Jonathan Schofield is pleased that a quality operator is opening in a beautiful building
Since banks became awful, alienating, customer service denying telephone tyrannies many of the finest city centre buildings across the country have become redundant.
The good news is that many are then reborn as restaurants: sort of, ‘ring, ring, ring, this is so and so bank and this call is being recorded for training purposes and we’d really rather you gave up and put the phone down but press one for a installing a chain restaurant in one of our former customer facing facilities’.
The menu will focus on steak and seafood. Think Hawksmoor perhaps.
Now one of Manchester’s most beautiful and stately nineteenth century buildings is to get the same treatment. Tyke-based mini-chain The Cut & Craft will open in the superb main banking hall of the former Manchester & Salford Bank which last triple-locked its safe as the Royal Bank of Salford. For more on the building check the box below.
The owners of the building are Bruntwood SciTech who after acquiring the building do what Bruntwood do and completed a splendid restoration and refurbishment. Manchester is very lucky to have Bruntwood, a company which almost acts as a corporate architectural steward protecting important city buildings, particularly from the sixties and seventies.
It’s unusual for them to acquire nineteenth century buildings but we can be mightily glad they have here. The Cut & Craft restaurant will be called Bond which presumably refers to the financial thingamajig rather than anything to do with MI6. It will open this year.
Bond will take over the former banking room but will also utilise the basement vaults converting them into private dining and entertainment spaces. The menu will focus on steak and seafood and feature oysters, Exmoor caviar and beef tartare with breaded yolk and sesame croutons, grilled monkfish, king scallops, as well as the usual suspects of fish and chips, grilled lamb cutlets and a 10 oz flat iron steak. Think Hawksmoor perhaps.
The only potential downside to the happy arrival of a quality operator is the location. This part of Mosley Street is essentially Piccadilly Gardens. True Higher Ground and Namii are located a step away on New York Street but Bond will be staring Piccadilly Gardens in its crude and clumsy face. Let’s hope that’s not a problem.
Manchester & Salford Bank and Edward Walters
Edward Walters was one of Manchester's most important and prolific architects who excelled in that particular Manchester style dubbed 'palazzo'.
This was a style borrowed from Renaissance Italy. The simple but stately design of the model allowed plenty of light into buildings whilst delivering great dignity and power. Charles Barry (later the architect of the Palace of Westminster) introduced the style with the Athenaeum in 1837 which is now the Princess Street facing extension to Manchester Art Gallery.
Edward Walters' palazzos make up some of Manchester's best architecture in structures such as the Free Trade Hall, now the Edwardian Hotel, and the textile warehouses on Charlotte Street. His best bank remains the host of Bond, the Manchester & Salford Bank from 1862 with its dramatic fenestration and imposing cornice. Even the royal palace scale door is part of the drama while the 27ft (8m) high main banking room is a jaw-dropper.
This beautiful building deserves to have a tenant which appears to be as good quality as The Cut & Craft. This should be a real asset for Manchester.
If you liked this you might like:
Manchester's architectural part one
Manchester's architecture part two
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