A pub ...... some oysters .... and a tale of moving a landmark

Pretty much everyone will have a story about Sinclair's and the Old Wellington.

So I won't offer up my own.

I will just wait and see.

Location; Manchester

Picture; the landmark with beer, 2022, from the collection of Andrew Simpson

Pubs I think I might have drunk in ..............

The trouble with being 72 is that lots of things I did blend into a heap of vague memories.

So, I might well have drunk in the Anson in Longsight.

Of course, being a pub the memories do have a habit of becoming even more hazy.

Not so Andy Robertson who took a wander across Longsight recently and recorded a few lost pubs, adding “this is the ex-Anson Hotel on Beresford Rd, Longsight. 

It was one of the many typical such "estate " pubs that sprang up everywhere in the thirties. 

Nearly all are closed and many demolished. 

Many have been put to other uses like the Anson which houses an Asian food outlet/wholesalers and other businesses. 

Many buildings still exist today here in Manchester, e.g., Southern Hotel in Chorlton, Yew Tree in Wythenshawe. 

Evidence of its pub existence can be seen in the Outdoor sign and Threlfalls sign, which must have been hidden for many years.”

Now if you trawl the newspaper records for the early decades of the last century, you can come across reports of the both the breweries and the City Council conduction polls of the residents to ascertain support for a proposed pub, and not unsurprising in most cases the vote went the way of Bolly Brewer.

Location; Longsight

Pictures; the Anson, 2022, from the collection of Andy Robertson, and the Anson in 1971, by B Garth,  m49180, courtesy of Manchester Libraries, Information and Archives, Manchester City Council, http://images.manchester.gov.uk/index.php?session=pass

The Lord Nelson on Newton Street …… no longer will it celebrate the Battle of Trafalgar

Now I am the first to admit that the title is a tad contrived.

The Lord Nelson circa 2010

But the 27 ships of the Royal Navy were commanded by Admiral Nelson when it engaged a larger force of French and Spanish ships at the Battle of Trafalgar.

The outcome was a victory for the Royal Navy, although Nelson died during the battle, and like so many victorious commanders he gave his name to a string of pubs across the country.

Here in Manchester and Salford, Pigot’s Directory for 1828-9 listed six pubs bearing the Admiral’s name and one of these was the Lord Nelson on Newton Street, when it was run by a Robert Walker. Mr. Walker is a shadowy figure, and I can find no reference to him in the Rate Books till 1840, but he will be there, I just haven’t found him yet.  

But then I can’t locate him on the census returns.  There are lots of Robert Walker’s in Manchester in 1841, but not one of them was a publican.

So I shall have to revert to the pub, which in Michael’s picture carried the date of 1895, which will be when it was rebuilt.

The Lord Nelson, 1851

The early pub was quite a substantial one taking up a largish footprint according to several maps from the middle decades of the 19^th century.

 Leaving me just to add it closed around 2010 and was demolished the following year, after which it became a building site between 2016 and 18, and is now one of those modern buildings the city seems to throw up from Ancoats across to Deansgate.*

 Pictures; The Lord Nelson, circa 2010, courtesy of Michael Markey, and the pub in 1851, from Adshead’s map of Manchester, 1851, courtesy of Digital Archives Association, https://digitalarchives.co.uk/

 *Pubs of Manchester, http://pubs-of-manchester.blogspot.com/search?q=lord+nelson

No more the Church Inn ........... on Cambridge Street

Farewell the Church Inn

Happier Times, 2015

You were a pub I never visited, 

But friends spoke highly of you

And of that long tradition of dispensing beer

Which stretched back to 1852.

My sources  tell me that  long before you sold beer and cheer*

You were one or two residential dwellings, 

And had celebrated your fifteenth birthday

Before the old Queen came to the throne in 1837.

And now you have gone …… closed in 2016, and demolished in 2021

In your place will rise “62 units and associated landscape

2015

And highway works”**

It wasn’t easy I understand

And the proposed plans were turned down twice, before final acceptance.

