Enlargement of Methodist College Alexandra Road Manchester

PRIMITIVE METHODIST COLLEGE, MANCHESTER – The memorial stone of an extension to the Primitive Methodist College in Alexandra Road, Manchester was laid yesterday afternoon by Mr W P Hartley of Aintree. The present college building gives accommodation to some thirty students for the ministry. By the generosity of Mr Hartley, room is made for double that number. It is estimated that the extension will cost not far short of £10,000. The architect is Mr J G Sankey of King Street, Manchester. [Manchester Guardian 13 May 1896 page 10]

OPENING OF THE NEW COLLEGE WING – On Saturday afternoon the new wing of the Primitive Methodist College in Alexandra Road, Manchester, was opened by Mr W P Hartley of Aintree, who bears the entire cost of the new building. ….  The College, as now completed, consists of a long and varied façade to Alexandra Road, with two extensive wings at right angles, one at each end of the façade, the whole forming three sides of an inner court or quadrangle. The extension forms the greater portion of the frontage of one of the wings. It has doubled the accommodation for students in the College from thirty to sixty, enlarged and rendered more suitable the Principal’s house, and has added several important public rooms formerly lacking. The new portion of the main façade consists of the enlargement of the Principal’s house, a large dining hall, reception rooms, a library and a large assembly hall, the whole forming, with the older portion of the buildings, a peculiar, somewhat irregular, but fairly balanced frontage. At the junction of this frontage with the students’ new wing is to be built a clock tower some 85 feet high, very lofty in comparison with the buildings of which it forms part, but the more effectually achieving the aesthetic reason for its existence -  the forming of a pronounced dominant feature in the composition. The clock faces are to be illuminated, and the belfry is to be fitted with Cambridge chimes. It has been necessary to keep the design of the new extension generally in character with the older portion of the buildings, but it has been found possible to give a more pronounced collegiate character to the whole that the older portion indicates. The architect is Mr J Gibbons Sankey, Manchester and London. [Manchester Guardian 21 June 1897 page 12]

Reference    Builder 9 September 1893 page 193
Reference    Manchester Guardian 11 May 1895 page 4 – contracts
Reference    Manchester Guardian 13 May 1896 page 10 – memorial stone
Reference    Manchester Guardian 21 June 1897 page 12 – opening of new wing

1879        original building  -Tate and Popplewell ,
1896-7        new wing and clock tower,  - J G Sankey
1903-1906    right block and chapel  - F W Dixon