A history of Didsbury in just 20 objects number 2 ........... the polling book …. 1836

Now most people will know that there was a time when few people could vote in elections, but I am always taken aback by just how few that was.

Didsbury in 1853

Here in Didsbury, the total population who were over the age of 21 in 1841, was 1,789, but those entitled to cast their vote in Parliamentary elections amounted to just 52, and of course all the 52 were men.

Added to which 30% of those electors, didn’t even live in Didsbury.

Now this I know because of the Poll Books, which are a list of voters entitled to vote by virtue of a property qualification.

They are a wonderful resource, providing the name of each elector, where they lived, the nature of their qualification and the location of that property.

And for good measure, the entry also provides the name of who lived in each property, many of whom were tenants, which extends our knowledge of who was resident in Didsbury in the year the register was compiled.

% of electors living in Didsbury in 1836

And that is very important, because apart from the census returns, there are few documents which offer up the names of people who were not either wealthy or in trade.

The first census to record individual names, was the 1841 census and while there are parish records for births deaths and marriages, these can be fragmentary, and early directories, tend only to list the “people of plenty”.

So, with names of even the humblest, it is possible to visit the rate books and search for both owners and tenants, and that will yield how much they paid in rates, as well as the estimated rental value of the property.  These rate books were compiled every year and so it is possible to track the movements of an individual tenant or property owner around Didsbury.

And that is particularly useful given that the time between each census was ten years, and many street and trade directories are not inclusive.

There is of course the tithe record, which lists who owned the land, who rented it, its value and it's use.  It also came with a map, which makes it easy to plot where people lived, but these were one off exercises.

The Didsbury Hotel, once the Church Inn, circa 1860-70

So, our Poll Books are a fascinating insight in to Didsbury, more so because in an election year they also record how people voted.

This was after all, a time before the secret ballot and how you voted was seen by everyone who attended on the day of the election and was recorded for everyone to read..

Alas our Poll Book dates from 1836, a year when there were no Parliamentary elections, so I cannot find the voting preference of Samuel Bethell who interests me because he was for a time the owner of the Church Inn which sometime after 1855 was renamed the Didsbury Hotel.

He also owned the smaller beer shop known as the Prince Albert, which stood roughly on the corner of Millgate and Wilmslow Road.  The Church Inn had a rateable value of £74 which was matched by its near competitor the Old Cock, but was far ahead of the Prince Albert which paid just £14.

That shouldn’t be a surprise given that in the 1850s, the Prince Albert appears to have been run by John Arnold who was also a blacksmith and the beer shop may well have been a secondary venture.  So far, he has proved elusive and is not on either the 1841 or ’51 census, and while there is a John Arnold on the Poll Book for 1836, I do not think this is he.

Detail of the Didsbury Hotel, 1860-1870

But there are 73 names on the Poll Book which pretty much opens 72 more investigations which in turn may tell us a lot more about Didsbury back in 1836.

And along the way I might also uncover more about Mr. Bethell, who according to one Didsbury historian “acquired squatter’s rights over the space [in front of the Church Inn] by enclosing it with boundary stones sometime between 1821 and 1855 and treating it as his own”. **

In so doing he will have deprived the villagers of an open space, leaving me to reflect that such a dastardly act may also have led him to watering down the beer.

But that may just be one scurrilous accusation too far.

We shall see.

Location Didsbury

Pictures; Didsbury showing the Church Inn and Old Cock, 1853, from the OS for Lancashire, 1841-53, courtesy of Digital Archives Association, http://digitalarchives.co.uk/ and the Didsbury Hotel, formerly the Church Inn, 1860-70 from the Lloyd Collection

*Poll Book, 1836, Didsbury, Southern Division of the County of Lancaster, page 62-63

** A History of Didsbury, Ivor R. Millon, 1969, page 25

Looking for the Didsbury street they stole ……

Well, a bit deceptive as the street in question is still there it’s just its name they stole.

Northgate Street, 2021

All of which will prompt the party poopers to exclaim “what an outrageous and silly bit of nonsense”.

And so it is, although that said there is a serious story here which revolves around the comprehensive city-wide policy of eliminating certain street names which I guess was to do away with duplications.  

I suppose it has always gone on, but I know that in the 1960s and 70s plenty of old names vanished.

Many of them were in Chorlton, but now I have come across the first in Didsbury and it was North Street which ran off Wilmslow Road close to the clock tower.

North Street, 1957

Today it is Northgate Street and for anyone still a tad puzzled as to where it is, just look for the Station pub which remains a delightful little place to pass the time.

The Station on North Street, 1959

I first came across it in 1978 on a night spent in the company of John Cordwell who lived in Wolseley Place, and always maintained that he was the man who shouted out “Judas” at the Bob Dylan concert in Manchester in 1966.  

John and I had worked together at a high school in Wythenshawe, and while I had stayed, he moved on to a post at Didsbury College of Education.  

