Did your ancestors go to the ball?

Manchester's The Lowry Hotel is appealing for help in hunting down the attendees of the original Manchester Ball held in 1828.

The hotel is offering complimentary tickets for its Maggie’s Charity Costume Ball for decendents of the influential Mancunians who attended the original event almost 200 years ago.

The ball on the 30th March 2019 takes inspiration from one of the region’s most glamourous happenings in 1828, when generous philanthropists from the North West attended the extravagant Manchester Ball to raise money for local charities.

It's pictured in a famous portrait.

Landowners, MPs, industrial magnates and business owners were invited to the Theatre Royal event, for which tickets cost one guinea. Prominent citizens included the Lord Mayor, Home Secretary Robert Peel, the De Trafford family and J Lees.

The Lowry Hotel will be gifting two pairs of tickets, picked at random, to those people forthcoming with information on guests in the famous image.