Z is for ......

Zion Institute.

The Zion Institute was built for the Zion Church and paid for by a bequest from Enriqueta Rylands, wife of John Rylands. When it was a Congregational Chapel, it attracted a congregation of a thousand people for its morning and evening services every Sunday. It also functioned as a community centre offering local residents a variety of activities in its sixty rooms, that included a hall of worship, an assembly hall, a gymnasium, games rooms, reading rooms and a canteen.

It was just as well Mrs Enriqueta Rylands donated £25,000 to build the new church and Institute in 1907, because she already had a long term illness and died the following year.

The new Zion Congregational Church was completed and opened on Wednesday October 11th 1911. It was built on the site of the Zion Chapel which had opened in 1842.

It is now an Arts Centre and has survived two major clearances and redevelopments of the Hulme area where I lived from 1980 to 1984.

This concludes my a to z of manchester