We kept in touch, and more than once squeezed into the pub which at weekends was always heaving.

Just when John confided the Dylan story to me, I have long ago forgotten, and if I am honest I only half believed him, given that he did recount amusing and sometimes impossible tales, which were always  told with a slight smile and a twinkle in the eye, as if to say challenge me if you dare. 

That Dylan concert, 1966

Moreover, while I knew him as John, many of his older friends knew him as Nigel, and later still I rather think he reverted to Nigel.

It is a memory I long cherished and just when I began to think that I had dreamed it up, the confirmation came in an article in the Independent by Andy Kershaw, leaving me to tell friends that not only had I known the man that shouted out Judas to Bob Dylan, but it predated the national revelation by thirty years.

And that takes me back to Mr. James Edward Smallpage who was confident that his new beer shop on the corner of Wilmslow Road and North Street would be a success.

It started selling beer in 1879, and with an eye to the future, was directly opposite the new railway station which opened in the January of the following year.

And by 1881 it was trading as the Station Hotel, which rather cornered the market in railway names, given that his two nearest rivals were the Wellington and the Dog and Partridge.

He might even have adopted the name earlier, but sadly the rate books for the years 1880-81 for Wilmslow Road are missing.

North Street, and Wilmslow Road, undated

Before his entry into the world of beer, he was variously a cashier, and clerk and later reverted to this occupation, having given up the Station Hotel in 1885.

Thereafter the Station Hotel had a series of owners and managers and in 1911 the man pulling the pints was a William Wrightman who was 45 years old and a widow, who shared the pub with an Annie Elizabeth Robinson who described herself as “housekeeper”.

Cabs and people looking towards North Street, undated

Now this maybe the same William Wrightman who is listed as a cab driver at 40 Wilmlslow Road, which was just a few doors down the road in the row beside Saints and Scholars and is now the small open piece of land adjoining the library.

The romantic in me has often speculated on the relationship between Mr. Wrightman and Ms. Robinson.  

Both were from Lincolnshire and she was working as a cook in one of the big houses on Wolseley Place, a decade earlier, so their paths could have crossed many times.

She may even have encountered him in the cab office which stood directly opposite the railway station and the Station Hotel.

And after a few pints of Marstons in their old pub my imagination runs to the idea that he might be one of the figures caught in an old photograph of the railway station and the cab shelter.

And that is pretty much it except to own up that the search for North Street was not prompted by me, but by a request from someone who looking for what is now Northgate Street.

I wasn’t alone in offering up an answer, nor was I the first but I was the one with time on my hands to go looking for a story, and as you do found heaps of them.

In time I will trawl the rate books and find out when the houses fronting the street were built and maybe pick one to explore the histories of its occupants.

For now, I will leave you with the revelation that in 1921 the five properties on the southside were occupied by a mix of people including a clerk, salesman, engineer, florist, and “Crumpet Baker” along with the woman who described herself as “Domestic at the Poor Law Guardian Rhodes Memorial Homes”, which I suspect I will have to revisit.

As well as that outrageous plug for the book on Didsbury Pubs, available from www.pubbooks.co.uk

Location; Didsbury

Pictures; Northgate Street, 2021, courtesy of Google maps, North Street, 1957, from the OS map of Manchester and Salford, 1957, the Station 1959, m42646, courtesy of Manchester Libraries, Information and Archives, Manchester City Council, http://images.manchester.gov.uk/index.php?session=pass, and Wilmslow Road undated

The lost Didsbury pub …………

It was the pub which progressed from being a hotel, went on to have a connection with a snooty fox and ended its days as the Mersey Lights.

The Mersey Hotel opened on November 30th, 1939 and was an impressive place which according to the Manchester Evening News was a “modernistic and scientifically built hotel, with “a futuristic design”, but also reflected “the spirit of the past”, with its half-timbered exterior and grand entrance.

Inside, the hotel was divided into several rooms including a Lounge, Smoke Room and smaller areas, which were decorated with paneled walls and murals.

And in a nice touch of recognition to the “workmen who for the last 12 months have been building the premises”, Groves and Whitnall, who had spent £40,000 on its construction, “arranged that the workmen, including, foreman, joiners, carpenters, bricklayers, plasters, plumbers and other artisans shall have the honour of declaring this magnificent new hotel officially open”.*

We might find this a cynical marketing ploy, but I like to think it was genuine, and as the advert proclaimed, “The Opening Ceremony … performed by the Craftsmen who built it”, represented “A Pageant of Labour”.

A full forty years later I occasionally called in for a drink , and would sometimes be tempted to stay on for the big show, for like many of these big interwar pubs, the Mersey offered live entertainment, which had included, Little and Large, Les Dawson, Bernard Manning and Freddie and the Dreamers.

