Palace Inn, Market Street Lane

This grand old inn stood on what was first Market Stead Lane, then Market Street Lane, and what we now know as Market Street. It is depicted here from the 1820s, and this one depicting a similar period shows how different Market Street was back then. The Palace is described in The Manchester Man as "the last relic of that cramped thoroughfare to disappear at the bidding of Improvement. Possibly, because its many eyes and dark-red-brick face looked out on a space so much beyond the twenty-one yards assigned by Act of Parliament to the regenerated street that the Improvement Committee had no powers to meddle with it, for surely its historic association were not sufficient to protect it [1]."

1. The Manchester Man, G. Linnaeus Banks, 1896.