Category: Manchester

Manchester Venues 166 to 167

Directly outside the Manchester Oxford Road station in an old coffee shop and cycle hub they have now opened the Oxford Road Tap which completes the trilogy of tap bars at Manchester stations alongside the already existing Victoria and Piccadilly Tap. I have had one visit thus far to this small tidy craft beer spot where it has a large repurposed National Rail sign and also a live timetable, so you know exactly how much time you have to drain your pint!

Oxford Road Tap. Image Credit uk.news.yahoo.com

Opposite the train station access road and the Palace Theatre you will find the Grade II listed Principal Manchester building, though it is more widely known as the Refuge Assurance building. The Refuge company was founded in 1858 and moved to its Oxford Road location in 1890.

After purchasing the site, they worked with the renowned Victorian architect Alfred Waterhouse in designing their new head office, whose previous work included London’s Natural History Museum. The grand ornate high ceiling interior was built in 1895. There were further extensions in 1905 and 1912, the latter incorporating the impressive 220ft baroque clock tower which formed the new main entrance, with clock quarters stylised with a Manchester bee, which is now synonymous with many other contemporary artefacts in the city. The latest incarnation accommodated up to 1900 clerks.

During the Second World War they constructed two air raid shelters in the basement but thankfully avoided any direct hits. The Refuge company relocated to Wilmslow in 1987, the building then becoming Charterhouse Hotel and in 1996 it was renamed as the Palace Hotel. It changed hands again in 2016 with the Manchester Refuge Bar taking over one half of the building.

Refuge Bar. Image Credit we-heart.com

There are many separate spaces in this vast space, and these include the public bar that you encounter immediately upon entry. Behind there is the Dining Room where we have visited once for a very decent Sunday lunch, it is exceedingly popular, and we had to book a couple of months in advance. Next to there is the Winter Garden area and there is additionally the Den and a Private Dining Room which can both be booked with capacities of 80 and 10 respectively.  

I had walked past this building for many years on the way to the station, but it was around 2018, a couple of years after opening, before I finally made a visit to the bar. It is also handy as an alternate though tad expensive venue to contrast the nearby fine grungy pubs and has been utilised prior to late trains and for post Ritz and Gorilla gig drinks.

They have regular DJ’s on there but in April 2024, the day we sampled our Sunday fodder, I was delighted to find that my ‘bonus gig’ banner was flashing as there was a jazz band playing in the main bar.

The aforementioned attached Manchester Principal Hotel (now renamed post-covid as the Kimpton Clocktower Hotel) was subject to an extensive £25m refurbishment in 2016 which resulted in the creation of the largest hotel ballroom in the whole of the Northwest of England. The hotel is alleged to be haunted by a grieving war widow who committed suicide by throwing herself down the staircase from the top floor and this area was only accessible to the menfolk at that time! Room 261 is also to be avoided with reports of the sounds of children playing in the hours of darkness.  

The annual Manchester Literature festival has been in place since 2006 and was built on the legacy of its forerunner the Manchester Poetry festival. It is a two-week multi venue event that occurs every October and also provides a year-round Creative Learning programme which supports the next generation of readers and writers.

Principal Hotel. Image Credit Country and Town House Magazine

One of the selected venues for the 2018 event was the Principal Hotel. Marcus had a spare ticket for an audience with the Wedding Present lead singer Dave Gedge and this took place in one of the numerous function rooms on a Sunday afternoon.

As we exited the lift I ran into Jo Davies (nee Brewer) who was one of the large crew that I used to attend the Raiders/Warehouse indie nightclub with in the early 1990’s. I was a regular there between 1985 and my last attendance on John Dewhurst’s stag do in 2005. I know the next generation of sons and daughters now attend, though I did hear last week from one of those old timers on a recent attendance that one of the DJ’s was playing Taylor Swift, by heck that would never have happened in my day!

Dave was there to talk about a book he had recently penned with the interviewer Richard Houghton called ‘All The Songs Sound The Same’. The theme of the tome was to present 300 Wedding Present stories from fans, friends and band members including one from our current PM Sir Keir Starmer. He then followed the chat by playing acoustic versions of four of the band’s finest tunes.     