It is a little surprising today to realize that the Mersey, along with the Princess Club, in Chorlton, the Golden Garter in Wythenshawe and pubs like the Princess on the Parkway attracted many of the top entertainers of the 1960s and 70s, including the Drifters, Bob Monkhouse, Billy J Kramer, Lonnie Donegan and Tom Jones and plenty more.

In later years, Mersey Hotel became the Snooty Fox and later still the Mersey Lights.

At which I have to confess that to write more about this lost pub will only get me into trouble with Peter Topping who co-wrote our book Manchester Pubs The Stories Behind the Doors Didsbury

So I shall just tell you that it is available from us at www.pubbooks.co.uk

Location; Didsbury

Pictures; courtesy of Sally Dervan  











*The Mersey Hotel, Princess Parkway, West Didsbury, Opens Tomorrow Noon, The Manchester Evening News November 29th, 1939

The Prince Albert …….. one of the lost Didsbury pubs

The discovery of the Prince Albert was and remains a big surprise.  

Prince Albert, 2020

It stood on the northern side of Wilmslow Road, facing that modern block of flats located between Millgate and Kingston Road, and seems to have had a short life.

Like many beer shops it may have been a response to a period of unemployment or hardship or was run as a sideline to another business.

In the late 1840s and into the next decade, the Prince Albert was managed by a John Arnold who was a blacksmith and worked the smithy alongside the beer shop.

In the great pecking order of alcoholic establishments, the Prince Albert was pretty low down.  Its ratable value in the 1850s, was just £14 compared to the Didsbury Hotel and Old Cock which were both rated at £73.

It will have in all probability been just a room, and the beer may have been dispensed from the kitchen through a hatch.

For those who remember the Collier’s Arms by Hartshead Pike on the Ashton and Oldham border, just such a practice was how the landlady offered up her beer.*

Didsbury, 1853

Given its size and location I suspect it will have been frequented by agricultural labourers and passing itinerant traders, for who the Didsbury and Old Cock were too grand.

And, for perhaps a decade it was for those in the know, the first drinking place along the main road from Parrs Wood into the village.

Location; Wilmslow Road

Picture; Prince Albert…. That other Albert, in Albert Square, 2020, from the collection of Andrew Simpson,  Didsbury , 1853, from the OS for Lancashire, 1841-53, courtesy of Digital Archives Association, http://digitalarchives.co.uk/

*The Colliers Arms, https://ashton-under-lyne.blogspot.com/2008/01/colliers-arms.html

A book, and a thank you ......... Didsbury Through Time

Now for no other reason than I can, here is one of those smashing comments on a book I wrote.

The book, 2013

The book was the first I did in collaboration with local Manchester artist Peter Topping, and was commissioned by Amberley Publishing for their series "Through Time".

The format is a well travelled one, and consisted of taking 90 old and 90 new images of a place and writing a short comment focusing on "the changes over time".

Ours was Didsbury, and while Peter sourced the images from old picture postcards I wrote the text.

But nether of us wanted to follow the format exactly.

So Peter included some of his paintings of places in Didsbury which contrasted with older photographs of the same place.

And mindful that Didsbury has a well known and respected historian along with a series of historians who wrote accounts of the area in the 1960s and 1970s, I chose to write about the people in the pictures.  

In some cases these were those mentioned on the reverse of the cards, and others were people who lived behind the doors of the houses in the pictures.

It led to a sub title for many of our subsequent books which was simply "The Stories Behind The Doors".

The book proved very popular when it was published in 2013, and last week I got this message from John.

School Lane, circa 1900

"Dear Mr Simpson,

Having received a copy of your book from my son John, may I say a heartfelt 'Thank you' for a wonderful, memory evoking publication of Didsbury - as I write with tears in my eyes out of sheer gratitude and appreciation of your wonderful publication, you have helped an 80 year old woman in frail health be transported back to my childhood, your descriptions and dialogue are so splendid I feel

I am actually back in my beloved Didsbury and I smell those oh so familiar smells of the village and see the faces of  many shop keepers and personalities who lived around the area. 

Thank you once again, I am eternally grateful to you".

Leaving me just to add, that since the publication of Didsbury Through Time we have returned to the area and written Manchester Pubs The Stories Behind the Doors Didsbury and another on the places of worship in West Didsbury and Chorlton-cum-Hardy.**

Location; Didsbury

Pictures; cover of Didsbury Through Time, 2013, and School Lane circa 1900 from the book

*Didsbury Through Time, Peter Topping and Andrew Simpson, Amberley Publishing, 2013

**Manchester Pubs The Stories Behind the Doors Didsbury & Chorlton-cum-Hardy Churches, Chapels, Temples A Synagogue And A Mosque are available from us at http://www.pubbooks.co.uk/ 

The Fletcher Moss ……… once the Albert and once a railway pub

The beer house which became the Albert and then the Fletcher Moss and had been owned by a railway company.