No more will shouts of last orders drift across Cambridge Street

And in their place will be heard the sounds of earnest and not so earnest students

Unhappy times, 2019

My old friend Andy recorded you in happier times, 

And may even have ordered up a pint of J W Lees

But his last visit was to view a hole in the ground

A sad end to the Church Inn

Location; Hulme

Pictures; The Church Inn, 2015-2019, from the collection of Andy Robertson 

Hole in the ground, 2021

*The Church Inn Hulme, Manchester, Heritage Appraisal, Stephen Levrant,  Stephen Levrant Heritage Architecture Ltd, https://www.heritagearchitecture.co.uk/

**Planning application 125654/FO/2019 | Erection of a nine-storey purpose built student accommodation building comprising 62 units and associated landscape and highway works, following demolition of existing structures | Former Church Inn 84 Cambridge Street Manchester M15 6BP, Manchester City Council Planning Portal, https://pa.manchester.gov.uk/online-applications/applicationDetails.do?activeTab=documents&keyVal=Q23IPBBC03O00

The Jolly Angler .......a city centre pub ..... soon to close its doors for the last time

The Jolly Angler is a pub either you know about and love or is one that someone told you about, because it was a bit off the beaten track.

For years it has stood as an almost isolated beacon surrounded by what had once been busy enterprises, of which a few still exist.

As later as the 1950s there were two saw mills, a clutch of engineering works, a heap of old canal warehouses and plenty of small terrace housing, all of which would have offered up a host of clients for the pub.

And now things are going full circle with the return of residential apartments within a few minutes walk of the pub.

But alas the pub is closing.

I picked up a tweet at the weekend from the landlord that, “It’s with a heavy heart that we tell all our @TheJollyAngler regulars, new visitors and visitors still to come that we will be closing after Xmas this year. The building is sold and will not continue to operate as a pub. We are gutted but grateful we have a few more months”.

Now isn’t the time to go looking for the plans someone will have for the area, and instead I shall just reflect that there are many who will remember it with fondness.

It featured in our book on city centre Manchester pubs, and is the first of the 76 which were serving up beer and good cheer, back in 2016 when we wrote and published the book.

That book was less a guide and more a history of the pubs, the people frequented them and the area where they were situated.

In all there were 78 drinking places, and four years ago all but two were open and doing business. Of the two that were no more, one had only just closed and the other was Tommy Ducks, which as Mancunuian  knows was an establishment we couldn’t leave out.

You can order the book, along with our Chorlton and Didsbury pub books,  at www.pubbooks.co.uk or the old fashioned way on 07521 557888 or from Chorlton Bookshop

Location; Ducie Street, Manchester

Pictures; The Jolly Angler, 2020, from the collection of Andy Robertson, and the interior, 2016, Peter Topping, Manchester Pubs The Stories Behind the Doors City Centre page 224

*Manchester Pubs The Stories Behind the Doors City Centre,Peter Topping & Andrew Simpson, 2016

Will the Ducie Bridge reveal its secrets?

Now, a couple of days ago, I reported on the passing of the Ducie Bridge, closed since 2015 and soon to be just a hole in the ground.*

I say a hole in the ground, but pretty much soon after its demolition, the archaeologist will be in on the site, sifting through the past to make sense of this bit of the city’s history.

And then a new office block will rise obscuring the Co-op building which currently lurks behind the Ducie Bridge.

So, I like Andy’s picture, which frames the new against the old and may count as one of the last photographs of the pub, before it goes for ever.

After which it will join that long line of lost Manchester pubs.**

Location; Manchester

Picture; the Ducie Bridge, 2019, from the collection of Andy Robertson

*So, farewell the Ducie Bridge ……… much loved and missed, https://chorltonhistory.blogspot.com/2019/11/so-farewell-ducie-bridge-much-loved-and.html

**Lost Manchester Pubs, https://chorltonhistory.blogspot.com/search/label/Lost%20Manchester%20pubs