27 Mar 2012, 10:08

The Victorian Chop House Company, restaurant operator behind
Sam’s and Mr Thomas’s Chop Houses in Manchester, is in
advanced negotiations to acquire the Memorial Hall on Albert Square
for redevelopment into a restaurant and small hotel.

Project Prince involves conversion of the Grade 2*-listed
building on the corner of Lloyd Street and Southmill Street into a
ground and lower ground restaurant, first floor function rooms in
the memorial hall, with eight bedrooms in total across the second
and third floors.

A planning application has been submitted by architects the Hurd
Rollland Partnership on behalf of the Victorian Chop House Company.
The planning application also seeks change of use consent for the
second and third floors from offices to hotel. The building is
owned by a private consortium and is currently empty.

The design statement in Hurd Rolland’s planning application
said the hotel will “bring new life to the heart of the
city’s main square.”

The application continued: “[The Victorian Chop House
Company] is a locally-owned and independent business which has had
much success in competing with the national chains. It will create
a venue not to be found in any other city. And it will restore the
Memorial Hall meeting place to the city in a guise appropriate to
the 21st century.”

The refurbishment will include creation of a photographic
exhibition in tribute to the building’s Victorian architect,
Thomas Worthington, who designed the façade in the Venetian
Gothic style. The building was erected in 1864-6 to commemorate the
2,000 nonconformist clergy who seceded from the Church of England
in 1662 as a result of the Act of Uniformity and has housed the
Manchester Unitarian Sunday School Union and Home Missionary Board,
the Charles Halle Choir, and several societies such as the
Statistical, the Photographic, Elocutionist.

The plans have been drawn up with the full support of English
Heritage. The building sits within the Albert Square conservation
area. The project team includes the Hurd Rolland Partnership
Chartered Architects; Stephen Levrant Heritage Architects;
Thomasons structural engineers; Warrington Martin quantity
surveyors; Bill Logan Associates mechanical and electrical; and
Sandy Brown Associates acoustic consultants.

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