The Albert, 1970

The Fletcher Moss was not always thus named, and many will remember it as the Albert when it was a more modest pub, still divided into small intimate rooms.

It appears to date from 1869, when a William Armett who had a number of properties on William Street took a chance on the 59 years old Joshia Bethell to run a new beer shop in one of his houses.

And that was the start of the Albert Inn which took its name from the nearby street, and later became the Fletcher Moss, as a reminder of that interesting character who gifted his home as a museum to the people of Didsbury.

But there has been much written on Fletcher Moss, and so instead I shall stick with Joshia Bethell who was born in 1811 when Didsbury was still a small rural community. He will have been old enough to have remembered the rejoicing at the news of Waterloo, celebrated the coronation of the old Queen in 1837, and watched as the first railway train arrived in the township in 1880.

And his early life reflects that old rural Didsbury.  In 1841 he gave his occupation as “joiner”, a decade later as “coachman” and in 1861 as a “gardener”.  But with an eye to the future and his advancing age in 1869 he took up the job as beer keeper at the new Albert Inn.  That said, either because the beer shop was not yet paying its way, or because he was a cautious man, he chose to describe himself on the 1871 census as “Gardener and beerkeeper”.

The Albert, 1959

A decade later all seemed well and he was officially recorded as “a publican”, by which time his landlord status had changed and from 1879 if not a little earlier he was a tenant of the Midland Railway Company who had bought up the land on either side of the proposed new railway track.

In that portfolio of purchases came William Street, and no doubt Mr. Bethell reflected with his customers on the changes the new railway would bring to Didsbury, offering those who could afford it a swift route into the heart of the city, or out to the Peak District and the south.

As exciting as that might have been, the downside was a rise in the estimated annual rent and rates bill  due on the Albert, which rose by an extra 5/- in rent and 2/6d in the rates levied on the property.

The Fletcher Moss, 2013

Of course, we will never know just what Joshia Bethell made of that rise, the coming of the railway, or what he might have said about the Albert becoming the Fletcher Moss. But I think we can be certain Joshia knew of Fletcher Moss and may even have met him.  Afterall the family had moved back to Didsbury from Cheetham Hill and later moved into the Old Parsonage which along with the gardens and recreation ground were donated to the city in 1919.

It was a generous gift and I like the idea that countless customers might reflect on the history that the pub has to offer up.

And if you want to read more about Didsbury’s historic and much loved pubs, then there is no better book than our recently published, Manchester Pubs The Stories Behind the Doors Didsbury, Peter Topping & Andrew Simpson, 2019.  Available from www.pubbooks.co.uk and local bookshops.

Location; Didsbury

Pictures; The Albert, 1970, A. Dawson, m49142 and 1959, J.F Harris, m50611, courtesy of Manchester Libraries, Information and Archives, Manchester City Council, http://images.manchester.gov.uk/index.php?session=pass and the Fletcher Moss, 2013, © Peter Topping

Coming to you in Didsbury …….. a barrel of Taylor Eagle’s best bitter. ….. by steam lorry

The brewey's; steam wagon

Now if you had been walking in the vicinity of the Royal Oak or the Station sometime just before 1914, you might have seen the steam lorry of Taylor Eagle delivering beer to our two pubs.

The brewery was founded by Joseph Taylor in 1849, registered in February 1888 and was sold in 1924 to a company which retained 60 pubs and was acquired by Marston, Thompson and Evershed Ltd in 1958.*

Now, it is easy to fall into the trap of speculating on the origin of the name Eagle in the title, and I wish there were something bizarre about how it came to be included.

But alas it is nothing more exciting than that the brewery was situated on Eagle Street, although later it was listed on Lloyd Street and Burlington Street which almost adjoins it.  It was here by 1863, and was advertised as “Taylor, Joseph, ale & porter brewer Eagle Brewery, Lloyd Street, Burlington Street, Oxford Street, Chorlton on Medlock”.

The full description

Mr. Taylor does appear to have prospered, because thirteen years earlier, he didn’t qualify to be listed in the trades section as a brewer and only appears in the alphabetical listings of the directory as “brewer 12 Calder Street”, and “beer retailer 25 Brownhill Street”, both in Salford.

It is a measure of just how modest his two enterprises were back in 1850, that neither Calder Street nor Brownhill Street were significant enough to be included in the directory.

 Nor does he show up in the historic records. 

In 1851, a Joseph Taylor is recorded as a pauper in the Salford Workhouse, while a second was living in Prestwich, was 73, and on “private means”, neither of which is he.

So, the search will go on, but in the meantime, I do have a map showing the brewery in 1893, a couple of beer bottles bearing the company name, and of course the ongoing mystery of where to find Mr. Taylor.

