Reception
Our Sponsors
Date: | Wednesday 23 May | sponsored by |
The conference reception will take place in the Great Hall at the Manchester Town Hall from 6-7.30pm on the evening of Wednesday 23 May 2012. The building of Manchester Town Hall (1868-77) was due to the expanding business of the Corporation and cost £1 million. A competition was held and won by Alfred Waterhouse (1830-1905), mainly for his ingenious planning to accommodate the ceremonial and workaday Council requirements onto the irregular triangle shaped site. The Town Hall was designed in the thirteenth century Gothic style but was, in Waterhouse’s words, a building ‘essentially of the nineteenth century’. It incorporated such innovations as a warm air heating system. The structure comprises fourteen million bricks encased in spinkwell stone. The exterior of the Town Hall bearing some notable scultpures is now a Grade One listed building. Centrally placed is the imposing 280 foot high clock tower, started on New Year’s Day 1879. The inscription on the three clock faces reads ‘Teach us to number our days’. The Great Hall is a glazed skylight on which are inscribed the names of mayors, lord mayors and chairs of the Council since Manchester received its Charter of Corporation in 1838. The superb ceiling is separated into panels bearing the arms of the principal countries and towns with which Manchester traded. The pattern of bees on the mosaic floor outside the Great Hall, gives its name to the landing. The bee is symbolic of Manchester’s industry and is found on the city’s coat of arms. Manchester’s involvement in the cotton trade is commemorated by a border of white strands and stylised cotton flowers on the mosaic floors. The 4,500 yards of marble flooring was laid by Venetian craftsmen. |   |