Last week saw the announcement that four floors of the Royal Buildings on the corner of Market Street and Piccadilly Gardens are to be converted into a new hotel,Zedwell which will be its first site outside of London
The location though has a history of being a hotel, its name the Royal Buildings being a clue for Manchester’s Royal Hotel stood on the site until it was demolished in 1908
Its demolishen marked the end of nearly 100 years of Manchester History, a story that began in 1827 when Henry Charles Lacy took over the site which previously had been a substantially built residence with an outhouse and gardens,occupied by a family known as the Potters
An advert for the property at the time describes the house with its connecting coach house,stables and offices surrounded by a spacious garden
Lacy, who already owned the Bridgewater Arms on HIgh Street saw an opportunity and began work converting the house into a coaching inn, the garden, he covered with stables and coachouses and at the corner of Back Mosley Street he built an office where bookings were taken.
The four principle coaches to London, York,Birmingham and Liverpool left from here alog with the Mail coach.
They were for the time distinctive,painted red and black,the coachman and guards attired in red coats, top boots and hats.
One guard sat at the back of the carriage, he carried pistols and blew a horn to announce the passing of the coach through roadside villages and the imminent approach of the coach at the change houses.
Of course the Railways would imminently succeed Lacy’s Enterprise but the Hotel would continue being one of Manchester’s landmarks through the nineteenth century but it would be demolished to make way for the expansion of the Lewis’s store, now the site of Primark.
The new building would house shops on the ground with offices and storage on the upper floors and by order of Manchester’s Corporation was built with a rounded edge between Mosely Street and Market Street