And a later steam engine

But, for all those who like lists, I do have a full list of the pubs owned by Taylor’s Eagle Brewery.  Most are in Manchester, with a few in Salford and others in faraway Altrincham, Knutsford, Timperley and Urmston, but the company had two in Didsbury, of which the second was the Station, but that is a story in another chapter.

And to compliment that list my old friend Bob Potts offered up an even more fascinating list of pubs and the year they obtained their first license covering the city centre, and the surrounding areas including Didsbury.

For the record, Bob  produced a fine book on the pubs of Hulme and Chorlton on Medlock. **

His records offer up a date of 1847 for its first license, and I wonder whether our Mr. Taylor on a visit out from Salford set about persuading the beer keeper at the Royal Oak to give up making his own beer and turn instead to Mr. Talyor’s “superior ales and porters”, which I am the first to accept is silly speculation.

And that is it.

Location; Didsbury

Picture; Taylor Eagle Brewery Steam Wagon, circa 1914 GMC Records, courtesy of Manchester Libraries, Information and Archives, Manchester City Council, http://images.manchester.gov.uk/index.php?session=pass  and a later steam lorry, 1980 from the collection of Andrew Simpson

*Brewerypedia, http://breweryhistory.com/wiki/index.php?title=Main_Page 

 ** Potts, Bob The Old Pubs of Hulme and Chorlton-on-Medlock, 1997

The Station ……. Mr Smallpage’s new enterprise on Wilmslow Road

This is the Station which was opened in 1879 by Mr. James Edward Smallpage, who was confident that his new beer shop on the corner of Wilmslow Road and North Street would be a success. 

He began his business just one year before the new railway station  opened in the January of 1880

And by 1881 it was trading as the Station Hotel, which rather cornered the market in railway names, given that his two nearest rivals were the Wellington and the Dog and Partridge.

He might even have adopted the name earlier, but sadly the rate books for the years 1880-81 for Wilmslow Road are missing.

Before his entry into the world of beer, he was variously a cashier, and clerk and later reverted to this occupation, having given up the Station Hotel in 1885.

Thereafter the Station Hotel had a series of owners and managers and in 1911 the man pulling the pints was a William Wrightman who was 45 years old and a widow, who shared the pub with an Annie Elizabeth Robinson who described herself as “housekeeper”.

Now this maybe the same William Wrightman who is listed as a cab driver at 40 Wilmlslow Road, which was just a few doors down the road in the row beside Saints and Scholars and is now the small open piece of land adjoining the library.

The romantic in me has often speculated on the relationship between Mr. Wrightman and Ms. Robinson.  Both were from Lincolnshire and she was working as a cook in one of the big houses on Wolseley Place, a decade earlier, so their paths could have crossed many times.

She may even have encountered him in the cab office which stood directly opposite the railway station and the Station Hotel.

But for the rest of this story and the Station's connection with Bob Dylan you will have read our new book on Didsbury's pubs.

Location; Didsbury

Pictures; the Station, 1959, m42646, courtesy of Manchester Libraries, Information and Archives, Manchester City Council, http://images.manchester.gov.uk/index.php?session=pass

A beer shop, a boggart and a dog called Brigadier ………….. The Waterloo

The Waterloo stood on Burton Road close to Boggarts Entry which is now the footpath leading to Candleford Road.

The Waterloo, 1907

The pub only vanished in the 1990s and stretches back into the 19th century appearing in the rate books for the late 1840s.

I always assumed it was another of those Battle of Waterloo pubs, but not so because according to the Withington historian, Mr. Whittaker, “it is said to take its name from the annual coursing race, the Waterloo Cup.  

The story is that the owner of a house where is now the Inn, one day picked up a stray dog.  He called the dog Brigadier and in 1866 it won the Waterloo Cup for him.  When the dog died, it was buried in the grounds and the grave remains to this day.  

On the tombstone is inscribed ‘In memory of a faithful friend Brigadier, winner of the Waterloo Cup 1866, died September 18, 1877 aged 14 years and 3 months’.  There is no reason for doubting this victory as the Times for February 17th, 1866, states that the ‘winner of the cup was Mr. Gordan’s Brigadier’”. **

The Waterloo, 1970

Mr. Whittaker includes a line drawing of Brigadier’s tombstone and there is now a Brigadier Close which runs into Burton Road just a few yards from the site of the pub.

But a trawl of the census return shows no Mr. Gordon on Burton Lane, and the rate books suggest that the pub which is listed as a beer house was owned by a John Chorlton and occupied by a George Thorniley from the 1850s into the 1860s.

All of which is very confusing but shouldn’t ever get in the way of a good story, which just leaves me to say that our pictures are of a later Waterloo and leave you either to find out for yourself about the word Boggart, or better still turn to our new book on Didsbury pubs and bars which is due out in June  11th.

At which point I have to say that my fellow author will be less than pleased that I have lifted one of the stories for the blog and will mutter darkly into his glass of Mancunian, that the “stories are for the book”, you can’t just give them away”***.

