Former Reform Club Manchester Club

MANCHESTER

SJ8398SW KING STREET 698-1/28/193 (North side) 03/10/74 No.81 former Reform Club

GV II*

Includes: No.50 Manchester Club SPRING GARDENS. Political club, now office and club. 1870-1, by Edward Salomons; altered. Sandstone ashlar with polychrome dressings, hipped slate roofs. Double-pile plan, the rear range projecting to the right, on end-of-block site, with chamfered corners. Venetian Gothic style. Three storeys with basement and attic, 5 bays plus the corners, symmetrical; chamfered plinth, cornices to ground and 1st floors, 3-sided oriels to the corners finished as turrets with slated spirelets, prominent bracketed main cornice and blind-arcaded parapet. The ground floor has an elaborate round-headed doorway in a porch composed of colonnettes and concave under-hang to a projected balustraded 1st-floor balcony, coupled square-headed sashed windows with shafts to the other bays, and at the corners similar colonnettes to elaborately bracketed under-hangs of the oriels (a window to the left corner and a doorway to the right). The tall 1st floor has an arcade of large round-headed arches with banded 2-centred extradoses and hoodmoulds, carried on coupled columns with carved capitals, each arch containing a tall 2-light sashed window with round-headed lights and circular tracery, and a balustraded balcony; and the 2nd floor has small coupled 2-centred arched windows with shafts and an impost band,and a small wrought-iron balcony to the central pair. (Former dormer windows and central spire now removed.) The oriels have very elaborate treatment, including tall slender arcaded windows to 1st floor with carved emblematic panels above, a prominent balcony to 2nd floor with wrought-iron balustrade, and an arcaded cupola with projecting grotesques. Return sides similar in the 1st bay, but differing and simpler to the rear of this, the right-hand side with an arcaded quadrantal 2-storey oriel in the angle of the rear wing. Interior (as reported 03.10.74): hall and staircase with linenfold panelling, 2-storey Grand Dining Room, and huge billiard room within the roof.

Listing NGR: SJ8402798281