> ## Content Index > Fetch the complete content index at: https://www.voyagevoyage.no/llms.txt > Use this file to discover other available public pages before exploring further. # Kimpton Clocktower Hotel - URL: https://www.voyagevoyage.no/en/kimpton-clocktower-hotel-2/ - Published: 2026-08-11T08:08:51.000Z - Updated: 2026-11-02T11:51:20.000Z - Author: Christian Braathen - Tags: England, #en, #src-6a7ad63aaf5fcf00018a2c9c **Manchester, England. An insurance building from 1890 that still sells reassurance.** --- When an old building is turned into a hotel, the first thing to go is often the job it used to do. The brick wall is exposed and painted white, a lift door from the last century is hung over the sofas as art, the industrial lamp comes from a catalogue, and beside the lift the word heritage appears on a brass plate. The history has been told, and the rest is concept: the same lobby scent, the same low sofa, room 412 in the same version whatever the city. On the corner of Oxford Street and Whitworth Street stands a building that was raised to convince people that an insurance company kept its word. It still does. Now with beds. ## The setting Alfred Waterhouse designed the building in the 1890s as the headquarters of the Refuge Assurance Company; he was also the architect of Manchester Town Hall and the Natural History Museum in London. Red brick and terracotta, a clock tower above the roofline, glazed tiles inside because tile withstands soot and can be washed. The building was extended in stages, into three interconnected volumes. Grade II listed. Kimpton took over its running in 2018. The trap is a familiar one: the dome becomes a backdrop, the tile becomes wallpaper, and the floor plan is straightened into something an operations manager can walk through in four minutes. Here it has not been straightened. Three buildings never designed for one another produce corridors that take their time, doors that are not where you expect them, and more routes down to breakfast than you can use up in a week. It costs in housekeeping, in luggage carrying and in minutes per room. In return, you walk through the building rather than past it. Beneath the dome, where horse and carriage once turned, stands a three-metre bronze horse by Sophie Dickens, great-great-granddaughter of Charles Dickens. It stands on the turning circle itself, not in a corner. At street level by the entrance is a florist. The Palace Theatre is next door, Oxford Road Station is across the street, HOME and Canal Street are five minutes in opposite directions, and Piccadilly is a quarter of an hour on foot. ![](https://storage.ghost.io/c/a6/70/a6706a0b-663b-4412-99b4-dff09bbf0853/content/images/2026/08/IMG_5087.JPG) ![](https://storage.ghost.io/c/a6/70/a6706a0b-663b-4412-99b4-dff09bbf0853/content/images/2026/08/IMG_5086.JPG) ## The rooms With 270 rooms and eleven suites spread across three buildings, the floor plan could not be repeated. One room has panelling inherited from an office, another has a glazed tile column standing in the middle of the floor, and the column takes up square metres no one gets paid for. The furniture is scaled to the ceiling height rather than to a standard package. The wardrobe is deep enough that you feel for the back wall. The money has been spent where it shows over time. The wallpaper and textiles were woven for the building by Timorous Beasties, with the Manchester bee in the pattern, which means a stain on a seat cannot simply be reordered from a catalogue. Graphic prints from the city hang on the walls. The telephone is postbox red against grey and cream. The money has been saved in the bathroom. White tiles, a British basin, a shower over the bath as standard. No fuss. The difference between the cheapest and the dearest room lies not in the equipment. In the wardrobe there is a yoga mat, on the table a box of chocolate and crisps, and the suites have record players. The record collection is put together by a music concierge, and the concierge will visit an ordinary room too, if you ask. Suite No. 51 is in the directors' old office, with the panelling intact, its own entrance and a marble table in the sitting room. The office has become the most expensive room in the