The Holiday Inn Express Hotel on Oxford Road



This  £9Million hotel building was designed by the architectural practice of McCormick Architecture.  It comprises an 11-storey, wedge-shaped building that offers patrons 147 bedrooms, a basement restaurant and leisure facility.  The construction, by Russell Construction, involved the use of concrete wall panels and prefabricated bathroom pods.  The building is clad in black bricks.







Below are some images of the building under construction.




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January 26, 2010





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Update on progress March 15, 2010








June 6, 2010




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The narrow site beside the River Medlock was previously home to a Spa store.


This building that housed the Spa sat on the triangular site bounded by the River Medlock, Hulme Street and Oxford Road.  In 1888, as you can see in my sketch of a map from that date shown below, there was a 3 storey building on this site.  At this point I don't know if this is it or a later replacement.  The occupant of the building in 1888 was Odhams Press.



Just across Hulme Street and behind the Regal Cinema, Odhams Press had a second building which obviously held their printing presses.



A Wikipedia article about Odham Press says that it was, "originally a newspaper group in the 1890s, it took the name Odham's Press Ltd. in 1920 when it merged with John Bull magazine. By 1937 it had founded the first colour weekly, Woman, for which it set up  and operated a dedicated high-speed print works. The company also owned Ideal Home (founded 1920) and the well-known equestrian magazine Horse and Hound (acquired). Later Odhams expanded into book publishing (for example, Winston Churchill's Painting as a Pastime, and an edition of the complete works of William Shakespeare) and comics, including Wham! and Smash!" 

In 1963 Odhams became part of the The International Publishing Corporation Ltd.  It was created following the merger of the UK's three leading magazine publishers – George Newnes, Odhams Press and Fleetway Publications – who came together with the Mirror Group to form the IPC.