This neo-Gothic town hall, built in 1887, is a beloved piece of Manchester’s remaining Victorian architecture, sited on Albert Square in the centre of town.

While ‘town hall’ hardly evokes images of antique grandeur, the building is really rather beautiful, giving it, as a training venue, the edge over the ubiquitous bland corporate hotel.

Its interior boasts some classically opulent neo-Gothic touches: the banqueting hall (which seats 150 people for lunch or dinner, and can hold 200 people theatre-style) has two enormous stone fireplaces, with an ornate oak ceiling and double doors, while the conference hall, which holds up to 150 theatre- style, has its very own minstrels’ gallery. (It is also linked, via an antechamber, to the splendidly-named Lord Mayor’s Parlour, also available for hire.) Unsurprisingly, the building is regularly used for quite a variety of events, including weddings, awards ceremonies and banqueting dinners.

As well as the banqueting and conference halls, the town hall has a ‘Great Hall’, which is the room most frequently used for receptions and awards ceremonies. The room’s vaulted ceiling is covered with the coats of arms of nations and cities that traded goods with Manchester at, as the literature says, ‘the height of her mercantile power’, and the walls are covered in famous murals by Ford Maddox Brown. Again, you don’t get that in your average hotel chain. The Great Hall is the largest of the main rooms, and can hold 500 people for a reception, 500 theatre- style and 200 in a classroom layout.

There is also a reception room available, and ten committee rooms – five of which, in the town hall extension, are primarily used for council meetings. The others, the largest of which has a capacity for 35 people, can be hired and set up how you choose. All standard equipment and resources are available as part of your hire package – there is both a day delegate package and a bespoke booking service.

Manchester City Council, which runs the conference hire service at several sites around the city, has its own catering division – Manchester Fayre – which provides the catering for the town hall. It can provide food and drink for a small meeting up to a major event for 350 people.

In 2004, Manchester University and UMIST (University of Manchester Institute of Science and Technology) were merged, bringing together the two largest academic conference centres in the north. The facilities – which are marketed under the name ‘meeting.manchester’ – extend two miles from the city centre, and include an impressive 8,000 bedrooms and a range of meeting rooms, ranging from ‘leafy Victorian buildings’ to high-spec corporate venues.

One of the buildings in the University’s portfolio is – perhaps unsurprisingly for Manchester – another neo-Gothic building, Whitworth Hall, part of the Oxford Road site, ideally located in the centre of the city.

As one of the buildings around the University’s picturesque old quadrangle, part of the University’s main campus, the building was designed by Alfred Waterhouse and his son Paul Waterhouse. Sitting opposite the university’s museum, the hall is used each year for the conferment of degrees. The attraction of this area is that it is both central and easily accessible by public transport, but is calm and quiet.

The building can accommodate meetings for up to 675 people, and banquets for up to 300 people, so is one of the bigger conference venues available in the city. It has played host already to a number of training conferences and workshops, and is also used for trade exhibitions and product launches.

Adjoining the building is the Council Chamber (see picture), where there are five boardrooms which can seat between 12 and 24 delegates. There is also a bistro next door, which provides all the catering facilities needed for events in the building.

For lengthier sessions, the Oxford Road site is close to a wide variety of accommodation facilities, including the Whitworth Park residences. A mile from the city centre, the accommodation is available from mid-June until early September. There are 400 standard bedrooms in flats on offer, with self-catering facilities, and each has between seven and nine bedrooms with shared bathroom and kitchen areas.

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