A stylish new Manchester hotel has made the cut in a list of Britain's "100 Best Places to Stay" in 2023. Leven is the only Manchester hotel to feature in the new list published by The Sunday Times at the weekend.
Leven Manchester is based inside a former cotton warehouse, which was once the iconic Mash & Air bar in the city centre. Now it has been transformed into a design-led NYC-style loft aparthotel, with 42 boutique bedrooms.
It is a new entry on the Sunday Times list of Britain's best hotels and praised for its "industrial design". It is rated in the "rooms for under £125" category, citing room-only doubles priced from £89 a night.
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The hotel is spread across four of the original warehouse floors boasting exposed brickworks and huge warehouse windows. Meanwhile a new fifth floor was built on top of the building which houses stunning penthouse suites with balconies and eye-popping views out across the city centre.
In the Sunday Times list, the entry for Leven praises the hotel for its "prime position" just five minute's walk from Manchester Piccadilly Train Station. It says: "Housed in a red-brick former cotton warehouse, it's now a mix of an intimate boutique hotel and an aparthotel with an industrial design that provides personality without fuss.
It adds: "This is the spot for the kind of person who might book an Airbnb but want the services, style and location of a hotel." It is one of 15 hotels that are listed in the "North" section of the best hotels list.
It also features two Lancashire hotels - the Freemasons at Wiswell and The Cartford Inn in Little Eccleston while Liverpool's Titanic Hotel gets a nod. The five star Seaham Hall in county Durham is named as the regional winner for the north in the list.
Manchester brothers Joshua and Ben Senior are behind the venture - having invested millions of pounds to sensitively upgrade the building at its prominent location on the corner of Chorlton Street and Canal Street in the city's Gay Village.
When they launched the venue earlier this year, they said that Manchester is the first of what is planned to be a "global network" of Leven Hotel sites, with the brothers working in partnership with Wellbrook Hospitality on the new brand.
They say they want it to be a place for guests to stay "on their own terms" - and rather uniquely that means there's no fixed check-in or check-out time. Instead, the hotel will do its best to accommodate the time you would like to stay and go.
The design of the venue has a chic NYC loft-style apartment feel throughout, with green tiles and furnishings a key feature of the lobby and lounge areas on entrance.
Every bedroom is unique - all boasting their own artworks and design, with room rates starting from £89 a night.
The spectacular penthouses on the top floor boast outdoor balconies offering stunning views out across Canal Street and over the rooftops and beyond. These rooms start from £299 a night.
Guests enter the hotel off Chorlton Street, walking into the main lobby and bar area furnished in vibrant bottle greens with emerald scallop tiles adorning the walls. There is a coffee bar and pastries here through the day (where you can grab continental breakfast if you're a guest), becoming a cocktail bar in the evening.
There's also a small gift shop here with Leven-branded merchandise. Here's where you can find their "signature" Leven socks that also appear in every room too.
Long term the aim is to create a large restaurant and bar concept in the basement of the hotel, with bosses said to be in "advance discussions" with an operator. In more recent times it has been used as a pop up art exhibition space.
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