The Flemish Weaver – Salford

The transition of Manchester into a town was realised as the rest of Britain experienced an increase in population, due to trade and commerce, in the early thirteenth century. During this time Manchester was also granted an annual market, making it one of the most important towns in Lancashire. This, along with the arrival of Flemish weavers and cloth makers in the 14th century, marked the beginnings of Manchester as a major player in the textile industry.

Following a wild flurry of activity in the ensuing centuries, wool and silk are replaced by cotton, in a whirl of spinning jennies, mules, flying shuttles and water frames – cottage industries are replaced overnight by the satanic mills of the Industrial Revolution. Subsequently international capital decides that its time to do one – so off they flounce in search of cheap labour and post-imperial commodity supply chains and markets.

The Cotton Club closes its doors forever.

The Flemish Weaver pub suffers a similar fate, built in the 70s to serve the Pendleton Estate – the tab end of post-war prosperity supplies enough tab ends and pulled pints to support several boozers.

The slow burn of the free market has however, transformed the passing pub trade into a threatened species of ashen faced publicans and absent friends, disappearing in desperately diminishing circles, as time is finally called.

 

The Flemish Weaver finally closed in 2014.

 

 

 

The Sparrow – Collyhurst

84 Thornton Street North Collyhurst Manchester M40 8JT

It’s too late, she’s gone
Too Late Too Late
It’s too late, my baby’s gone
Too Late Too Late
Wish I had told her she was my only one
But It’s too late, she’s gone

We spend much of our lives searching for something that once was.

There are maps, guides, street views that are as ghostly as the very destination you may seek, the past is an unreliable path to the present.

Walking up Thornton Street North, through Village Park, a city green space initiative, now largely untended and unloved, you can clearly see where The Sparrow was.

A former estate pub, a footprint.

Away from the white hot heat epicentre of the Northern Powerhouse, you quickly feel the chill of deindustrialisation. Full employment and newly built social housing the stuff of dreams and folk memory, as the future is buried beneath worn lino and entrancing entrance steps, seemingly leading nowhere.

 

 

Primrose View – Oldham

Primrose View, 25-27 Ashton Rd, Oldham OL8 1JX

Once there was an OB brewery here, OB – OK?

Fine Lancashire Ales, bought out by Boddington’s.

Closed down by Boddington’s.

Boddington’s was bought out by Interbrew.

Beer can and will eat itself – Boddies the Cream of Manchester, the transubstantiation of Monopoly Capitalism, it rises to the top, as another local brewery and its pubs sink.

Almost without trace.

A poor do in the poorest of towns, the view was never primrose.

The blanked, bricked and tinned windows, have a more than somewhat restricted view of an uncertain future, demolition or redevelopment, planning applied for 2014.

Another new flue, that never arrived.

The Griffin – Heald Green

Wilmslow Road, Heald Green, Stockport SK 8 3BE.

Once upon a time, some time ago –

Fields.

Lots of them, full of farmers.

Thirsty farmers in search of succour, or better still, bitter.

Rough tracks cross the county, ready for the roadhouse ruffians to surface, and resurface as thoroughly modern thoroughfares.

No more back to back, back to basics culture, compact company cars are hereon in, carrying the weary worker back to these shiny suburbs.

You should see the estate they’re in.

A brand new boxy breed of boozer is created, for the blue collared, blue blazered clientele.

 

Post 1980 a fresh wave of affluence demands refurbishment, a squeaky clean ambience for the executive refreshment, entertainment environment.

Gone are the confident rectilinear volumes of modernity, to be replaced by an anonymous non-style style, a confused collision, a mismatched, mishmash mash-up.

Surrounded by plants.

The Three Crowns – Stockport

Manchester Road, Heaton Norris, Stockport. SK4 1TN

In the 1960’s you were built as an estate pub by Boddington’s to serve the new housing developments at the top of Lancashire Hill, two large rooms separated by the bar.

You were transformed into the Cosmopolitan and latterly the Venue.

Applications were made for change of use to a takeaway and a carwash.

Neither would take, or wash.

In March 2009 you closed your doors to the drinker forever.

Like a seriously unwanted child you were snapped once and only once it seems.

Prior to being boarded up and out.

Then reinvented as luxury apartments.

I’ve belatedly redressed your absence from presence, here’s my small gift to you.

Ladies and Gentlemen, I give you the Three Crowns, take a bow.

 

 

The Railway Hotel – Longsight

Berigan Close, Manchester, M12 4QT.

Once there was a Railway Hotel here, once there was a railway too.

The nearby Longsight Shed teemed with Carriage and Engine Cleaners, Firemen, Drivers, Guards, Fitters and Shunters and all the requisite ancillary support staff.

Thirsty work.

Firstly the first Railway Hotel disappeared, then the railway too.

Sidings once full of stock and sheds full of locos, stood emptier.

Ghostly.

Less spare capacity rolling stock, less cleaning and maintenance, less of everything.

The area was redeveloped, back to back terraces replaced by brand new homes.

The Railway Hotel reappeared, a brand new Boddington’s house for brand new people in their brand new homes, neat sleek and well, new.

Through the 70’s, the final death throws of late industrial capitalism required far fewer hired hands, no more thirsty work for tired lads and lasses.

No more Railway Hotels.

Tinned up and turned into a mini-market.

Through a succession of owners, the building has survived, as a retail outlet and multiple occupancy residential homes.

There are now virtually no pubs left in the area.

Making things poorer and poorer for the pourer.

Thanks to Dan Granata:

http://manchester-estate-pubs.blogspot.co.uk

http://images.manchester.gov.uk/index.php?session=pass

 

Jack and Jill – Brinnington

Brinnington Rd, Stockport SK5 8AD

High on a hill, above Stockport town centre sat the Jack and Jill.

Built in 1954 to serve the emerging nearby social housing estate.

A curved brick frontage overlooking the Goyt Valley.

Classical Moderne with a splash of Brut – it’s all over.

In happier times it served the Community.

 

 

I returned to find:

Tinned-up doors and windows, no sign of a sign.

No sign of signs of life, save the landlord of eight years packing up to leave for pastures new, The Friendship in Romiley.

“I want flat caps, darts and dominoes, its got a bowling green too!”

I asked if the Jack and Jill was to be demolished?

“It’s up for sale.”

No amount of vinegar and brown paper, I fear, will put Jack back together again.

Jill perpetually tumbling.

After.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

The Swinging Sporran – Manchester

78 Sackville St, Manchester M1 3NJ

South of the border down Manchester way, on the wrong side of the Tweed:

– sat The Swinging Sporran, closer to the culverted Medlock than thee.

What’s in a name?

The decontextualised allusion to outlandish Bamforth innuendo and Caledonian capers.

The Swinging Sporran now, no longer swings.

It began as an abrupt end to a multi-storey car park that wanted to go on forever.

A sociable adjunct to the Umist campus and a suitably Modernist companion in both style and demeanour, bunker like brick blocks just about topped by a residential core.

It became home to live music and DJs of every stripe, enough to induce spots before your very, very wavy eyes.

With thanks to http://www.mdmarchive.co.uk

The Swinging Sporran becomes The Retro Bar, having acquired a kiosk and coffee bar along the way, and an over elaboration of signage and detail that incautiously disguises its original spare aesthetic.

You can if you wish, escape through a door, climb the stairway to the stars, and gaze at the campus below, hurry though.

Nothing lasts forever.

Billy Greens – Collyhurst

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

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.