This office block by Holford Associaters dominates Cross Street standing 9 storeys high with a further attic level.  The building has undergone a comprehensive refurbishment and provides a Grade A specification including raised floors and air conditioning.   As you can see from the images, it is also home to the Cross Street Unitarian Chapel and, in fact, it occupies the site of the original Cross Stret Chapel founded in 1662.

The original chapel was destroyed by a Jacobite mob in 1715 but rebuilt.  It appears on the OS Map for 1849.  There was a chapel on the Chapel Walk side of the site.



The building was destroyed again 1n 1940 as a result of enemy bombing.  It was once again replaced in 1959 by a new building on the same site.  James Edward Holroyd wrote an account of the air raid for "Lancashire Life" in December of 19890.  He wrote, "... "At about 1.30am on Tuesday the all-clear sounded, and I climbed a vertical internal ladder to the MG roof. A never-to-be forgotten Christmas Eve had been ushered in by a city ringed anew with fire. The Royal Exchange opposite, and Woolworth's beyond, were still burning, as were the much-loved Victoria buildings with their sequence of Aesop's fables carved in stone. The Market Place area - that remaining bit of city history - was an inferno, to be destroyed completely save for the miraculous preservation of the old Wellington Inn block. ....Meanwhile, beneath the reeking pall of smoke, subdued Christmas celebrations went on; "Robinson Crusoe" was at the Place, Sargent conducted the Halle's "Messiah" at the Odeon..."  If you follow the link below you can see a photograph of the Cross Street after the raid.  The photograph shows the remaining shell of the building and insiode the congregation gathered to worship."


The aerial photograph below is dated May 13, 1953 and the chapel site is marked with the number 1.  (2 is St Ann's Church and 3 is the Royal Exchange). It appears that what you can see must be the shell of the bombed chapel before it was demolished and replaced.



The 1950s version of the Cross Street Chapel lasted until 1995 when it was demolished to make way for the Observatory.  The ground floor of that building became home to the latest version of the chapel.  The Pevsner Guide for Manchester describes the meeting room of the chapel as, "... a double-storey drum with foyer and corridor curving around it.  Inside is a circular colonade of cylindrical piuers.  Pale colours prdominate with fittings of sycamor, including a lantern and communion table by Gary Olson, pale orange marble floors and smooth and roughcast wall finishes."  William Gaskell, husband of the writer Elizabeth Gaskell ministered at the Cross Street Chapel from 1828 until his death in 1884.  According to the chapel's Wikipedia page "... During the construction of Manchester Metrolink's second city crossing in the City Zone, 270 bodies from what used to be the chapel's graveyard had to be exhumed and reburied."