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If you’ve ever alighted at St Peter’s Square and taken a march down Oxford Road in Manchester city centre, you will know the Kimpton Clocktower Hotel.
You may well have thought it was called the Palace Hotel, Le Méridien Palace Manchester, Palace Hotel (again), or The Principal Manchester – four name changes the former Refuge Assurance Company headquarters has had since being converted to a hotel in 1996 – but you will have definitely noticed it.
Built-in the early 1890s, this Grade II-listed red brick and terracotta structure is eye-catching enough even before you spot the magnificent 217-foot tower – a genuine Manchester landmark. It was all the vision of renowned Victorian architect Alfred Waterhouse, whose CV also includes Manchester Town Hall and the Natural History Museum. Sidenote: Alfred’s brother Edwin was a co-founder of the accountancy firm now known as PriceWaterhouseCoopers.
But whether you know the Kimpton Clocktower or not, you definitely should. To my mind, it’s Manchester’s finest period hotel (yes, better than the Midland).
Everything about it feels gigantically grand. All around is sumptuous ceramic tile work, stained glass, and carved wooden staircases. Step inside the enormous domed reception area and you’re met by a galloping three-metre bronze horse (sculpted by Sophie Dickens, granddaughter of Charles). Head downstairs and you’ll discover a vast basement ballroom, once the dining and dance hall for the 2,000 Refuge Assurance employees.
We were fortunate to be given a junior suite in a room so cavernous that the two king-sized double beds within it appeared to be somewhere in the distance. It’s not all about scale though: the velvet furnishings and bespoke textiles (designed by Scottish company Timorous Beasties) were delightful, as were our Master Vetivert toiletries (although you have to make do with Elemis in standard rooms) and old-fashioned red telephone, while this was definitely the first hotel room I’d ever stayed in to have a turntable (with a genre-jumping selection of LPs from Oasis, Japan, Dusty Springfield, and the Backstreet Boys).
It’s something of a maze to walk around, but that only emphasises the uniqueness of the place – of all 270 rooms and suites, no two are the same.
But don’t let the gorgeously designed rooms keep you confined to barracks – head downstairs and you have the choice of a number of even grander spaces, such as the Refuge bar with 40-foot granite bar, a 139-cover dining room, and our favourite, the Winter Garden, housed inside a glass atrium with abundant foliage and the perfect location for an evening cocktail or, in our case, breakfast.
We ate in The Refuge by Volta dining room, which serves a selection of well-executed small plates, called voltini. We opted for the Gochujang fried chicken wings, lamb shawarma, salt cod croquettes, coley tikka, and an ox cheek that must have been slow-cooked for about two and a half millennia. A sticky toffee pudding with orange miso caramel, salted caramel ice cream, and pecans ended the event in appropriately divine fashion.
The Kimpton Clocktower was recently named one of the UK’s top hotels in the Condé Nast Traveler’s Readers’ Choice Awards 2021. It’s not to understand why. This is a hotel that provides a real dose of escapism and grandeur. How lucky we should feel to have it on our doorstep.
Kimpton Clocktower Hotel, Oxford St, Manchester M60 7HA. More info:
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