Celebrating Didsbury’s history

Now there are many ways you can tell the story of Didsbury over the last few centuries, and this is the new one.*

Our book on Didsbury’s history is published today and joins the other two in the series, Manchester Pubs The Stories Behind the Doors and brings to seven the books I have written with Peter Topping.**

With the new one, we had no intention of repeating the excellent work of earlier Didsbury historians, *** and instead went looking for the people who owned, worked or just drank in the pubs, and through their stories helped tell the bigger story.

Like all our books, this one has been designed as a series of walks, starting in the east and by degree travelling along Wilmlsow Road, and on to Burton Road, Barlow Moor Road and Lapwing Lane.

Each walk takes in 49 of our historic pubs and the bars and restaurants.

And because it would be churlish not to, we have included the four Withington pubs, and a final chapter on the lost drinking establishments.

There are six walks in all, and so as not confuse the casual tourist to Didsbury, they are Didsbury East, Didsbury Village South, Didsbury Village North, Withington, Burton Road, and Didsbury West, which will take you from Parrs Wood, north to Withington and on to West Didsbury.

In the Crown, 2019

Of course how you choose to walk the book is up to you, and armed with a guide to the tram stops and a bus timetable it will be possible to jump in and out of all the walks using Peter’s easy to read maps which head up each chapter.

Or if you prefer, you can just sit at home and read the walks.

Each pub has an original painting by Peter, with more peppered through the book, and there is a wealth of contemporary and period photographs along with my stories.

The book .... ready for sale

It is a book which will take you from the east of the township to the  west taking in four centuries of Didsbury’s history and a bit of Withington’s, and along the way features the pub associated with a dog called Brigadier, more than a few pubs which changed their names, and the one linked to Bob Dylan.

So that is it, Manchester Pubs The Stories Behind the Doors Didsbury is available from,
www.pubbooks.co.uk and local bookshops.


* Manchester Pubs The Stories Behind the Doors Didsbury, 2019

**others by Peter Topping and Andrew Simpson, Didsbury Through Time, 2013, The Story of Hough End Hall, 2015, Manchester Pubs The Stories Behind the Doors City Centre, 2016,  Manchester Pubs The Stories Behind the Doors, Chorlton-cum-Hardy, 2017, The Quirks of Chorlton-cum-Hardy, 2017, Chorlton-cum-Hardy, Churches, Chapels, Temples A Synagogue and Mosque, 2018, and by Andrew Simpson, The Story of Chorlton-cum-Hardy, 2012 and Manchester Remembering 1914-18, 2017

*** Booker John, A History of the Chapels of Didsbury & Chorlton, 1857, Fletcher Moss, Souvenir of the Coronation Festivities Held at Didsbury, June 22nd 1911, France, E & Woodall T F, A New History of Didsbury, 1976, Million, Ivor R., A History of Didsbury, 1969, Williamson Mrs. C., Sketches of Fallowfield and Surrounding Manors, Past and Present 1888, Whittaker, Kenneth, A History of Withington, 1957, and the excellent pamphlets by local historian Dina Leitch