But that still leaves the stories of the other 48 drinking establishments, which we have grouped into six walks, allowing the reader, the Didsbury resident and the casual tourist to stroll from the east to the west of the township taking in the history of each pub and bar, along with the history of the area, and for good measure we included the “Withington four”.

And because we can we have also added the lost pubs, like the Prince Albert which flourished briefly and the grand Wellington Hotel which still dominates the corner of Wilmslow and Barlow Moor Roads.

So mindful of my fellow author I will say no more.

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

Location; Didsbury

Pictures; The Waterloo, 1907, m50749 and in 1970, m50750, courtesy of Manchester Libraries, Information and Archives, Manchester City Council, http://images.manchester.gov.uk/index.php?session=pass


*A History of Withington, Whittaker, Kenneth, page 38

**ibid, Whittaker, Kenneth, page 21

***Brightside Brewing Company, http://brightsidebrewing.co.uk/beers/the-mancunian/

Are you in our Didsbury pubs book?

In the Greenfinch with the Didsbury Dozen pub crawl, 2019

Now, that is not such an outlandish question, because in the course of producing the book which tells the stories of 49 Didsbury pubs and bars, Peter photographed a lot of people who were enjoying a pint, a meal or just a chat with friends.

 And some of them have come back to us to say that they would like to buy the book on the strength of appearing in it.

 One chap’s son bought him the book and having read it cover to cover bought six more because he and a friend were in the Fletcher Moss story.

Looking down from the Stairs at Saison, 2019

Nor is this peculiar to the Didsbury book, because while researching our first book on the iconic 78 city centre pubs we encountered a group out on their own beer survey.

All five were CAMRA members and two were from Scotland.  They consented to be in the book, and a few months later came up to us at CAMRA’s beer and cider festival in  Manchester Central and bought the book, because not only were they in it, but they had enjoyed looking at a copy a friend had just purchased.

The birthday bash at Botanist, 2019

Not to be out done, the following year, back in Manchester Central at yet another CAMRA beer and cider festival, we met up again, only to have our two Scottish friends recommend the book to the group they were with.

All of which takes me back to the Didsbury pubs book, which came out in the summer, already has had an official launch at Didsbury Beer Festival, where yet again, someone bought the book on the strength of their presence in the publication.

So if you are curious as to whether you are in it, or just want a good read about Didsbury's pubs and past, along with acquiring some of Peter's fine paintings,  you can  buy the book from us at www.pubbooks.co.uk

And just to draw you in there are plenty of stories, A new book on Didsbury pubs and bars at, https://chorltonhistory.blogspot.com/search/label/A%20new%20book%20on%20Didsbury%20Pubs

Location; Didsbury




Pictures; happy customers in Didsbury's pubs and bars from the book, Manchester Pubs - The Stories Behind the Doors - Didsbury, 2019

In the Orion on Burton Road ....... with memories of Mr. Norbury, the Crimean War and that last goal

Now you might be forgiven for wondering why our new book on the pubs and bars of Didsbury should have a chapter on Withington but it does.

And I am quite happy to say that we have included the four which will still serve you a pint, a packet of scratchings and a warm welcome, along with another four which exist only in the memories of some pub goers.

Of the four which still do the business, I could have chosen the Red Lion, but that would be to do what everyone would do, so instead I have chosen the Orion.

It is one of those pubs, and I say this in a nice way, where time has pretty much left it alone.

So, while there may be the requisite television screens and a range of bright tiles along the side of the bar it is still, a “down-to-earth, no-nonsense drinking shop”. *

On our last visit, which just happened to be a Thursday afternoon, the place was full of men of a certain age, most of whom were already past their 21st birthday when England won the World Cup back in 1966.

Their preferred drink was Holt’s Best Bitter, and the talk turned on the favourite to win at Doncaster the following day, and in what round had Henry Cooper felled Muhammad Ali in their 1963 fight.

And I don’t doubt that these bar room conversations wouldn’t have changed over much in the 150 years since the Orion had been opened by John Hamnet Norbury, who built two houses on a plot he had bought in 1867.

One of these he converted into a beer shop, installing his parents as the proprietors who worked the beer shop alongside a grocery business, and he settled into the other.

According to one source Mr. Norbury sold the beer shop on to the brewer Broadbent in 1875. **

This I suspect will have been Clowes and Broadbent who in 1863 were based at 109 York Street in Chorlton-on Medlock and later moved to 136 York Street proudly advertising themselves as the Clowes and Broadbent Steam Brewery. ***

They chose not to change the name Orion, which may have been in deference to Mr. Norbury who named the beer shop after the ship he had served on during the 1850s.

This was the second Royal Naval ship to carry the name Orion and there would be another three. ****

And as you do, I became fascinated by Mr. Norbury who was born in 1837 in Withington.

