In the City Arms on Kennedy Street

Now if I have to own up to a favourite pub in the city centre, the City Arms pretty much does it for me.

It’s situated on Kennedy Street and like its neighbour has been selling beer from at least 1850 if not earlier.

And it is just exactly what you think a Victorian pub should be.

There are two rooms, plenty of old tiles and a sense of history in the place.

In its time it has been the haunt of local politicians, town hall staff and a band of loyal customers.
And of all the landlords who have stood and called time at the end of the night my interest has been drawn to Edwin and Eliza Eastwood from Yorkshire.

In 1851 they were both just 22 and I guess had not been in the city for long.  They had married the year before in Halifax where Eliza had been born, and both came from families which were inn keepers.

He described himself as a beer seller and as the pub does not feature in the list of pubs and taverns in 1850 I rather think he was one of those hundreds of people who had taken advantage of the 1830 Beer Act which had allowed the brewing and sale of beer from a person’s house for a small fee.

It was often a side line to supplement the family’s income but for some it led on to better things.  In the case of Edwin and Eliza this was to be the St ledger Hotel on King William Street in Blackburn where they were pulling pints and serving customers by 1871.  Three decades later Edwin aged 72 had become a property agent and lived in a comfortable looking terraced house in Granville Road.

Nor is that quite the end of the story of young Edwin and Eliza, for 1861 after they may have already moved off Edwin was visiting Manchester and staying at the Wagon and Horses on Back Bridge Street.  There is still a pub there on the same spot and back in the 1970s we often slipped in there for a quiet drink before going off to the cinema.

It was the perfect place for an early evening drink, with a few office workers and shop assistants passing the time before they went home and before the evening crowd came in.

Back then it was close to the Deansgate Shambles.  But all of that is quite properly another pub and another story.

Picture; West Yorkshire, Marriages and Banns 1813-1935 from ancestry.co.uk

Painting; The City Arms, © 2013 Peter Topping, 
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