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Grand Old Rooms or Warehouse Cool: Choosing a Manchester Hotel

Manchester, United KingdomDecember 25, 20242 min read
By MASA Editors
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A wide central Manchester street lined with heavy Victorian red-brick and sandstone buildings, the gothic clock tower of Manchester Town Hall closing the view at the end under a bright blue sky.01
A wide central Manchester street lined with heavy Victorian red-brick and sandstone buildings, the gothic clock tower of Manchester Town Hall closing the view at the end under a bright blue sky.Photo: Timiciuc Andrei / Unsplash

A railway hotel where Rolls met Royce, a terracotta insurance palace, a converted stock exchange or a warehouse aparthotel. Manchester makes you pick a century.

Manchester's hotels are mostly other buildings that changed careers. Insurance headquarters, a stock exchange, a Victorian railway hotel, a cotton warehouse: the city's boom left behind so much good architecture that almost nothing has been built from scratch. Choosing where to stay here is really choosing which era you want to sleep inside.

Key facts

  • Compact centre: most of these are within a 15-minute walk of each other and of Piccadilly and Victoria stations.
  • Trams: Metrolink reaches Old Trafford, Salford Quays and the suburbs from the centre.
  • Busy weekends: match days, arena concerts and the Christmas markets in late November and December push rates sharply up. Book early.
  • Value: Salford Quays and the fringes of the centre are consistently cheaper for the same standard.

The grand dames

The Midland opened in 1903 as a railway hotel opposite what is now the Bridgewater Hall, and its lobby is a piece of Edwardian theatre; Charles Rolls and Henry Royce are said to have met there. The Kimpton Clocktower fills a vast terracotta and glazed-brick former insurance headquarters, with a tiled winter garden that still stops people mid-stride. The Edwardian Manchester occupies the site of the Free Trade Hall, one of the most politically significant buildings in the city.

A tall red-brick cotton mill standing over the canal in Manchester's Northern Quarter, a red iron footbridge crossing the water in low sun.
A tall red-brick cotton mill standing over the canal in Manchester's Northern Quarter, a red iron footbridge crossing the water in low sun.Photo: Jonny Gios / Unsplash

King Street: small and theatrical

King Street Townhouse is a converted Italianate bank with a rooftop plunge pool looking straight at the Town Hall, and it is probably the most photographed hotel view in Manchester. A few doors away, Hotel Gotham inhabits a 1930s bank building by Edwin Lutyens and leans hard into art deco noir. Both are small; both book out on weekends.

Spinningfields and Deansgate: the polished end

The Stock Exchange Hotel turned the city's former trading floor into a boutique hotel under a glazed dome, backed by two former Manchester United players. Around it, Spinningfields is where the expensive restaurants and rooftop bars cluster.

Empty red-seated stand and pitch inside Manchester United's Old Trafford stadium
Empty red-seated stand and pitch inside Manchester United's Old Trafford stadiumPhoto: Harry Walsh / Unsplash

Northern Quarter and Ancoats: warehouses and long stays

Native Manchester occupies a restored Victorian warehouse near Piccadilly, with apartment-style rooms that suit families and stays of several nights. Whitworth Locke does something similar in the Oxford Road corridor. This is the right side of town for record shops, small bars and breakfast that is not in a lobby.

Old Trafford and Salford Quays

Hotel Football sits opposite Manchester United's ground and is exactly what the name promises. Further along the water, Salford Quays offers modern chain hotels at lower rates beside the Imperial War Museum North and The Lowry, with a tram into the centre in around twenty minutes.

Tip: If your trip includes a match or an arena concert, check the date before you book anything. Manchester's room rates swing more sharply around fixtures than almost any other British city.

In pictures
Narrowboats moored on a canal beside red-brick Victorian warehouses at golden hourPhoto: Jason Jeandron / Unsplash
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