Manchester Venues 163 to 165 – Jazz Festival

The HOME complex in the centre of Manchester is in effect three venues rolled into one and has five cinemas, two theatres and a decent 500 square metres of gallery space contained within. They encompass all stages of the delivery as they cover the commissioning, production and presentation of those aforementioned artistic pursuits. The modern building is situated on Tony Wilson Square and is a stone’s throw from the old Hacienda nightclub site and was opened in May 2015 at a cost of £25 million.

Home Complex. Image Credit hotels.com

It was a joint venture between the Cornerhouse cinema and arts centre next to Oxford Road station and the Library Theatre company and both organisations then relocated into their new home. The Cornerhouse was famous for hosting the UK premiere of Quentin Tarantino’s Reservoir Dogs and was the first public gallery to display artefacts from Damian Hirst. I have sampled a couple of cold ones in the bar that used to be located there prior to its closure.

HOME has inherited several patrons including film maker Danny Boyle, actresses Meera Syal and Suranne Jones and musician Phil Collins. It is a busy old spot as they host 10,000 events annually and it has been included in the TimeOut’s list of the Top 10 cinemas in the UK. They are commendably forward thinking environmentally as they stand as carbon literacy champions.

I have never yet actually visited one of their arts events, but I have devoured a pizza in their café if that counts! I have also basked there in the summer on their outdoor tables and recall watching Coco Gauff’s first dramatic appearance at Wimbledon on one of the big screens.

In this quarter which is classed as being located in the Oxford Road Corridor you would also find the large Gas Works Brewbar, built on the old Gaythorn Gas Works which contains an in-house brewery, shuffle boards and a large seating area outside. Simon Wood’s restaurant used to be located here prior to its recent closure but there still remains Hakkapo and the Indian Tiffin Room.

Manchester Jazz Festival. Image Credit manchesterjazz.com

The longest running festival in the city is the Manchester Jazz Festival which was first staged in the summer of 1996. The first event took place in St Ann’s Square and was jointly organised by Manchester City Council, Musicians Union, Northwest Arts Board and a local brewery. It was a very small scale venture with only nine bands and a DJ on the roster. The first year coincided with the IRA bombing, but commendably the inaugural event was rearranged and staged a few months later.    

The annual event is run as a not for profit charity venture and has grown considerably over those intervening years, with an international exchange organised to mark the 2002 Commonwealth Games in Manchester. In 2005 further exposure was gained when BBC Radio 3 chose to undertake a live broadcast on the launch night. The most recent edition featured over 60 free and ticketed events incorporating multiple venues and they will celebrate their 30 year anniversary in 2025.

Now I have to be upfront and confess that Jazz is my least favourite musical genre, however when I noted I was in that very area on the sunny opening night and there were free gigs on prior to the event I was attending, the ‘gig addict’ in me knew I had to take advantage of these free hits!

Thus, on the night on the seventeenth day of May 2024, CCTV would have picked up Marcus, Uncle George and I mulching down to the Manchester First Street Main Stage. In a very busy area, a band called Mangorata were performing. The 6-piece jazz fusion band derive from Leeds, where they met initially as students at Leeds Conservatoire and a year earlier, they had released their self-titled album.   

Heading further away from Whitworth Street West you then arrived at Manchester First Street (Ask Garden Stage) located on James Grigor Square. Mr Grigor was a renowned 19th century botanist from East Anglia.

James Grigor Square. Image Credit alamy.com

The band on stage were the Gaz Hughes Trio, with Gaz being the original drummer for the Matthew Halsall Band and one of their early albums was nominated for a MOBO and they won Best Jazz Album at the Giles Peterson worldwide awards. On a personal level he won the people’s vote for Jazz Drummer of the Year in 2019.  The trio is completed with Andrzej Baranek on piano and Gavin Barras on double bass.  

The final venue of the day was inside the bar area at Manchester Home Stage where we witnessed Secret Night Gang, a local jazz, funk and soul act who had recently released their second album ‘Belongs on a Place Called Earth’.