For most commuters in north Manchester, the Hellfire Club is a regular sight.
The brilliantly engineered curved structure sat on the corner of Queens Road dates back to the late 1800s and is also widely referred to as the Junction Inn or the Junction Hotel – a drinking hole that many locals consider as one of the more significant of north Manchester’s past.
Today, the building is a shell of its former self and as far as we’re aware, is currently still on the market for upwards of £300,000 with no interest from prospective developers.
The Junction Hotel
But that wasn’t always the case…
The Grade II listed building has played host to a number of ventures in its time, more notably the previously mentioned Hellfire Club which launched in 2006 and peacocked as a horror-themed bar home to “nefarious activities”.
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In the mid-2000s it’s said that biker gangs visited regularly and it survived comfortably due to a large regular clientele that called the place home.
Ironically, however, the Hellfire Club succumbed to a hellfire of its own in 2014 and shut down – leaving a much-adored history of revelling and memorable evenings in its wake.
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A year later, after a lavish refurbishment, Cirque Manchester took over.
Cirque Manchester, described at the time as “the hidden gem” Manchester had been waiting for, was a unique champagne-house bar set over two floors.
The Hellfire Club of old
The 250-cap venue opened each weekend and aimed to lure punters of similar venues in Manchester city centre out of town for “unparalleled service and a luxurious drinks menu”.
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With its vintage lounge that boasted VIP table service and glamorous waitresses, Cirque failed to become the elite celebrity hangout that it promised and closed for a rebrand just one year after its launch.
That’s when it got sexy. Literally.
Cirque’s owners, not wanting to fail (and clearly believing in such an iconic building), enlisted the services of Cheryl Smith, best known for organising Sexhibition, the North’s biggest sex festival.
Cirque
Keeping its name, the club’s new promoter turned the building into a burlesque emporium with the hope of attracting a more exclusive clientele during a time in which a ‘burlesque boom’ was sweeping Manchester’s nighttime landscape.
Equipped for fetish and BDSM nights, Cirque had brought back some of the nefarious energy that the building was famous for during its long stint as the Hellfire Club – and after rebranding away from a Deansgate crowd and focusing more on an exclusive audience on the rise, the club experienced some immediate success.
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But that success was short lived, and a pattern had officially formed on the corner of Queens Road. The old Hellfire Club, or Junction Inn, or Junction Hotel, was struggling to rediscover its identity and multiple failed attempts at reinvigorating it had left it derelict.
The Hellfire Club today
Then the hellfires returned.
Derelict buildings in north Manchester don’t stand for long without being savaged by fire, and in 2019, the still-photogenic curved building had become home to multiple blazes, leaving it run-down and home to mountains of scorched rubbish and timber.
With its gutted Victorian-interior and unsafe floors and stairwells, over the last few years, the idea of redeveloping this historic landmark has become an off-putting prospect for property developers – but it can’t be long until someone decides that turning it into flats just two miles from Manchester city centre could be a lucrative proposition.
In the meantime, it continues to stand strong and is remembered by many as a place in which they laughed with friends, filled their bellies, or saw some sh*t they’ll never forget.
Long live the Hellfire Club!
Feature
Liam Broady is on the comeback – here’s why you need to watch out for him at Wimbledon
The Manc
Local tennis player Liam Broady is quietly rising back up the ranks on the ITF Tour, and here’s why we think you should watch out for him come Wimbledon 2026 this summer.
He is physical proof that the ATP Tour ranking means so much to a player’s career.
The Stockport-born tennis player has suffered many injury setbacks since turning pro in 2014. With a host of ankle and back injuries plaguing his playing career, he has had to turn to the ITF (International Tennis Federation) Tour to climb the rankings once again.
He is currently placed at 283* on the ATP (Association of Tennis Professionals) Tour after reaching two semi-finals in the space of a month.
With wins on two of Portugal’s hard courts in Faro and Santo António, the 32-year-old has climbed from rank 303 at the start of the year to under the threshold in less than three months.
His hard work on outdoor courts is paying off as his seeding is slowly improving, and his opponents are becoming less of a challenge.
For the unititated, the ATP ranking is decided by a points system that determines your playing level, and therefore who you can possibly draw, with lower seeds getting tougher games as they need more points, and vice versa.
These point tallies factor into every win, loss, serve, and shot as it propels you up or down the table.
