In the heart of Manchester sits an imposing building with a fascinating and stunning interior, yet even those born and bred in the city are unlikely to have passed through its mighty wooden doors.
As The Freemason’s Hall, this was a place built to keep secrets, but after almost 90 years those sturdy doors are being flung wide. The building in Bridge Street, at the gateway to Spinningfields, has been largely untouched since its completion in 1929.
Its Grade II-listed art deco frontage is impressive yet strangely unassuming, almost stark and grey, befitting its once clandestine purpose. By contrast, the interior is simply breathtaking, opening onto a grand full height main hallway dominated by immense marble Ionic pillars, with a sweeping stone staircase and overlooked by a series of Spanish balconies rising to a spectacular vaulted ceiling.
It is a building designed to be largely unnoticed to the casual passer-by, but to astonish and captivate those granted privileged access across its threshold. Perhaps only Dr Who’s Tardis could do it better!
Now, for the first time since 1929, this hidden gem is set for a transformation as it becomes Manchester’s premier events venue. While its architectural features will be preserved, its rooms will be given a new life, securing the historic building’s future.
A series of stylish restaurants and bars, including a spectacular roof terrace bar, will fill the renamed Manchester Hall, together with state-of-the-art conference facilities and suites for weddings, private functions and corporate events.
The front of the building is already shrouded in scaffolding, but work on that splendid neo-classical interior will not begin in earnest until the New Year. Which means there is one last chance to experience its historic grandeur and even explore its mysterious inner sanctum.
Bookings are still being taken up to Christmas for parties, weddings and other events both large and small. Among the rooms available is the former Derby Lodge Room, where the region’s most senior Freemasons have met for generations to hold their ceremonial meetings shut away from the prying eyes of anyone not part of the ancient brotherhood and schooled in ‘the craft’.
