The Kimpton Clocktower Hotel is a historic commercial building, now a hotel, at the corner of

Oxford Street Oxford Street is a major road in the City of Westminster in the West End of London, running from Tottenham Court Road to Marble Arch via Oxford Circus. It is Europe's busiest shopping street, with around half a million daily visitors, and ...

and

Whitworth Street Whitworth Street is a street in Manchester, England. It runs between London Road ( A6) and Oxford Street ( A34). West of Oxford Street it becomes Whitworth Street West, which then goes as far as Deansgate ( A56). It was opened in 1899 and is ...

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. The building was originally constructed in segments from 1891 to 1932 as the Refuge Assurance Building.

History

Refuge Assurance Company

The first phase of this Grade II* listed red brick and terracotta building was designed for the

Refuge Assurance Company The Refuge Assurance Company Ltd. was a life insurance and pensions company based in England. It was founded by James Proctor and George Robins in Dukinfield, Cheshire in 1858. The company was originally known by the unwieldy name of the Refug ...

by Alfred Waterhouse and built 1891–1895. The inside was of Burmantofts faience and glazed brick. The ground floor was one enormous open business hall. It was extended, with a striking tower, along Oxford Street by his son

Paul Waterhouse Paul Waterhouse (29 October 1861 – 19 December 1924) was a British architect. Early life Paul Waterhouse was born on 29 October 1861 in Manchester, England. He was the son and business partner of Alfred Waterhouse, an architect who designed ...

in 1910–1912. It was further extended along Whitworth Street by Stanley Birkett in 1932. What is now the ballroom was previously the dining hall for employees, with males and females being required to sit separately. Around 2,000 staff were employed. Women had to reapply for jobs if they married, and some areas of the building were for men only. The ballroom in the basement was used as a dance hall for workers in their lunch hour. After occupying the building as offices for nearly a century, the Refuge Assurance Company moved to the grounds of

Fulshaw Hall Fulshaw Hall is a country house, south of the civil parish of Wilmslow, in Cheshire, England. It is recorded in the National Heritage List for England as a designated Grade II listed building. Samuel Finney III, the miniature-painter t ...

, Cheshire on Friday 6 November 1987. The Refuge Assurance company had discussed converting the building into a new home for the Hallé Orchestra with one of Manchester's cultural patrons Sir Bob Scott for over a year. The £3 million funding required for the project did not materialise and the Halle subsequently moved from the

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 ...

to the new Bridgewater Hall upon opening in 1996. Local architecture critic John Parkinson-Bailey noted that "one of the most prestigious and expensive buildings in Manchester lay forlorn and empty except for a caretaker and the ghost on its staircase".

Conversion to hotel

The massive structure was converted to a hotel by Richard Newman in 1996 at a cost of £7 million, and was named the Palace Hotel, owned and operated by the

Principal Hotel Company Principal Hotel Company is a British hotel and conference venue operator headquartered in Harrogate, England. History Principal Hotel Company advertises that it was established in 1898, as that is the year the oldest hotel in its chain, Kimpton F ...

. Principal Hotels was sold to Nomura International Plc in 2001, and they rebranded the hotel as Le Méridien Palace Manchester. When Le Méridien Hotels faced financial difficulties, the hotel was bought back by a reconstituted Principal Hotels in 2004 and again renamed the Palace Hotel. When Principal Hotels decided to brand all their hotels with their corporate name, the hotel was renamed The Principal Manchester, in November 2016. The current glass dome in the reception area was taken from a Scottish railway station during the conversion to a hotel. In May 2018, the hotel was sold to the

InterContinental Hotels Group InterContinental Hotels Group (IHG), marketed as IHG Hotels & Resorts, is a British multinational hospitality company headquartered in Denham, Buckinghamshire, England. It is listed on the London Stock Exchange and is a constituent of the F ...

. It was announced in February 2020 that the hotel would be renamed the Kimpton Clocktower Hotel in March; as part of InterContinental Hotels Group's Kimpton Hotels brand. However, the hotel was forced to close before the renaming, due to 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 identi ...

. It reopened under the Kimpton name on October 1, 2020. The hotel is purported to be haunted. One of the staircases is said to be haunted by a grieving war widow who committed suicide by throwing herself down it, throwing herself from the top floor. The staircase in question was only accessible to men at the time. Room 261 is allegedly haunted, with reports of the sound of children playing at night.

References

Citations

Bibliography

External links

Official website
{{coord, 53.4744, N, 2.2403, W, type:landmark_region:GB, display=title Hotels in Manchester Grade II* listed buildings in Manchester Alfred Waterhouse buildings Hotels established in 1996 Hotel buildings completed in 1895