In 1855 he joined the Royal Navy and was posted to HMS Orion.  His service record shows that he signed on for ten years and the start of his engagement was April 10th. *****

Now that date is significant because HMS Orion had only been completed the month before and set sail for trials in the February of 1856.

She was at the cutting edge of naval technology having been planned as a sailing ship, she was redesigned to take steam.

She took part in the Crimean War, being posted to the Baltic, later sailed across the Atlantic visiting Havana and Canada, was present at the Fleet Review at Spithead in 1856 and completed her final posting in the Mediterranean in 1860 before going out of service the following year.

The romantic in me likes to think that years later, sitting in the bar of his beer shop John entertained his friends and customers with stories of his time at sea and it is quite remarkable that we can follow the naval career of an Ordinary Seaman across the world in the mid-19th century.

But that is not quite all.  We know his first child was born in Cornwall in 1859 and that his second was born in Withington eight years later, which fits with the end of his naval career which looks to have been 1861, when HMS Orion was decommissioned.  By the April of that year John and his family were settled in Withington on Burton Lane.

And he seems to have prospered, because in 1861 he described himself as a labourer, but within a few years is listed as a stone mason and builder.  So, it is just possible that he built the two houses, one of which became the beer house.

By 1881 he had replaced his father behind the bar of the Orion but had left by the following year, and I rather think the brewery also gave up the beer shop at the same time. They, like John appear in the rate books for Withington in 1882 but there after are missing.

Now there is much more …………. But for that you will have to buy the book, which is available from us at www.pubbooks.co.uk 

*WhatPub, https://whatpub.com/pubs/MAS/4351/orion-withington

**A walk through the history of Withington, Withington Civic Society, 2014
***Slater’s Street Directory 1863, and 1876

****HMS Orion, 1787-1814, fought at Trafalgar, 1805, HMS Orion, 1854-61, HMS Orion, 1879-1913, HMS Orion1912-1922, fought at the Battle of Jutland, 1916, HMS Orion 1934-49

*****Royal Navy Register of Seamen’s Services, 1848-1939

The lost pub on the edge of Didsbury ............. the Kingsway Hotel

I suppose most of us rather like to think of our pubs as cherished old things, which have survived the test of time, having seen off world wars, depressions and two Brexit debates and votes.

1959

And certainly when Peter and I came to write our new book on Didsbury‘s pubs and bars, we were confident that the majority would have clocked their first century and a bit and some like the Old Cock and the Didsbury Hotel could trace their origins back beyond the time that King George lost the American colonies.

But of course, there is a big chunk of the township which owes its existence to the inter war housing boom of the 1920s and 30s.

Out in East Didsbury and onto Burnage and Withington, private developers and the Corporation built new homes, and with these came schools, churches, a cinema and a clutch of brand-new pubs, like the Gateway and the Parrs Wood Hotel.

1995

These two we fell on with abandon, and because we could, we crossed the border into Burnage, and described The Mauldeth Hotel and the Kingsway, reasoning that many in Didsbury might well have traveled to the two for a change of scene, or perhaps a romantic tryst.

These were pubs built for the motor car age with carparks, and an eye to coach parties.

And like the cinemas of the period, the pubs were large, plush and designed to be places of comfort.

2019

Sadly, both The Mauldeth and the Kingsway had closed before we wrote the book.

I had first noticed the To Let sign on the Mauldeth Hotel back in 2014., and while it stayed there into the following year it later closed, reopening as a children’s nursery.

The Kingsway closed in 2018, and I did wonder its fate.

But how that wondering is over, because a few days ago Tony Kelzo posted three pictures of the demolition of the pub.

2019

I haven’t yet checked with the City Council’s planning portal to see what might go up on the site, but rest assured something will.

Leaving me just to mention the book again, Manchester Pubs The Stories Behind the Doors Didsbury, which neatly recounts the history of 49 pubs and bars, across Didsbury and Withington as well as the lost ones.

Together they help tell the story of how these areas changed over time.

The book is available from us at www.pubbooks.co.uk 

Location; Burnage

Pictures; The Kingsway in 1959, H W Beaumont, m49830, again in 1995, M Luft, m47481, courtesy of Manchester Libraries, Information and Archives, Manchester City Council, http://images.manchester.gov.uk/index.php?session=pass and the Kingsway in June 2019, from the collection of Tony Kelzo

When an Eagle sat in a Didsbury pub

I am the first to admit that as a title it might not pass muster under the heading of true stories about Didsbury pubs, but there is an element of truth.

The Royal Oak, 1959

This is the Royal Oak, famed for its cheese and pate lunches, mentioned in the Guardian Food Guide back in 1988, and regularly in newspaper articles and blogs ever since.

But once upon a time it received its beer from the Taylor’s Eagle Brewery, which was based behind the University on Lloyd Street.

