Chandos Hall is the one to go for... (Accommodation in general)

Member Name: 1983agoodyear

Product:	Accommodation in general
Date:	13/05/02 (1214 review reads)
Rating:

Advantages: Very close to the student bar, A well kept, clean building, A pleasant and productive atmosphere

Disadvantages: Some rooms encounter noise pollution from Victoria station, Some rooms are near a railway line which bothers some people but not me

For around six months I lived at Chandos Hall (no longer as I left my course at the University of Manchester for another) and I would commend it with only one reservation as I found it too far for comfort from the Manchester University, as it always took me around 15, 20 minutes to go between the two at the sort of speed I like going places and this is a conservative representation as I always felt myself rushed. Don't be fooled by the accommodation map - the scale's a fair bit smaller than it appears. I thought the massive motorway roundabout would be a quaint little thing with flowerbeds and adverts placed by local businesses in the middle bit! - For UMIST students it's right on top of things, unless you're at the business school or materiel sciences thing, which are a bit further away.

The actual building was is your typical 1960s concrete job, from the "let's have all the working class people living happily together in a commune just as I did before daddy stopped sending me money" school of architecture, but don't let that put you off as it is in good condition and is well maintained. There's one basement floor, housing a table tennis table and a laundry, the ground floor with the office and the common room and then residential floors of which there are about fourteen, I forget exactly. Right at the top is the warden's floor, with a well hidden roof-top garden and a meeting room for the annually elected Residents Association Committee - or RAC - which organises social events and represents the concerns of residents to the warden/UMIST accommodation bosses. The bulk of the floors have a dozen or so people living on them, I'm not sure exactly as the one I was in had less, as like three other floors it housed a tutor's flat (the tutors being there to quieten us down/make sure we don't kill ourselves etc.,) and a cleaning cupboard which together accounted for roughly a quarter of the available space. The
rooms are spacious, no doubt about it, on the small floors there's two shared rooms and seven single ones though most of the double ones aren't shared and are instead designated "super single" rooms with the inhabitant paying extra for double the space, unless their room-mate moved out for somewhere else in which case they end up getting more for less, har har (I speak with experience...)

Each single room has a sink (in Chandos Hall there seems to be no uniform standard of sink, there're all shapes and sizes which is typical of the nature of the place) with a mirror that somehow manages to be inherently manky without actually being unhygienic or mucky. The wardrobes are spacious, and built in the wall so they can't fall over/get nicked/fall from a window and kill someone, etc., and have capacious cupboards above them which are very handy. The desks are a nice size and quite new, the mattresses on the beds are nice and firm, the linen's good and the chairs are comfortable (each single room has one high-backed normal chair and one low down slob-chair). There are enough lightbulbs/powepoints/lightswitches/shaving plugs and the windows open and a good temperature is maintained. Apparently on the lower floors the bedroom sinks have been known to overflow somewhat but on the upper levels they do nothing but gurgle a couple of times in the evening, for no apparent reason. The floors are carpeted throughout (with the exception of the kitchen) the corridors are well-light, a little narrow, and painted either yellow, red or blue depending on the floor. Just outside the lift/stairwell there's always a full-length mirror and a snazzy little letter signifying what floor it is you're on. Getting TV reception in the rooms is tricky. According to my former room-sharer you can obtain keys for your desk and your wardrobe from reception. All the rooms have telephones installed (but it's easier just to use your mobile!) and an Etherne
t socket. Double rooms have double the facilities, with the exception of sinks, mirrors, windows and radiators. On my floor there were two toilets, two showers and one bath which no one ever used. I personally had no problem with the showers though one of them was a trickle rather than a shower and the other had no lock or ventilation so it was a trade off between privacy and comfort, though the one which was lacking a lock did have a curtain that could be drawn. The toilet cubicles were a little crampt and the only place to wash your hands would be in your own sink. Washing/toiletry provision was adequate and there were never any queues.

The kitchens are excellent - however both the 2001 and 2002 UMIST/MANU accommodation brochures advertised the presence of Satellite TV and two microwaves, though my floor had but one and no sky (there isn't a computer cluster in the hall either, as it claims, the room it once occupied having at some point been commandeered into becoming - well, let's just call it the UMIST North Campus's debtors prison...) Everyone gets a locker to keep their food in, there's two fridges, two freezers, a kettle, a toaster and two electric ovens as well as a microwave - crockery, cutlery and pots and pans are all provided, and again provision is adequate. Kitchens are cleaned on all weekdays, and the washing up liquid topped up, and provide a good place for gathering to watch TV or just "chilling" and are exactly the right size for the number of people who use it. The only thing is that the water's a little minging, it's warm and has a disturbingly smooth, silky flavour but then I think it's the same in London. I am very much of the provinces. The hall is an excellent place in which to get drunk - resident hall tutors are there to pick you up and lead you to your bead/calm you down and there's no end of things to shout out of the windows and the little egg-cups constitute a good supply of ready made
shot-glasses.

The atmosphere of the place is brilliant - I had no problems with any of the guys on my floor and had a great time there and the better I got to know them the more I liked them. It's literally a minute's walk from the UMIST bar, a stone throw's away from the station and not far from the city centre which in some ways is as good as it is bad!! The office in the reception has some decent secretaries in it by day and security guards in there by night so there's always someone to let you back in to your room if you lock yourself out 24-7 and there's also a security lodge just down the road full of burly UMIST-troopers - in this respect (having its own reception) it is unlike the other halls in the UMIST North Campus (Wright-Robinson, Lamberts and Fairfild's Hall) who are all served by this office and picking up post is really easy. As someone who served on the RAC for a couple of months, pre-me executing a deedpol, until I became an absentee member (!!) and once attended a higher-level meeting (which was not confidential, may I just point out seeing as I am going to mention some of what came up for your benefit) where it transpired that there was a greater frequency of crime/unauthorised entry in the other residences as well as an increased problem with leafleters (all the leaflet sprees in Chandos were inside jobs) who'd come in and stuff loads of leaflets everywhere, though the harsher crime problems such as burglary were generally speaking more in the Univeristy of Manchester's halls in Moss Side and places like that, where GMP patrol with machine-guns! The Chandos Hall entrance was, when I was there (until Feb 2002) opened by a key card from the outside, and to get to the lifts you had to open another door with it, though people who shouldn't be inside have been known to slip in after others when they opened the door as though they were residents just coming in with them, though this is rare. To discourage
leafleters people are allowed to leave the odd pile of papers in the foyer, with most of the rubbish that gets pushed under people's doors being adverts for the Paradise Factory, a local club. And don't be taken in by the big macho CCTV camera - it's placing's a little dodgy and more often than not it can't see anything by virtue of its positioning though by Sept. 2002 they'll have probably sorted it and I think that to be fair security is pretty tight - although there are prostitutes and tramps on Granby Row/Sackville Street, none of that sort of thing gets through the measures that are in place and once inside the hall you can go about your business there with a well-founded sense of security. As someone on my floor said, all the crime's going on eleven floors down! - In my crime there I encountered no crime other than the ones we committed!!

To summarise: In the words of the accommodation brochure, "Friendly, relaxed supportive environment" - it's secure, has its own distinct, pleasant ambiance to it, is well located and has good facilities. It provides a quality environment for both work and play. I enjoyed every moment of my time there, both dull and memorable!! - As someone starting at the University of Warwick later this year, looking at the type of accommodation they have, it seems unlikley that any of them will equal Chandos in terms of facilities and customer service, though this of couse remains to be seen...

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