Beetham Tower.
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The Beetham Tower or Hilton Hotel as it is otherwise known, lies in the heart of Manchester city centre.
Designed by Manchester-based firm, Ian Simpson Architects, the tower started construction in 2004 and was completed in early 2007 at a cost of £150 million, Standing at 171m tall (562 Feet), it is the tallest building in Manchester, and has the UK's highest living space, and the tallest building outside London.
The building includes a five star, 285 bedroom Hilton Hotel from levels 5-23, a 'destination sky bar' on the 24th floor and apartments up to floor 50.
At floor 24 the building dramatically juts out 4m from the floors below with a cantilever, the top floors offer views stretching as far as the Welsh Mountains, Liverpool and the Blackpool Tower, and can be seen from 10 counties.
The Architect who designed the building Ian Simpson bought the Penthouse duplex apartment with roof terrace for a reported £3 million pounds.
This place has been the one building in the city I have wanted to explore for a long time but never got around too, so when I recieved a call from Bungle one night with the decision to give it a go it was game on.
The weather was appalling and reception empty and already we where having second thoughts, but a break in the weather restored confidence, as we made our way in and started our ascent, security appeared from nowhere and demanded to know what we where doing.
We explained we where visiting friends and with that he took of with a concerned look, at this point the lift shot us up 20 floors but we where not happy with his response, again we thought of aborting the explore due to the possability of compramising the site and ourselves.
Not happy with this thought we marched back to the lobby and challenged the security guard!!!
He then apologized to us and explained that they get a lot of unwanted visitors trying wander round the building and gain access to the roof? "Really" we replied, "The cheek of some people".
With that he apologized once again and even directed us to the residents lift to take us straight to where we wanted to go ;)
When we finally reached the roof there was a moment of silence as we all took in the views, being on top of one of the highest building in the country is quite and accomplishment but after infiltrating it in style, it just topped the night off.
An amazing explore and worth it just for the view!
Date : April 2008 : Location : Cheshire : Explorers : Havoc : Bungle : Gibbo