The brewery was founded by Joseph Taylor in 1849, registered in February 1888 and was sold in 1924 to a company which retained 60 pubs and was acquired by Marston, Thompson and Evershed Ltd in 1958.*

Now, if you are at all romantic or imaginative, you might well speculate on the origin of the name Eagle in the title, and I wish there were something bizarre about how it came to be included.

The Eagle Brewery, behind the University, 1894

But alas it is nothing more exciting than that the brewery was situated on Eagle Street, although later it was listed on Burlington Street which almost adjoins it.

It was here by 1863, and was advertised as “Taylor, Joseph, ale & porter brewer Eagle Brewery, Lloyd Street, Burlington Street, Oxford Street, Chorlton on Medlock”.

Mr. Taylor does appear to have prospered, because thirteen years earlier, he didn’t qualify to be listed in the trades section as a brewer and only appears in the alphabetical listings of the directory as “brewer 12 Calder Street”, and “beer retailer 25 Brownhill Street”, both in Salford.

It is a measure of just how modest his two enterprises were back in 1850, that neither Calder Street or Brownhill Street were significant enough to be included in the directory.

 Nor does he show up in the historic records.

In 1851, a Joseph Taylor is recorded as a pauper in the Salford Workhouse, while a second was living in Prestwich, was 73, and on “private means”, neither of which is he.

So, the search will go on, but in the meantime, I do have a map showing the brewery in 1893, a couple of beer bottles bearing the company name, and of course the ongoing mystery of where to find Mr. Taylor.

But, for all those who like lists, I do have a full list of the pubs owned by Taylor’s Eagle Brewery.  Most are in Manchester, with a few in Salford and others in faraway Altrincham, Knutsford, Timperley and Urmston, but the company had two in Didsbury, of which the second was the Station, which is a story for another day.


Location, Didsbury, Chorlton on Medlock and Salford

Pictures; The Royal Oak, 1959, J.F. Harris, courtesy of Manchester Libraries, Information and Archives, Manchester City Council, http://images.manchester.gov.uk/index.php?session=pass  and the Taylor’s Eagle Brewery, 1894 from the OS map of South Lancashire, courtesy of Digital Archives Association, http://digitalarchives.co.uk/

*Brewerypedia, http://breweryhistory.com/wiki/index.php?title=Main_Page

The Didsbury pub that never was ……………a case of mistaken identity and incompetence

Now it is so easy to get things wrong when it comes to identifying a local pub.

You start with a picture that looks vaguely familiar, discover that it is in the collection either side of images of the same location, and hey presto the mistake is about to be made.

Of course, it doesn’t help that you want it to be a pub you know, which would fit into the story you are writing.

So, there we have it, the story of the Didsbury pub that never was.

It started with a trawl through the collection of Manchester images from 1967, and amongst a group of pictures which were clearly of Didsbury, I came across three pub interiors.

You don’t often come across photographs of the insides of pubs, partly I guess because people were too busy drinking, or because most of the clientele took the inside for granted seeing no reason to bother wasting film on what everyone knew.

All of which made these three a bit special, and knowing the interior of Didsbury pubs I quickly fastened on the Royal Oak.

Like our pub it once had tiny rooms and given its age, would have looked very similar to the one in the three pictures.

That said, something was not quite right, with the geography of the room in relation to the streets outside.

At which point I called in my co author of the Manchester pubs books for a second opinion.  Peter quickly pointed out that the name on the glass was the Queens Arms, and on closer inspection the partial street name visible through the window was not Old Oak Street.

Added to which for those who like these things the Royal Oak is a Marston’s pub, while the hand pumps on my mystery pub advertise Robinson’s brewery.

So it would seem that this is the end of the story, but not quite, because I rather think we can still learn something from our three images of what one of the smaller Didsbury pubs might have looked like.

And I know that this is historically a little questionable, but I have over the years sat in pubs across Manchester including Didsbury that come close to these interiors.

Back in 1967, you could still find pubs, with tired looking furniture, well worn lino, which offered just a darts board for entertainment and more than a few faded pictures of faraway scenes, along with a list of last seasons fixtures for the local football team, and an invitation to sign up for the next pub jolly to Blackpool.

Of course Didsbury pubs have long left this landscape well behind, and for those who want to know just how different they are I recommend our Didsbury pubs book ……….. Manchester Pubs - The Stories Behind the Doors - Didsbury, 2019, which is a companion to our other two in the series, on City Centre pubs, and the pubs and bars of Chorlton-cum-Hardy.

You can  buy all three books from us at www.pubbooks.co.uk

Location; Manchester,

Pictures; The Queens Arms, 1967,  "Courtesy of Manchester Archives+ Town Hall Photographers' Collection",
https://www.flickr.com/photos/manchesterarchiveplus/albums/72157684413651581?fbclid=IwAR35NR9v6lzJfkiSsHgHdQyL2CCuQUHuCuVr8xnd403q534MNgY5g1nAZfY