I am looking at a photograph of the Oaks Hotel taken in 1959
and it is pretty much how I remember it two decades later.
It had been built sometime after 1911 and catered for the cemetery trade.
It had been built sometime after 1911 and catered for the cemetery trade.
It was a huge rambling building with a fine staircase and
plenty of rooms which would have suited cemetery parties. I suppose in its heyday it must have been a
crowded and boisterous place, but when ever I dropped in it just
seemed empty and a little sad.
Perhaps the fact that to get to it you had to pass a line of
businesses catering in cemetery goods was not conducive to a happy night
out.
And I rather think R.E. Stanley caught it at its best. By the 1970s and early 80s the elegant lamp
posts on either side of the entrance had gone and the front and enormous back
car parks were showing their age.
Thinking about it I suppose I only ever went there a few
times and a part from a few locals I guess most of its clientele were the
funeral parties. It closed in the early
1990s and was demolished soon afterwards.
Picture; The Oaks Hotel, by R.E.Stanley, May 1959, m17565, courtesy
of Manchester Libraries, Information and Archives, Manchester City CouncilThe Feathers, another lost pub published on Sunday October 14th
