Chancellors Hotel & Conference Centre (formerly named The Firs), is a Grade II listed mansion in Fallowfield, Manchester, England The house was built in 1850 for Sir Joseph Whitworth, by Edward Walters, who was also responsible for Manchester’s Free Trade Hall and Strangeways Prison. The house was surrounded by a 52 acres (21 ha) estate. Whitworth used The Firs mainly as a social, political and business base, entertaining radicals of the age such as John Bright, Richard Cobden, William Forster and T. H. Huxley at the time of the Reform Bill of 1867. Whitworth, credited with raising the art of machine-tool building to a previously-unknown level, supported the new Mechanics Institute in Manchester –the birthplace of UMIST – and helped to...
