The Palace Hotel, Machester....

This is the clock tower of the Palace Hotel in Manchester. It's a stunner of a late Victorian building. It used to be the HQ of the Refuge Assurance Society until it decamped to leafy Cheshire to the south of the city. It was converted into a hotel. It occupies a huge site on the corner of Whitworth Street and Oxford Street. Manchester is blessed with some wonderful Victorian architecture and I'm always surprised that this building isn't better known outside the city. It's all smooth, hard red brick and terracotta tiles, both designed to resist the pollution of industrial Manchester when we were a centre for heavy, dirty industries. Here you see the clock tower that soars over the Oxford Street facade. One of the symbols of Manchester is the bee (we are a hive of activity) and the largest ones in the city are on the clock face....