Tag: Northwest England

A world-class hotel in Chester

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* It’s English Tourism Week, so here’s an idea for a English Tourism Week escape — first published by the Daily Telegraph this week.

A Chester hotel has been named the world’s best small hotel

Edgar House [pictured above], a seven-bedroom boutique property in Northwest England, beat hotels in New Zealand, Costa Rica and Thailand to take the top spot in the Tripadvisor Travellers’ Choice Awards announced this week.

The results are based on reviews and opinions collected over the past year from TripAdvisor readers. This is the first year the hotel has entered the small hotel category.

“Guests always comment on the personal touches and attention to detail — from the ducks in the bathroom to the little treats o the pillow at bedtime,” says co-owner Tim Mills, sitting by the open fire in the lounge against a backdrop of classical music.

“It’s easy to feel like just another room number in a hotel but we aim to keep on making people feel special and looked after.”

The hotel, set in a period Georgian building overlooking the River Dee, opened in 2013 and welcomes guests aged 14 and above.

The individual rooms are stylish while artworks from Chester’s Castle Galleries adorn the walls throughout and a new cinema room with a large screen and gourmet popcorn is available downstairs.

Restaurant Twenty2, a fine-dining restaurant under head chef Neil Griffiths, opened within the building last November.

The 24-cover dining room opens Wednesday to Sunday for Sunday lunches, afternoon teas and evening meals.

The Roman city of Chester will see the opening of its new £37 arts centre, run and programmed the arts producer Chester Performs, later this year.

The stately Chester Grosvenor Hotel celebrated its 150th anniversary last year.

“Chester is my favourite English city. It’s compact to explore and a great base to explore the wider region,” says Midlands-born Tim.

“It’s a small city of romance — a perfect place to propose.”

Katrina Michel, Chief Executive of Marketing Cheshire, adds: “Chester is a world class heritage city and now we have another world class hotel to welcome visitors.”

Read the Telegraph review, Edgar House.

What did you think of this story? Post your comments below.

Liked this? Try also A home from home in Chester.

Story of the week: World Town Crier Championship in Chester

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There’s a man who stands in the middle of Chester each day in tights and shouts at people.

But don’t worry. For David Mitchell, the Town Crier of Chester, it’s just a job.

“I booked a town crier to wake my bride to be on our wedding day. He had to cancel, so I hired the outfit and did it myself. When his job subsequently came up, I applied,” explains ex-teacher David, whose book For Crying Out Loud! will be published by Avenue Books in September.

“It’s an unusual job interview, whereby candidate and panel stand on either sides of the River Dee.”

This year David is inviting 40 more town criers from places as diverse as Bromsgrove and Baltimore to the historic Roman city of Chester.

He will be hosting the 2010 Chester World Town Crier Tournament [pictured above], the event reaching a rallying-call crescendo after three rounds with the final on June 19 in the Town Hall Square.

Festival season

The event also kicks off Chestival, a month-long arts festival running until July 14.

Amongst the Regency frilly-frocked competitors, look out for Martin Wood, the town crier of Shrewsbury, who at 7ft 2in is the world’s tallest crier.

Check out, too, the vocal delivery of the in-form favourite for the title, Judy Campbell from Australia.

Judy is the first woman to win the Australian National Championship and the only woman to be placed in the top three at the 1997 World Championships.

For David, bringing the tournament to Chester reflects the close historical links between the city and the art of crying.

“Chester is the only place in the world to retain a regular proclamation at a fixed point at a fixed time (the Cross, at noon, Tuesday to Saturday, May-August) and has done so since 1553.”

Historically town criers have provided a cornerstone of community life.

William the Conqueror is credited with importing their trademark call of ‘Oyez’ (it means ‘listen up’ in French) but bell-totting criers also appeared in the Bayeux Tapestry and there are references in The Old Testament in (Book of Proverbs, Chapter 8, verses 1-3).

New shoots

Far from a dying art, town crying is today enjoying something of a renaissance thanks to its tourist appeal.

There are currently around 200 town criers across the UK alone.

The Chestival programme also brings the Chester Mystery Plays (June 17-20), a Midsummer Watch Parade (June 18-20) and Fireworks concerts (June 25-26) to the city.

You can’t miss the events. Chester’s very own town crier will be shouting about them from the rooftops.

“Town crying is a historic form of communication,” says David.

“Chester lends the perfect historic setting to a world-class event.”

Oyez to that.

What did you think of this story? Post your comments below.

This story was first published in Hotline magazine in 2010.

Liked this? Try also Home from home in Chester.

Story of the week: A walk around literary Manchester

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Literary types gather soon for the annual Manchester Literature Festival.

They’re in for a surprise. Manchester has a host of hidden-gem treasures and a slew of new openings for bookish types keen to explore the city’s rich literacy legacy – from Karl Marx observing working life in the mid 19th century to the UK’s current Poet Laureate, Carol Ann Duffy.

“Manchester always had an edgy, radical feel as a city,” says Blue Badge Guide Kate Dibble of Manchester Tours, who leads literary tours of the city.

“Great authors through the ages have always tried to capture it.”

