Uttley House (formerly named The Firs), is a

Grade II listed In the United Kingdom, a listed building or listed structure is one that has been placed on one of the four statutory lists maintained by Historic England in England, Historic Environment Scotland in Scotland, in Wales, and the Northern Irel ...

building and

Halls of residence A dormitory (originated from the Latin word ''dormitorium'', often abbreviated to dorm) is a building primarily providing sleeping and residential quarters for large numbers of people such as boarding school, high school, college or university s ...

Fallowfield Fallowfield is a suburb of Manchester, England, with a population at the 2011 census of 15,211. Historically in Lancashire, it lies south of Manchester city centre and is bisected east–west by Wilmslow Road and north–south by Wil ...

Manchester Manchester () is a city in Greater Manchester, England. It had a population of 552,000 in 2021. It is bordered by the Cheshire Plain to the south, the Pennines to the north and east, and the neighbouring city of Salford to the west. The t ...

England England is a country that is part of the United Kingdom. It shares land borders with Wales to its west and Scotland to its north. The Irish Sea lies northwest and the Celtic Sea to the southwest. It is separated from continental Europe b ...

. It was designed and built in 1850 by

Edward Walters Edward Walters (December 1808, in Fenchurch Buildings, London – 22 January 1872, in 11 Oriental Place, Brighton) was an English architect. Life Walters was the son of an architect who died young. He began his career in the office of Isaac Cla ...

, who was also responsible for Manchester’s

Free Trade Hall The Free Trade Hall on Peter Street, Manchester, England, was constructed in 1853–56 on St Peter's Fields, the site of the Peterloo Massacre. It is now a Radisson hotel. The hall was built to commemorate the repeal of the Corn Laws in 1846. T ...

. Originally a home for

Sir Joseph Whitworth Sir Joseph Whitworth, 1st Baronet (21 December 1803 – 22 January 1887) was an English engineer, entrepreneur, inventor and philanthropist. In 1841, he devised the British Standard Whitworth system, which created an accepted standard for screw ...

, The house is surrounded by five and a half acres of gardens to the south and an environmental research institute to the north. The house has seen many past uses, including a private home, hotel, vaccination clinic and conference centre.

History

The Firs

Whitworth used The Firs mainly as a social, political and business base, entertaining radicals of the age such as

John Bright John Bright (16 November 1811 – 27 March 1889) was a British Radical and Liberal statesman, one of the greatest orators of his generation and a promoter of free trade policies. A Quaker, Bright is most famous for battling the Corn Laws ...

Richard Cobden Richard Cobden (3 June 1804 – 2 April 1865) was an English Radical and Liberal politician, manufacturer, and a campaigner for free trade and peace. He was associated with the Anti-Corn Law League and the Cobden–Chevalier Treaty. As a young ...

, William Forster and

T. H. Huxley Thomas Henry Huxley (4 May 1825 – 29 June 1895) was an English biologist and anthropologist specialising in comparative anatomy. He has become known as "Darwin's Bulldog" for his advocacy of Charles Darwin's theory of evolution. The stor ...

at the time of the

Reform Bill In the United Kingdom, Reform Act is most commonly used for legislation passed in the 19th century and early 20th century to enfranchise new groups of voters and to redistribute seats in the House of Commons of the Parliament of the United Kingdom. ...

of 1867. Whitworth, credited with raising the art of machine-tool building to a previously unknown level, supported the new Mechanics Institute in

–the birthplace of

UMIST The University of Manchester Institute of Science and Technology (UMIST) was a university based in the centre of the city of Manchester in England. It specialised in technical and scientific subjects and was a major centre for research. On 1 Oct ...

