The building in front of you opened on 15 September 1830 as the Manchester end of the , and it is the oldest passenger railway station still standing anywhere. It looks oddly domestic, more like a than a station, and that is the point: nobody had built one before, so the architect fell back on what he knew.
What opened that day was the first railway in the world to run passengers to a timetable, hauled entirely by steam. A journey to Liverpool that had taken the better part of a day came down to roughly two hours. First class passengers climbed the stairs to the platform on the upper floor; everyone else waited below. The opening itself went spectacularly wrong, when a member of parliament stepped onto the track in front of the and became the first widely reported railway casualty, yet the service carried on the same week.
For your hotel this was the moment everything changed. With cotton arriving by rail as well as by water, the warehouses on Water Street worked harder than ever. A hand coloured print from 1831 shows the trains crossing Water Street on their viaduct, passing almost exactly where you slept last night.
The station is now part of the , and the original platform, the booking hall and the 1830 warehouse behind it are free to walk into.
Continue along Liverpool Road, then take Castle Street down towards the water, where the canal basin opens up under the viaducts.
Sources. Story: Science and Industry Museum; T. T. Bury, Entrance into Manchester across Water Street, 1831, Norfolk Museums Service Photos: T. T. Bury, Entrance into Manchester across Water Street, 1831, public domain via Wikimedia Commons