Walking tour

I joined a walking tour to trace a route around the modern-industrial city, following in the footsteps of the writers who have documented its evolution.

We started by Oxford Road train station where the Cornerhouse arts centre – moving to the new HOME development in May next year – remains one of the city’s best bookshops for art and cinema literature.

The short stroll along Whitworth Street West leads us past The Ritz, the gig venue where the performance poet John Cooper Clarke famously met Salome Maloney:

“In lurex and terylene, she hypnotised me.”

The nearby International Anthony Burgess Centre, dedicated to the Manchester-born author of the dystopian novel A Clockwork Orange, houses an eccentric collection of possessions, including letters to the film director Stanley Kubrick and his personal copy of A Clockwork Orange with doodles by the author.

The upstairs performance space hosts author Blake Morrison for the Burgess Lecture during the MLF on October 16, while the guided Unlocking the Archive tour is on October 22.

Heading towards St Peter’s Square, Manchester Central Library reopened in March this year after a £50m refurbishment to open up the library as a living-room space for the city.

It has welcomed some 300,000 visitors since, combining a high-tech media lounge, contemporary exhibition space and an interactive children’s library with the faithful restoration of the original architectural flourishes to their 1930s glory.

Neil MacInnes, Head of Libraries, Information and Archives, says:

“It’s the library as the street-corner university, a place to engage with knowledge and wisdom.”

Hushed reverence

By contrast, a visit to the Portico Library and Gallery, the Neo-Classical newsroom and library accessed from Charlotte Street, is like stepping back in time.

The 19th-century collection of dusty tomes, including travel literature, biographies and first-edition fiction, offers an insight into the mindset of Manchester in the industrial age. The genteel Reading Room is for members only but the café and gallery is open to all, as is the programme of literary events.

Cutting through the sidestreets towards Deansgate, the John Rylands Library, named after the 19th-century cotton magnate, is the third largest academic library in the UK.

Transformed by fusing a modern wing onto the existing neo-Gothic structure, new exhibition space and a study centre now complement the hushed reverence of the historic reading room. The John Rylands has a tour of the building and its collection on the third Thursday of each month.

Chetham’s Library, the oldest public library in the English-speaking world, traces Manchester’s literary legacy back to the medieval period.

The 17th-century Manchester textile merchant Humphrey Chetham established the library in his 1651 will as a free library for the use of scholars and the rambling space of cloisters and courtyards has been a haven for study ever since.

Friedrich Engels and Karl Marx researched here and their desk is now a place of pilgrimage in the 16th-century, wood-paneled reading room.

Writing in The Condition of the Working Class in England, Engels describes industrial Manchester:

”If anyone wishes to see in how little space a human being can move, how little air he can breathe, how little of civilisation he may share and yet live, it is only necessary to travel hither.“

Literary legend

I finish my tour in the city’s Ardwick district where Elizabeth Gaskell’s House, the family home of the Cranford author, reopens on October 5 after three years, restoring the Grade II-listed Regency villa as if the family had just popped out and left the table set for dinner.

The opening is timed to host two MLF events, the Manchester Salon exploring Gaskell’s 1855 novel North and South on October 8 and a walking tour of Gaskell’s Manchester, culminating at the house, on October 15.

Gaskell documented Manchester’s burgeoning industrial revolution from her writing desk at 84 Plymouth Grove after the family moved to the house in 1850 and her views contrasted starkly with the ideals of the Victorian era.

“As a female voice, few were as courageous as hers,” says Janet Allan, Chair of the Manchester Historic Buildings Trust [pictured above].

“Her greatest skill was to use storytelling to address the social issues of the era.”

A walking tour of Manchester proves the city may have evolved but its penchant for speaking out remains a constant source of literary inspiration.

What did you think of this story? Post your comments below.

This story first appeared in The Guardian in 2014. Liked this? Try also A weekend in Manchester’s Chinatown.

Unlocking Chester: A heritage trail through the ‘curated city’

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A new Chester heritage project is taking never-before-seen artefacts from the archives of the city’s Grosvenor Museum and installing them in situ in locations round the city.

The Chester Unlocked project goes live this weekend and aims to highlight the rich heritage of the Roman city.

Dean Paton, Managing Director of social enterprise Big Heritage, which has collaborated with CH1ChesterBID to establish the trail, said:

“This is guerrilla archaeology. Chester is part of an ongoing narrative and I love the idea of curating the city to tell this story.”

Visitors collect a map of the self-guided ‘Hoot’s Route’ tour around the city to follow the trail to some 30 locations around the city.

Amongst the artefacts are Victorian scent bottles in Penhaligon’s and an 1883 glazed teapot, originally manufactured in North Wales, now installed at Cinderbox Coffee independent coffee shop.

“Historically coffee shops were places to meet and discuss ideas,” says Cinderbox owner Jez Scott [pictured above]. “In some ways, we have now come full circle to the present day.”

The city-wide installation will run until November with an option to refresh and extend the displays. It will be accompanied by fringe events over the summer, such Roman menus at local restaurants and ancient wine tastings.

The city of Chester was founded by Romans as the military fortress of Deva in the first century AD.

More from Chester Unlocked.

Liked this? Try also World Town Crier Championship in Chester.