building. ![](https://storage.ghost.io/c/a6/70/a6706a0b-663b-4412-99b4-dff09bbf0853/content/images/2026/08/IMG_5108.PNG) ![](https://storage.ghost.io/c/a6/70/a6706a0b-663b-4412-99b4-dff09bbf0853/content/images/2026/08/IMG_5100.JPG) ![](https://storage.ghost.io/c/a6/70/a6706a0b-663b-4412-99b4-dff09bbf0853/content/images/2026/08/IMG_5151.JPG) ## The table Breakfast says the most. It is served in the Dining Room, beneath the tiled wall and the mural *The Glamour of Manchester*, in Victorian booths with their own lamp above each table. The lamp means the room does not have to change its light for the morning: it looks the same at eight as it does at nine in the evening. The booths fix the distance between the tables once and for all, and nobody pushes two tables together. The buffet is short: bread, pastries, cold cuts, cheese, cereal. The hot dishes come from the kitchen, and if you want eggs benedict or avocado toast, you order at the table and it goes on the bill. At 5pm wine, beer and alcohol-free options are set out in the Post Room behind reception, and the staff encourage guests to talk to one another. Until 6pm. A room with its own name, a fixed hour, no menu to choose from. And no bill afterwards. In a building with 270 rooms. British all the way. The arrangement works even on those who do not take part. The Refuge occupies roughly 9,000 square metres in three parts. The Public Bar has tiled columns, a full-height moulded ceiling and a DJ at weekends; here the city comes of its own free will, and here you are seen. The Winter Garden has a tiled floor, trees wound with fairy lights and a noise level at which you can speak softly. The dinner menu divides into little scran, bigger scran and extra scran, with a Sunday roast at the end of the week. ![](https://storage.ghost.io/c/a6/70/a6706a0b-663b-4412-99b4-dff09bbf0853/content/images/2026/08/IMG_5105.JPG) ![](https://storage.ghost.io/c/a6/70/a6706a0b-663b-4412-99b4-dff09bbf0853/content/images/2026/08/IMG_5104.JPG) ## The detail The detail at the Clocktower is the fire equipment. In the corridors, hose reels and extinguishers hang in bright red against grey and cream walls, at regular intervals all the way down the corridor, to the last door. They are not tucked behind a panel, not painted into the colour of the wall, not hidden behind a mirror. Red is the first thing you see when you turn a corner, and it is the same red as the telephone in the room. The industry standard is the opposite: the extinguisher goes in a cupboard with the same veneer as the wall, and the signage is a small grey arrow you have to look for. Refuge Assurance sold cover against fire and loss from this corner. The only thing allowed to shout in here is the equipment meant to put out the flames. It is almost odd that no one else does it. ![](https://storage.ghost.io/c/a6/70/a6706a0b-663b-4412-99b4-dff09bbf0853/content/images/2026/08/IMG_5090.JPG) ![](https://storage.ghost.io/c/a6/70/a6706a0b-663b-4412-99b4-dff09bbf0853/content/images/2026/08/IMG_5099.JPG) ![](https://storage.ghost.io/c/a6/70/a6706a0b-663b-4412-99b4-dff09bbf0853/content/images/2026/08/IMG_5103.JPG) ![](https://storage.ghost.io/c/a6/70/a6706a0b-663b-4412-99b4-dff09bbf0853/content/images/2026/08/IMG_5088.JPG) ## Worth the journey For those who want to stay in the city and not beside it: the Palace Theatre in the next building, a station across the street, a bar where people who are not staying here come in of their own free will. For those who like a building to have had a job before, and for that job still to show in the columns, the tiles and a tower you navigate by. For those who want to bring the dog, a record player in the room and breakfast beneath a mural. I have stayed in many historic buildings that have become hotels. This is one of the few that still does its job. It is not nostalgia. The building simply never stopped. Voyage Voyage. --- ## FACTS **Address** Oxford Street, Manchester M60 7HA, England **Double rooms from approx.** NOK 2,500 / night **Season** Year-round; prices remain flat throughout the year **Getting there** Oxford Road Station directly across the street · Manchester Piccadilly 15 minutes on foot · Manchester Airport (MAN) 20 minutes by car · no parking on site, public car parks nearby **Good to know** Families and dogs welcome; gym and bicycles to borrow, no spa **Link** [https://www.kimptonclocktowerhotel.com/](https://www.kimptonclocktowerhotel.com/?ref=voyagevoyage.no) **Stayed** February 2023, October 2024