A history of Didsbury in just 20 objects number 11 … .the plan of a pub

The story of Didsbury in just twenty objects, chosen at random and delivered in a paragraph or more.

I am looking at the plan of the lost Ring o’Bells, which stood the site of the Church Inn which in turn became the Didsbury Hotel.*

The plan is dated 1821 and formed part of the sales transaction by which Mr. Bethell bought the Ring o’Bell,s which he later demolished for his new pub which he called the Church Inn.

The name, the Ring o’ Bells goes back a long time and was a venue for the annual election of the township’s constable, was used by various Friendly Societies and once for a short while was used to hold a suspected criminal.

Added to which like many public houses it was occasionally used for the public sale of local properties.  In 1822 “at the house of Mr. Bethell, the Ring o’Bells in Didsbury the valuable estate of Mr. Lawrence Walker of Heaton Norris”, was for sale, along with several parcels of land, and “an excellent DOUBLE and SINGLE PEW, in Didsbury Chapel.  The large pew is subject to an annual payment of £1.1s and the other of 10s”. **

The same adverts provide a clue to as when the Ring o’Bells became the Church Inn, because in 1830 the sale of the home of Mr. Leech was offered up as “a Desirable Country Retreat” to be sold “at the house of Samuel Bethell, the sign of the Church Inn, Didsbury”.***

Location; Didsbury

Picture; map of the Ring o’Bells and surrounding area

* Plan of the Ring o’Bells, 1821, DCB 1595/36/8, Cheshire Archives and Local Studies, http://www.cheshirearchives.org.uk/home.aspx 

*Valuable Estate in Didsbury To Be Sold by Auction, Manchester Guardian, September 14th, 1822

***Desirable Country Retreat Manchester Guardian, May 1, 1830

Changing Didsbury …….. the bits we miss

 Now, we are all familiar with those old images of Didsbury stretching back into the last century and beyond, and the fun is comparing them with the same spot today.

Pub and restaurant, 2022,

It is something that publishers and historians go in for in a big way with titles like Then and Now, Old and New, and Times Go By.

All of which is fine but doesn’t always capture the last few decades.

After all when you have lived through those times it is easy to become blasé about what has changed around you.

And that is the subject of a short series predicated on the idea that we quickly forget the name of the bar or restaurant which occupied the site of that new Italian and which played a big part in our lives only a few years before.

It was Peter’s idea who on passing the Ye Old Cock reflected on the small restaurant next door.

I can remember it as an up market steak restaurant, and ate there when it was an off shoot of Dimitri’s around 2012.

But never really worked out why it changed its name to Olive and Vine but still advertised itself as Dimitri’s.

And last time I passed it was Jajoo, Indian Street Food.

Leaving me just to remember that back in 2008 it had been The Didsbury Village Restaurant.

Of course you can indulge yourself and slip ever backward, peeling away the decades.

But 20 or so years is perhaps enough.

The pub, 1954

And that makes a nice contrast to the Old Cock which has been a pub for a long time and I mean a long time.

It was already quite ancient when it hosted the Wakes events back in 1825.

So back to Peter who thought the series might not just focus on changes across the last few decades to two buildings, but also point out how one had stayed the same and the other had changed a lot.

Which is true of the Old Cock and its small neighbour. 

The pub has always had that name, and always offered up "beer and cheer" while its friend has had different names, and served different cuisines..... and the really oldies will remember when it wasn't a restaurant.

Olive & Vine in the summer

All of which is fine but does rather ignore that annoying little fact that the pub underwent a massive interior transformation, which saw all the intimate little rooms vanish to be replaced by a large open space.

But I shall ignore that development.  After all why let a bit of reality get in the way of a story, and just conclude that according to Peter  "The pub has always had that name, except for a brief moment in the early 1900s, when the ‘e’ in ‘Olde’ was dropped, while its neighbour  was the Welcome Cafe in 1928"

And then as sometimes happens, just after the story went live, Dimitri Griliopoulos, the owner of Dimitri's in town and Olive and Vine, replied with "Very sad to have given up Dimitris in Didsbury. 

8 months closed due to Covid was a big nail in a coffin, after 8 years hoping to make a financial success. 

The name Olive and Vine was to show that it was a slightly different style to Dimitris in town. 

Last time I passed it looked like the new owners also had trouble keeping going. 

Appeared closed ,

PS I worked at the Steak & Kebab restaurant there in the 1980s."

Along with the comment came some fine pictures which I just had to use.

Olive & Vine in the snow

So the postscript takes us full circle to Peter's original idea of presenting and informing the residents of Didsbury with a bit of the townships recent past

Location; Didsbury

Painting; Ye Olde Cock Inn and Jajoo @ 2022, Paintings from Pictures*

Picture; The Old Cock, 1954, from Didsbury Through Time, Peter Toping, & Andrew Simpson, 2013, and Olive and Vine, undated courtesy of  Dimitri Griliopoulos

*Dimitri's, https://www.dimitris.co.uk/

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

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

That pub on Palatine Road ……… with a bit of its history

Now, the Greenfinch pub rather dominates the corner of Palatine Road and Lapwing Lane.

It was  once a school for ladies, whose Principle was Miss Aurelia Hahnel.

She was busy expanding the minds of her students from 1878 to sometime between 1909 and 1911, by which time she was in her mid-sixties and may have decided that that was enough teaching for anyone.

The property was owned by the Midland Railway Company who seem to have bought it from a William Eastwood Green and looks to have been built in 1870.  Mr. had an extensive portfolio of property in the area including the White Lion.

Aurelia Hahnel’s father was Austrian, and he is listed variously as a merchant, chemist, and baker.  He died in 1900 in Boston in the USA and appears from the records to have been absent from the family from at least 1881.

It may just be that he was away during the years of the census, but that said, as yet Miss Aurelia is also absent from the 1861, 1871 and 1891 census records.

And for those who like a bit more history, one source records that it was once built as consulting rooms or small hospital by a doctor, for two of his daughters who failed to qualify”. *

I suspect this may refer to Mr. Thomas Ashton Goodfellow who as a GP, was living with his family in the property in 1911, but somewhere the story has lost something, because Mr. and Mrs. Goodfellow had three sons the eldest of which was just 8 in 1911.

The family appear still to be in the property when our doctor died in 1937.



Picture; the Greenfinch, from Manchester Pubs The Stories Behind the Doors Didsbury, Peter Topping & Andrew Simpson, 2019.  Available from www.pubbooks.co.uk and local bookshops.


*WHAT?UB, https://whatpub.com/pubs/MAS/4207/greenfinch-west-didsbury

The one you can’t visit …………….. today in Didsbury …… no. 2 CAU

This was the Wellington which has a long history dating back into the early 19th century if not earlier.

Depending on your age, you may well remember this pub as the Wellington or the Cavalcade, while if you grew up in the age of the Teletubbies, and the four Turtles, the site will have a succession of names of which include FUGU, Zizzi and more recently CAU.

Further back in time it was the Grey Horse but like its neighbor directly opposite it will have acceded to the rise of patriotic feeling after the defeat and be named after one of the two great military heroes of the day.

So, while its smaller rival became the Nelson, ours morphed into the Wellington, but it hasn’t always been the large impressive pile it became.

Back in the 19th century it was one of several more humble cottages which were there by 1818 and may stretch back into the 1780s.

Location; Wilmlsow Road

Pictures; CAU, 2020, from the collection of Andrew Simpson, and the Wellington in the early 20th century

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