Manchester is a small incorporated town in northeastern Carroll County, Maryland, United States, located just south of the Pennsylvania state line and north of Baltimore. The population was 4,808 at the 2010 census.

Manchester was incorporated in 1834 and is the second oldest incorporated area in Carroll County after Westminster, which was incorporated in 1818. The town was originally formed as a part of Baltimore County, before the creation of Carroll County in 1837. It is governed by an elected mayor and an elected five-person town council.

Manchester lies in the humid continental climate region, marked by cold and snowy winters but humid and hot summers. This climate is ideal for growing farmed crops in the summer such as tomatoes, sweet corn and squash, leaving much of the outlying area marked with large tracts of farmland. Manchester is a rural commuting town where residents travel to work in the greater Baltimore Metropolitan Area and the greater Washington Metropolitan Area.

The Town of Manchester, officially incorporated in 1834, was originally known as "Manchester Germantown". However, the name Germantown referred to a community west of Manchester that was later incorporated with the town. The town was originally laid out in Baltimore County and remained a part of that county until the creation of Carroll County on January 19, 1837.

Prior to European colonization, the Susquehannock people occupied the territory now within the borders of Manchester. At the center of town stands an intersection of what were once two important Native American trails. One part of the trail connected the Potomac and Susquehanna rivers, and the other ran from the Conewago River to the Patapsco River (Hanover, Pennsylvania to Baltimore, Maryland). The latter trail was laid out in 1737 as the first public road in what is now Carroll County by Robert Owings.

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