Minshull Street Crown Court is a complex of court buildings on Minshull Street in

Manchester Manchester () is a city in Greater Manchester, England. It had a population of 552,000 in 2021. It is bordered by the Cheshire Plain to the south, the Pennines to the north and east, and the neighbouring city of Salford to the west. The t ...

. The court was designated a

Grade II* listed building In the United Kingdom, a listed building or listed structure is one that has been placed on one of the four statutory lists maintained by Historic England in England, Historic Environment Scotland in Scotland, in Wales, and the Northern Ir ...

on 3 October 1974. It is one of two Crown Courts in Manchester, the other being Manchester Crown Court (Crown Square).

History

The foundation stone for the building was laid by the mayor on 10 July 1868. The building was designed by the architect

Thomas Worthington Thomas or Tom Worthington may refer to: *Thomas Worthington (Douai) (1549–1627), English Catholic priest and third President of Douai College * Thomas Worthington (Dominican) (1671–1754), English Dominican friar and writer * Thomas Worthington ...

and was completed in December 1871. The building is in Worthington's trademark

Gothic Revival style Gothic Revival (also referred to as Victorian Gothic, neo-Gothic, or Gothick) is an architectural movement that began in the late 1740s in England. The movement gained momentum and expanded in the first half of the 19th century, as increasingly ...

with a massive corner tower and a chimney stack styled as a campanile. The courts are constructed in red brick with sandstone dressings and steeply-pitched slate roofs. There is a profusion of animal carving by Earp and Hobbs. Worthington drew both on his rejected designs for the Town Hall, and on his earlier plans for Ellen Wilkinson High School, although the central tower he used there is placed asymmetrically at the Police Courts, due to the constraints of the site. The interior court rooms "have been preserved with relatively few alterations." Following the completion of new Courts of Justice in Crown Square in May 1961, the

Lord Chancellor's Department The Lord Chancellor's Department was a United Kingdom government department answerable to the Lord Chancellor with jurisdiction over England and Wales. Created in 1885 as the Lord Chancellor's Office with a small staff to assist the Lord Chancel ...

decided to close the Minshull Street building in 1989, but as the volume of cases increased in the early 1990s, the Department decided to re-open the Minshull Street building again to support the Courts of Justice in Crown Square. Between 1993 and 1996, the Minshull Street buildings were extensively modernised. The original courtyard was glazed over and an extension was added to the Aytoun Street side of the courts. The architect for these works was James Stevenson of the Hurd Rolland Partnership. Internally, the modernised complex at Minshull Street was laid out to accommodate twelve courts. Notable cases include the conviction of the gambler, Ming Jiang, in February 2023, for the murder of his gambling companion, Yang Liu, whose headless body was found on a country lane.

Notes

Sources

* * {{commons category Grade II* listed buildings in Manchester Gothic Revival architecture in Greater Manchester History of Manchester Court buildings in England Crown Court buildings Government buildings completed in 1871

History

See also

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Sources