It was Friday 20th January 1893, on a cold winters day in Manchester that 95 Brethren assembled at the Palatine Hotel in Hunts Bank, Victoria Street, near Victoria Station. 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 importan
t terminus - Victoria Station, opened in 1844. 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") 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. Due to the redevelopment of Freemasons Hall, and other geographical considerations, the Lodge moved again during the summer of 2009 to its present home at Middleton Masonic club.