– and helped to found the Manchester School of Design. To the rear, Whitworth had a shooting range — now the site of the University's horticultural glasshouses — on which he tested his famous, but commercially unsuccessful Whitworth Rifle which featured a revolutionary hexagonally rifled barrel. The house was surrounded by a estate that now makes up the current

Fallowfield Campus The Fallowfield Campus is the main residential campus of the University of Manchester. It is located in Fallowfield, Manchester, 2 miles (3 km) south of the main university site, to which it is connected by Wilmslow Road and the A34 road (En ...

. In 1882, having built a new house in

Darley Dale Darley Dale, also known simply as Darley, is a town and civil parish in the Derbyshire Dales district of Derbyshire, England, with a population of 5,413. It lies north of Matlock, on the River Derwent and the A6 road. The town forms part o ...

, Whitworth leased The Firs to his friend C.P. Scott, editor of the

Manchester Guardian ''The Guardian'' is a British daily newspaper. It was founded in 1821 as ''The Manchester Guardian'', and changed its name in 1959. Along with its sister papers ''The Observer'' and ''The Guardian Weekly'', ''The Guardian'' is part of the Gu ...

.History (Faculty of Life Sciences - The University of Manchester)
After Scott's death the house became the property of the

University of Manchester , mottoeng = Knowledge, Wisdom, Humanity , established = 2004 – University of Manchester Predecessor institutions: 1956 – UMIST (as university college; university 1994) 1904 – Victoria University of Manchester 1880 – Victoria Univer ...

, and was the Vice-Chancellor's residence until 1991.

Hotel

The house was converted into a hotel and re-opened as the Chancellors Hotel & Conference Centre in 1997. A large extension to the Grade II building was completed for the hotel, giving it a capacity of 72 rooms. The hotel was operated by the

university A university () is an institution of higher (or tertiary) education and research which awards academic degrees in several academic disciplines. Universities typically offer both undergraduate and postgraduate programs. In the United States, t ...

's events venue arm as a conference centre and featured a restaurant, bar and conference facilities. Operations ceased in 2019, as the university prepared to repurpose the site as part of the university's redevelopment of the existing buildings on the campus. During the

COVID-19 pandemic The COVID-19 pandemic, also known as the coronavirus pandemic, is an ongoing global pandemic of coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) caused by severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2). The novel virus was first identif ...

, the former hotel site was used as a

vaccination Vaccination is the administration of a vaccine to help the immune system develop immunity from a disease. Vaccines contain a microorganism or virus in a weakened, live or killed state, or proteins or toxins from the organism. In stimulating ...

centre.

Halls of Residence

In 2021, as part of a redevelopment of the

, the hotel was converted into student halls and renamed Uttley House, after writer Alison Uttley. The halls of residence

Junior Common Room A common room is a group into which students and the academic body are organised in some universities in the United Kingdom and Ireland—particularly collegiate universities such as Oxford and Cambridge, as well as the University of Bristol ...

is shared with Richmond Park, another halls of residence to the north.

Firs Environmental Research Station

Included in the site formerly part of The Firs is the Firs Environmental Research Station, a research institute of the Department of Earth and Environmental Sciences. During World War 1, various drugs were grown and developed at the station, including

Atropa belladonna ''Atropa belladonna'', commonly known as belladonna or deadly nightshade, is a toxic perennial herbaceous plant in the nightshade family Solanaceae, which also includes tomatoes, potatoes, and eggplant (aubergine). It is native to Europe, North ...

and

Hyoscyamus niger ''Hyoscyamus niger'', commonly known as henbane, black henbane, or stinking nightshade, is a poisonous plant in the nightshade family Solanaceae. It is native to temperate Europe and Siberia, and naturalised in Great Britain and Ireland. Histor ...

. The facility houses an air quality monitoring station, greenhouses, climate controlled growing environments and remnants of the old botanical garden. In 2020, as a result of a £2 million endowment, the greenhouses were substantially upgraded.

References

External links

Uttley House website

Firs Environmental Research Station website
* * {{DEFAULTSORT:Uttley House Buildings at the University of Manchester Grade II listed buildings in Manchester Houses in Manchester