The three large-scale performances of oratorios which celebrated the openings of organs in St. Peter's Church, Liverpool on 30 April, 1 and 2 May 1766, in St. Thomas's, Liverpool on 7–10 August, 1770, and in St. John's, Manchester on 29–31 August 1770, were succeeded by a long-continued though at times irregular series of festivals at Liverpool and a somewhat shorter series at Manchester. These series, which established both places as the leading festival centres in northern England, appear closely related to Manchester's and Liverpool's late eighteenth-century industrial and commercial expansion. Indeed, they may well be placed among the cultural first-fruits of the Industrial Revolution and they almost certainly represent attempts to satisfy a growing desire for cultural standing and prestige among the rising generation of northern manufacturers. The re-establishment of the Liverpool festival on a triennial basis after 1823 (following a musically lean period during the French wars) and the two music-meetings held in Manchester in 1828 and 1836 formed part of a new wave of enthusiasm for festivals that swept over England in the peaceful and prosperous 1820s.