 television rated the city as the 9th worst place to live in the United Kingdom, based on criteria of crime, education, environment, lifestyle and employment.

[58] Work is ongoing to regenerate the area known as Middlewood Locks, with the restored Salford terminus of the Manchester Bolton & Bury Canal forming the centrepiece of a brand new residential development.

[60] Rows of terraces in neighbourhoods such as Seedley and Langworthy – once used for the title sequence of Coronation Street – are being compulsorily purchased, demolished and replaced by "modern sustainable accommodation".

[66] Following a campaign supported by William Joynson-Hicks, Home Secretary and Member of Parliament (MP) for a neighbouring constituency of Manchester, city status was granted to the county borough by letters patent dated 21 April 1926.

[68] This was in spite of the opposition of civil servants in the Home Office who dismissed the borough as "merely a scratch collection of 240,000 people cut off from Manchester by the river".

At 53°28′59″N 2°17′35″W / 53.48306°N 2.29306°W / 53.48306; -2.29306 (53.483°, −2.2931°), and 205 miles (330 km) northwest of central London, Salford stands about 177 feet (54 m) above sea level,[79] on relatively flat ground to the west of a meander of the River Irwell – the city's main topographical feature.

The territory of Salford is contiguous with other towns on all sides, and as defined by the Office for National Statistics forms the sixth-largest settlement in the Greater Manchester Urban Area,[87][88] the United Kingdom's second-largest conurbation.

According to the 2001 UK census, the industry of employment of Salford's residents aged 16–74 was 18.0% retail and wholesale, 14.4% property and business services, 12.3% manufacturing, 11.7% health and social work, 8.6% education, 7.3% transport and communications, 6.8% hotels and restaurants, 5.8% construction, 4.4% finance, 4.2% public administration, 0.6% energy and water supply, 0.3% agriculture, 0.1% mining, and 5.7% other.

[110] Salford (Old) Town Hall, situated in Bexley Square off Chapel Street, is a Neo-classical brick building dressed in stone, designed by Richard Lane.

It is a listed building and gained international fame in 1986 when the pop band The Smiths posed in front of it for the inside cover of their album The Queen Is Dead.

Packhorses were superseded by wagons, and merchants would no longer accompany their caravans to markets and fairs, instead sending agents with samples, and dispatching the goods at a later date.

Despite the rapid progress made during the Industrial Revolution, by 1851 education in Salford was judged "inadequate to the wants of the population", and for those children who did get schooling "order and cleanliness were little regarded ... [they] were for the most part crowded in close and dirty rooms".

[158] Salford has a notable history in sports, which includes hosting some of the events in the 2002 Commonwealth Games: rugby league, speedway, and horse racing.

[160] The Premiership side Sale Sharks play their home games at the AJ Bell Stadium since the start of the 2012–13 season[161] Salford Quays has been used as a major international triathlon site, but a 2009 aquathlon was cancelled because of a lack of competitors.

[173] One of the most famous photographs of band The Smiths shows them standing outside the Salford Lads Club, and was featured in the artwork for their album The Queen Is Dead.

[194] Another notable resident of Salford is Eddie Colman, the youngest of the Manchester United players to die in the Munich air disaster of 6 February 1958, when only 21.

Other sporting Salfordians include Olympic Javelin Thrower Shelley Holroyd, English former snooker player Mick Price, who was born in the area, and Great Britain and England rugby league international and former Warrington Wolves front-rower Adrian Morley (later with the Salford Red Devils.