With an injury over Christmas, the Stopfordian Team GB player came back stronger for the start of the annual tournament calendar and now looks to be in fighting form on the ITF Tour.
He’s definitely had to tackle some obstacles over the years, both on and off the court…
Competing solely on outdoor hard courts to gain his fitness levels back is necessary, but the grass courts – his speciality – will come around with time and consistent form, with Wimbledon being his home tournament and his highlight of the competitive calendar.
His career best ranking was 93, after becoming the first British wildcard entry to beat an ATP top five player in 2023 when defeating Casper Rudd on Wimbledon’s centre court.
His win against the Norwegian in round two sent him into the top 100 rankings for the first time, and into the shining spotlight alongside British tennis stars.
The adverse effects of time away from the tour are clear to see with Broady’s peaks and dips in the table below; this means taking a hit to player motivation, game-to-game momentum and teamworking within doubles pairs.
Liam Broady’s career rankings progression chart. (Credit: ATP Tour)
It is a likely situation for players to neglect their doubles career without the added stress of injury, so if they are to arise, it does not just impact individual physicality levels but also communication between doubles pairs.
A fellow British player with similar injury problems is Emma Raducanu, who rose to fame with a shocking US Open grand slam win as a qualifier. Since her win, she has had multiple surgeries, which saw her plummet down WTA (Women’s Tennis Association) standings due to time spent off court.
The issues that come with injury upsets can make a career really difficult to reclaim, even at a young age; tour rankings can be brutal on game time and match opponents, such as Broady’s Wimbledon draw against Holland’s Van De Zandschulp and Raducanu’s recent draw against American no.3 Anisimova.
We hope to see Team GB’s athletes fit and ready to fight on tour, and we have a strong feeling we’ll see native talent Broady back in the spotlight where he belongs.
Gig review | KEO at the O2 Ritz in Manchester – Sometimes you just KNOW…
Danny Jones
Fontaines D.C., Turnstile, Wunderhorse, Sleep Token, Neck Deep; sometimes it only takes a few listens and a live show to KNOW that a band is going to catch fire and go on to be huge – for Audio North and KEO, it only took a few.
But having now seen KEO for a third time, collectively, we’re more convinced than ever that they’re going to be massive.
Sadly, a prior engagement meant that we just missed catching the support act, Tooth (though we did hear great things rumbling around the eager young crowd), but there was no chance we were going to miss this lot show off how very good they are at what they do.
And there was absolutely no chance they were going to disappoint us, either…
We first caught this fast-rising post-grunge outfit live in action at Kendal Calling last year, where they somehow turned a daytime slot on the Woodlands stage into a moody mid-evening mosh.
They had even less fully produced and officially released music out then, but then we had the pleasure of watching them at The Key Club in Leeds this past October, and they were even better; punchier, more graduated at their game, and their fandom seemed plenty strong already.
As it turns out, that same progression proved true in Manchester, as KEO played their biggest headline show to date, and that same cult following only appeared more fervent than ever.
They might be based down in the capital, with roots in Portugal, brothers Finn and Conor having grown up there, but they certainly know a thing or two about how to please a Northern audience.
Of course, we’re sure they go off just as hard down in the capital – in fact, we’re certain they do – but the response they got from two sold-out rooms full of Yorkshire folk and us equally discerning Mancs felt like they had well and truly passed the litmus.
With flying colours, may we add.
Everything from the raw ’90s rock feel to the aesthetic hits just right. (Credit: Audio North)
It’s also worth noting that these London lads have built up this hype like very few ever manage to do: by developing a sterling live reputation right from the off and putting top-notch shows first.
For those unaware, they only just released their first five-track EP, Siren, back in June 2025, yet they’ve been packing out venues and festival stages pretty much since day dot, with die-hards growing their love for the band via performance and initially only learning the lyrics through social clips and snippets online.
While some have questioned why they’ve been chosen to headline this year’s Neighbourhood Festival here in Manchester city centre before they’ve even dropped a debut album, you only need to hear the entire Ritz screaming back the lyrics to ‘I Lied, Amber’, ‘Thorn’ and ‘Hands’ to know they fit the bill.
Frontman Finn pours so much unbridled power and emotion into his vocals, guitarist Jimmy Lanwern didn’t even need to look to know that his riffs were ripping the roof off, and they’ve quickly moved far beyond the early Wunderhorse parallels – they’re their own beast just waiting to be fully woken.
Sam Ridgway -
8th May 2021 
