The secret rooms hidden underneath Manchester Town Hall

Manchester's historic Town Hall is the jewel in the city's crown. It is currently undergoing a massive £430 million refurbishment to bring it back to its former glory.

But people would be surprised to know at one stage there were plans to raze the Victorian gem to the ground.

The town hall was built in the late 19th century. It replaced another building which served as the city's civic centre on King Street. The classical columned façade of that building was removed and relocated to Heaton Park in 1912 when it was demolished and a bank built on the site. Today, it still stands in the park as a folly designed to resemble a classical ruin.

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The new town hall was designed by architect Alfred Waterhouse in the 13th-century Gothic style and completed in 1877 at around £1 million. The celebrated architect, who also designed Strangeways Prison and the Natural History Museum in London, was tasked with creating the new civic centre in the site's awkward triangle shape.

A warren of medieval and Georgian streets was knocked down to redraw the area around the new building, which was built around what was known as Towns Yard, an area that still forms the footprint of the internal courtyard.

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The new town hall needed to include a large hall, offices, a council chamber, reception rooms, and living quarters for the lord mayor. The city's civic heart would be a bastion of Neo-Gothic authority, with sculptures of generals and royalty at its entrance – including a statue of Roman governor Agricola overlooking Albert Square. Agricola was responsible for much of the Roman conquest in Britain and founded the original fort of Mamucium, where Manchester began.

Central to the town hall is a 280-foot clock tower with three clock faces and bells. The message 'teach us to number our days' is inscribed on each face.

The opulence continues inside the building's sculpture hall, which houses statues of well-known figures, including Sir Charles Halle and Oliver Cromwell. On the second floor is the vast Great Hall, with its panelled ceiling displaying the coats of arms of counties and towns Manchester traded with and mosaic floor patterned with bees – the symbol of Manchester's industry.

In 1932, work began to construct the town hall extension. It was designed by Vincent Harris, who also designed Central Library.

The extension was eight storeys high and intended to house the increasing number of departments, such as electricity and rates, as well as a large council chamber and demonstration rooms. The stained glass windows inside were designed by George Kruger Kray and depict the Lancastrian coat of arms.

Construction cost around £750,000, and it was officially opened by King George VI in 1938. Two covered bridges link it to the original town hall.

These days, council meetings are no longer regularly held in the town hall itself but in the new extension. The hall is now primarily used for various events, including weddings, civil partnerships, and conferences.

Thanks to its resemblance to the Palace of Westminster, the town hall has regularly stood in for the London location for TV and films, including Sherlock Holmes (2008), The Iron Lady (2011), and the drama series' A Very English Scandal and Peaky Blinders.

So, considering the town hall's architectural and symbolic importance to the city, it is even harder to understand why there were plans to bulldoze it. In 2013, academics unearthed a series of council plans, reports, and blueprints spanning 40 years from the 1920s.

The documents revealed the ideas, ambitions, and visions of city centre planners, architects, and highway designers of the time. But almost all the schemes were shelved or ignored before they got off the ground.

One report, written to revive a post-war Manchester city centre, revealed an elaborate idea to knock down Manchester Town Hall and substitute it with a 'smaller civic building.' The idea – which never went further than an entry in The 1945 City of Manchester Plan – aimed to 'modernise' the city centre.

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The University of Manchester geographer, Dr Martin Dodge, told the M.E.N. that the plans were "driven by a genuine desire to bring some order to the city and its satellite towns after a century of chaotic and unrestrained growth."

He said: "It was a bold plan but in those days there was a negative view of Victorian architecture. Manchester had just come through a war and people needed a new centre, but that was an idea too far."

In 2014, a report by Manchester City Council highlighted the need for the Victorian-era building's refurbishment, saying that heating and electrical systems needed replacing, windows needed refurbishing, and stonework and areas of the roof needed repairing. Soon after experts started a survey of the building to see what work needed to be done to preserve it, they unearthed hidden morsels of history that had been gathering dust for generations.

Long-forgotten secrets and treasures, hidden from visitors and tour groups for decades, were found in the building's bowels. In the basement were cellar rooms used as World War Two air raid shelters hidden behind a small door.

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The shelter had two brick toilet cubicles, evidence of the long hours spent by council staff and politicians waiting for the sirens to stop. No doubt, a direct hit or two by the Luftwaffe during the Blitz would have saved the post-war planners the trouble of drawing up those proposed demolition plans.

In the years that followed 1945, generations of council officers found the warren of basement rooms to be a handy place to squirrel away records and folders that might one day be needed or, at some future point, be disposed of.

Those officers would move on to be replaced by new officers following the same processes, leaving drawers and files and rooms full of history to accumulate, unremembered. Heritage experts delving into the network of basement rooms found a treasure trove of civic documents and leather-bound tomes.

On the second floor, near the main council chamber but mostly unseen by the public, was a doorway leading to the Lord Mayor's private quarters. Behind it, a staircase – carpeted in the original fleur–de–lis crimson – led downwards to a private entrance onto Princess Street. It was no longer open but historically only used by the Lord Mayor and guests, from kings and queens to cabinet ministers and foreign presidents.

Other artifacts discovered included bottles with historic references as well as a sandal buried into the building. The concealment of shoes into a building's foundations was not unusual in the 19th century. It was believed to protect the building against the influences of evil.

A long-lost set of original designs for Manchester Town Hall was also uncovered – in the last room archivists looked in. The drawings by architect Alfred Waterhouse date back to the mid-19th century and reveal an extraordinary level of detail.

The drawings showed that Waterhouse had considered the use of every one of the 500-plus rooms in his sprawling masterpiece, from the water department to the little room set aside for the civic organ player. The plans shed new light on the town hall's earliest operations.

Manchester's city architect had his own office, while whole wings were devoted to joinery and stationery. Half a floor was given over to water provision, and the fact a room was reserved for the 'unhealthy dwellings' department highlights the council's acknowledgment of Manchester's Victorian slum conditions.

The latest massive restoration project has seen the town hall closed to the public since 2018. Now considered to be one of Britain’s finest examples of Neo-Gothic architecture, here's hoping the ongoing rebuilding ensures Manchester Town Hall is around for another 140-years, at least.

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