The lost canal ….Bert’s Café …. and the Coach and Horses ….. views across Minishull Street fifty years ago

This was one of my familiar views of the Manchester I knew in the 1970s.

Looking towards Minishull Street, 1979

To my left was the tower block of the College of Commerce which some of us affectionately called The College of Knowledge but which had just joined the Art School and John Dalton to become Manchester Polytechnic.

Over to the right was the Fire Station and Police Station on Whitworth Street West. Leaving just the tall buildings of the British Rail office block and the swirling S bend pile which was more glass than wall.

Lost view of Minishull Street, 1979

And for those really in the know hidden behind the hoardings in the first picture was Bert’s café and Placemate that night club which had once been home to the Twisted Wheel.

To which there was the Coach and Horses on London Road which my Pubs of Manchester Past and Present tells me "was originally an artisan's house with a workshop on the top floor.  It ended its life as a Tetley house at the bottom of Piccadilly Approach on the corner of Upton Street".*

We would sometimes cross the car park from the college and spend an evening in there, ostensibly discussing the next essay but quicky ending up on the football machine drinking from those old-fashioned straight glasses.

Go back to 1850, and the spot from which the pictures were taken and this was Coal Yard of the Bridgewater Canal Company, supplied by an arm of the Rochdale Canal.  The canal still exits running beside Canal Street and running  eventually in one direction to the Dale Street Basin and  Castlefield in the other.

That canal arm, 1850

But the arm which also nudged Little Davis Street has long gone.  It was still there in 1950 and may well have been filled in when the College of Knowledge was built in the 1960s.

Leaving me just to reflect that for a while the Poly occupied the warehouse which once abutted the arm of the canal while I have written about Little David Street and some of the people who lived there.*

The Rochdale Canal with the vanished arm to the right, 1980

I could again explore that history from the 1850s but instead will settle on Bert’s Café which remains with me over 50 years after we frequented the place, eating Bert’s sausage sandwiches and swapping stories of the night before.

Given that it was just a few minutes’ walk from the College and we were the archetype students, we would put a morning breakfast over the first lecture of the day. 

The place consisted of just one room with a serving hatch from which Bert delivered the orders which mainly consisted of chips with egg, or bacon or sausage with a variation of these in sandwiches.  The bread was white, the spread marg and the coffee was hot milk with a hint of the brown stuff.

In the winter the windows were always steamed up and in the summer the door was permanently open but had those plastic-coloured strips which rustled in the wind and were a concession to privacy.

The view, 2025

Location Minishull Street

Pictures, looking towards Minishull Street, 1979 from the collection of Andrew Simpson and the arm of the Rochdale Canal,  1851 from Adshead’s map of Manchester 1851 courtesy of Digital Archives Association, http://digitalarchives.co.uk/ and the view in 2025, courtesy of Google Maps

*Pubs of Manchester Past and Present, http://pubs-of-manchester.blogspot.com/2010/01/coach-horses-london-road.html

** Little David Street, https://chorltonhistory.blogspot.com/search?q=Little+David+