© Palatine Lodge - 1893 - 2023 - In se ipso totus teres -
The Lodge’s first abode was at the Palatine Hotel, at the corner of Hunts Bank and Victoria Street in the centre of Manchester, close to Victoria
Station and to Manchester Cathedral, or the Collegiate Church as it was called up to 1847. Palatine Hotel was built in 1843, a massive edifice for its time,
and built long before the nearby railway, initially the "Manchester and Leeds" railway but soon to become the "Lancashire and Yorkshire" Railway and its
important terminus ~ Victoria Station, opened in 1844. Across Victoria Street
was the "London and North Western Railways" Exchange station opened in
1884. The hotel was important in its day, busy and popular, but it ceased to
be a hotel many years ago. For reasons not recorded in the minutes, though
possibly because of expansion and redevelopment in the Long Millgate area,
the Lodge moved to the Albion Hotel on the East Side of Piccadilly in central
Manchester early in 1896.
This was after the compilation of a special report by a committee
appointed "to gain information with respect to a more suitable Lodge room",
Victoria Hotel, Mosley Hotel, Freemason’s Hall in Cooper Street, the Grand
Hotel, as well as the Albion Hotel, are fully listed in this special report, which is
still kept safely with other Lodge documents, and is very informative reading
for conditions in late 1895. It lists all details of charges, catering, menus,
accessibility, nights available, staff available, lighting, storage facilities etc.,
what lodges already met there, even actual measurements of rooms and
sufficiency of size - and toilet facilities.
The Lodge grew, and grew, until "bursting at the seams" it had to
move to still larger accommodation. It did so to the Midland Hotel, near to
what was the "Cheshire Lines Railway" (later "Great Northern Railway") A
terminus - Central Station (now G-Mex) - in January 1904, when this new
hotel was opened. This was then certainly a prestigious. venue, encouraging
further growth, successful Masonic meetings and popular social events, for
almost 40 years.
The Masonic Temple in Bridge Street, Manchester, now called the
"Freemason’s Hall”, was dedicated on the 24th October 1929. It was available
for Lodges and approaches were made for Palatine Lodge to move there, but
apparently its facilities did not attract it from the Midland Hotel until March
1943, when this took place in the middle of World War II, no doubt brought
about by complex wartime difficulties, though no specific reason is recorded.
The last meeting at the Midland Hotel was the Installation of W.Bro Tom
Bromley in January 1943, at 12.15pm on Saturday 16th, lunch at 1.30pm, 44
members/visitors being present.
From 1943 until 2010, the Freemason’s Hall was the Lodge’s home.
In 2010 the Lodge moved to Middleton Masonic Hall.