Manchester's Estate Pubs

The Valley – Collyhurst

Posted on January 12, 2016 by modernmoocher

Glendower Dr, Manchester, Greater Manchester M40 7TD

The Vine – became The Valley.

A pub by the River Irk, on the edge of an estate.

The Valley it seems ran dry, there was little or nothing to be said:

“When I visited this pub it was called The Vine, this pub is on an estate that seemed fairly quiet when I went here. This pub is a typical estate type pub with a bar and smarter lounge I had a drink in the bar and this was a decent enough room to have a drink in.

This pub used to be a Boddingtons tied house and there was only one real ale on the bar this was Boddingtons bitter and this was a decent enough drink.

This was one of the better pubs I have visited in collyhurst.”

Somebody was dead:

http://www.manchestereveningnews.co.uk/news/greater-manchester-news/stabbed-man-dies-after-pub-888756

The doors closed.

Billy Greens – Collyhurst

Posted on January 11, 2016 by modernmoocher

17, Talgarth Road, Collyhurst, Manchester, M40 7QA

Billy Green was a boxer.

Billy Green was a landlord.

Billy Green kept The Vauxhall in Collyhurst – The Vauxhall was named for the nearby Vauxhall Pleasure Gardens, formerly Tinker’s and Elysian Gardens.

Collyhurst was then a rural idyll, lit with swaying lanterns, lilting music and laughter filled the night air, my how little has changed.

http://www.manchestereveningnews.co.uk/news/greater-manchester-news/manchesters-lost-pleasure-gardens-913985

Billy Greens was a pub, named after Billy Green.

Reputedly the toughest pub in Britain.

Point a camera at a hard man and he’ll tell you exactly what you want to hear, it’s easy, though it’s much, much harder to fill a pub these days – tough times.

Standing lost and forlorn in a sea of green grass – nobody’s home, laid low by a litre and a half of Lambrini or six.

Bare burnt rafters, boarded doors, the sign no longer swings in the wind.

Somebody just called tinned-up time.

Billy Greens is no more.

The Clarendon – Collyhurst

Posted on January 8, 2016 by modernmoocher

27 Pinehurst Rd, Manchester, M40 8QB

I’m turning a corner.

I’m turning a corner in my life, I’m turning a corner.

Into Pinehurst Road.

The Clarendon is a shock and a pleasant surprise, an open elevation of slabbed precast concrete, exterior steel spiral staircase attached.

A central residential block, with single storey lounge and bar extensions, surrounded by sufficient space to circumnavigate, marvel and snap with consummate ease.

Laura the current tenant comes out to chat, she’d worked there for some eighteen years, and when the pub fell empty just before Christmas, she decided to take it on. Determined to maintain continuity for a community pub which she, and hopefully others valued.

Never an easy undertaking.

We went inside, a clean orderly and cared for interior, warmed by a single Calor Gas heater.

“It’s too dear to put the heating on all the time.”

Good luck Laura.

The Queens Hotel – Collyhurst

Posted on January 7, 2016January 8, 2016 by modernmoocher

Sedgeford Rd, Manchester, Lancashire M40 8QU

Geologists use the term Collyhurst Sandstone for the soft red sandstone, which occurs in North West England. It is a sedimentary rock, created from desert sands blown into dune formations during the Early Permian period, when the area was within the desert belts to the north of the equator. The rock is not very resistant to weathering and erosion and disintegrates relatively quickly.

Historically Collyhurst provided much of the stone which built Manchester.

The Collyhurst Quarry is now gone, landscaped and badged as Sandhills, something of a misplaced, forlorn inner-city country park.

The area is literally built on shifting sands, walking the streets on a Wednesday in deep Winter, one can’t help but be minded of those wind blown Permian deserts.

Collyhurst was once at the very centre of industrial Manchester.

Large tracts of social housing were built in the area, for a workforce that fuelled and fed that City’s steady beating heart.

That industry and heart are now elsewhere, the Sixties estates and their inhabitants however, prevail – the pubs that prospered during the good times are just about hanging on.

The Queens, brick and concrete palace, boasting an Alan Bosyon mural, and bold, modernist, rectangular volumes on an expansive site.

Stop look and listen, to the wind.

The White Horse – Eccles

Posted on October 22, 2015January 7, 2016 by modernmoocher

110 Gilda Brook Road, Eccles, Salford M30 0DX

This was a pub, now it isn’t.

This is a pub with history.

Beverly Callard her story:

A make believe Coronation Street Rover’s Liz MacDonald, in a real life bar.

Situated at the head of a seriously urban dual- carriageway, hard by a motorway roundabout, a quintessential Sixties Boozer. Pale brick two-storey heart, with lower level lounge extensions.

Once a Robinson’s house, now like so many of their estate, divested of lustrous gold branding, festooned in the Sainsbury’s Local colours of burgundy and orange.

Their orange is a mix of two Pantones – 60% Pantone 021 and 40% Pantone 804.

They seem less forthcoming about their background shade of red.

Things didn’t work out for Bev – as the Manchester Evening News, so sympathetically reported.

“Bev Callard took over the pub in 2005 and later bought the Gallery in Hale Barns.

But she was diagnosed with clinical depression in 2008 after the pubs went bust leaving the couple with debts of £150,000.”

http://www.manchestereveningnews.co.uk/news/greater-manchester-news/eccles-pub-white-horse-once-6836584

Subsequent tenant Bernadette Harvieu fared little better, she took over the pub after winning £250,000 with a National Lottery scratch card, however –

“I couldn’t afford the prices Robinsons were charging for their beer and brought in beer so they have told us to leave.”

The Queens Arms – Audenshaw

Posted on October 22, 2015January 7, 2016 by modernmoocher

Guide Lane, Audenshaw, Manchester M34 5FF

A survivor – The Queens.

Despite the addition of several porches, pergolas, hanging baskets and assorted picnic tables, its solid brick two storey soul, and lower level bar areas, remain intact – unrendered and unwhitewashed.

The northern elevation clearly retains some sense of its original self.

Branded now as “Manchester’s Finest Carvery” – it was busy on my early afternoon visit, gaggles of grey-pound clutching customers spilling out of serviceable saloons, coupés and shooting-brakes, into the waiting warmth, of this timeless temple to heated meats.

“Never fails in giving excellent food at reasonable prices. The vegatables for the carvery are kept in hot water so the do not go hard and dry from standing under hot lamps. The roast potatoes are devine. Give this restaurant a try.”

I went in once – once upon a time.

Dog and Partridge – Heaton Mersey

Posted on October 19, 2015January 7, 2016 by modernmoocher

Didsbury Road, Stockport, Cheshire SK4 3AG

Just down the road from my home on Didsbury Road, stands a pub on Didsbury Road.

The Dog and Partridge once an estate pub, clean lines, bare brick, fur coat no curtains.

You know the score.

Over time a boozer gets ideas about itself, ends up getting rendered and whitewashed by the Brewery’s guileless gentrifiers, who possess the unwholesome taste of a past their sell by date bag of pound shop crisps.

Not satisfied with the Farrow and Ballisation of our culture, we now have to contend with the Argosifiers too.

Where will it all end?

I’ve never been in, thieves have though!

A masked gang were frightened off from a Stockport pub by the landlord and landlady.

Officers describe the gang as wearing dark clothes and balaclavas and carrying large knives.

Detective Sergeant Geoffrey Machent said: “The landlord and landlady were understandably shocked to be confronted by these three intruders in balaclavas. Thankfully neither of them was hurt, but we want to stop these men from doing this again.”