Another great looking estate pub that was on the same estate as the Hipp which it was also fairly close to.
There was the usual two rooms inside, I had a drink in the bar room which was quite busy on my Friday afternoon visit, there was also a more comfortable lounge.
The pub was a Robinsons tied house, there were two real ales on, I had a drink of Robinsons Bitter which was a nice drink, there was also Robinsons Mild on.
We are committed to the growth and development of individual, our local and international communities. In the interim may I use this medium to invite you to be part of the move of God in our church, the Pathfinder.
The Lord bless your richly as you navigate through in Jesus name.
The hotel was designed and built by James Reilly who had done the same for the Pomona Palace.
First thought was to call it the Duke of York ,but by 1874 the hotel was completed and opened as the Victoria.
Built in the grand Victorian manner.
But then:
The seven properties were introduced after the Victoria Hotel was replaced. It is formed by shops from Station Road through to Atkinson where the Empress Cinema sat and includes an open arcade with the then new pub. This became Phase Two of Urmston’s redevelopment scheme after the Precinct was decided on. The project by Edendale Property Ltd. and Booth Dale Investments was intended for 1964 but eventually arrived in 1966, since then it has gone through radical changes and major disappointment tending to be the result. 1967 had Council approving of the area being designated a pedestrian precinct and officially named as Victoria Parade.
The new arrival seems to have been pared back to a brick and wooden shuttering box, the most austere of Sixties architectural styling.
Its history seems to have been, to say the least, unremarkable – until it received a 2011 makeover as the Boogie Piano Bar.
The ‘crazy piano’ phenomena is coming to Manchester for the first time with the launch of The Boogie Piano Bar.
Party-goers throughout the globe have taken to the new-style piano bars for a good sing-song to the latest tunes, as well as classic tracks, and now Britain’s second city will have its first crazy piano venue.
“You have live music and can enjoy a crazy sing-along… it’s not what people think of from a stuffy old school piano venue.”
Inspiral Carpet’s Clint Boon and celebrity make-up artist Armand, were among the guests at the Boogie Piano Bar in Atkinson Road, Urmston, for the VIP opening on Friday, December 2 with a special performance from pianist Tom Lannon.
The brainchild of entrepreneur and restaurateur Joe Abid, the new piano bar is the latest addition to his Urmston venues which include the Boogie Lounge, also refurbished.
With a £160K investment, The Piano Boogie Bar is open seven days a week with live music on Fridays and Saturdays when it is open until 2pm and has capacity for 200 revellers with sumptuous booth seating.
It will be offering cocktails, house wines and fizz and will be serving tapas style snacks as well as a bar menu with burgers, nachos and other bar meals from £6.95. It will also be serving a full Sunday lunch.
The craze for crazy piano appears to have been short lived, as it was reinvented once again, this time as Stage One Bar.
Stage One Bar is part of the Urmston Music Foundation- an all-embracing name for several ideas for venues in Victoria Parade. The project is aimed at young adults with an interest in live music and in performing.
Saturday 6th March 2021, closed even before the Covid crisis and sold at auction for £205,000, the Victoria is now beyond forlorn.
The property is located in Urmston town centre at the end of an established retail parade known as Victoria Parade with access at the rear being taken from Atkinson Road.
Urmston railway station is approximately 150 metres to the north west.
Not much by way of a eulogy.
This particular ugly duckling never ever became swan.
The Victoria Hotel football team pictured here before their derby match with the Lord Nelson in November 1972.
Seen here in this well preserved glass negative print of 1910 – I assume that the hall was demolished around this time.
The surrounding area also boasted a Garratt Dye Works, Mill and Bridge.
Then rather confusingly the Old Garrick pub appears in 1844 – demolished in 1965.
1973 and the Old Garratt opens as a Boddington’s house.
Seen here in its original flat-roofed concrete and glass, brewery branded glory – typical estate pub architecture, though sadly lacking an estate to speak of.
Alongside on the railway viaduct is a poster for the then ubiquitous and iniquitous Tartan Bitter. Happily the Garratt sold a great pint of Boddington’s Bitter on cask, a milky pale pint that went down so cheap and easy.
On one occasion we all met up after work to have a drink before going to the The Carousel on Plymouth Grove to see The Pogues – we never made it, I assume Shane and the lads did.
Time changes everything the Cream of Manchester is now a somewhat sour subject, the Old Garratt has dropped the old in favour of Ye Olden Days, a look which it clearly lacked.
Modernity is now dragged up as a cut price stage set coaching house caprice, replete with lamps, black and gold lining, columns and pediments.
The pub that thinks it’s a pack of John Player Specials.
Add a little neon and faux grass and voila – a dog’s dinner for two or more.
Not at the moment in this instance, it would appear.
A residents group in Handforth is being blocked from converting a derelict pub into a community centre because of a 50-year-old rule.
The Spath Lane Residents Association wants to convert The Mermaid, in Delamere Road, into a facility for the community, but the group has been told the site must remain a pub.
As Mancunians were relocated from their homes in Ancoats and Hulme to Handforth in the 1960s and 1970s, it was agreed by Manchester City Council that the Mermaid would be built as a pub for the village’s new residents – and that it would stay that way.
So caught in a double bind – a pub that nobody wants remains un-let, the community resource required remains unrealised.
Meanwhile The Mermaid quietly falls apart, tinned up and seemingly unloved, from as far back as 2005:
A feisty group of Handforth pensioners, whose lives have been blighted by booze fuelled nuisance from their local pub, successfully blocked its application to open late. The group of five pensioners live near The Mermaid Pub on Delamere Road.
They said they have to live with fighting, loud music and antisocial behaviour spilling out of the pub onto their streets.
One man said: “The music from the pub is very, very loud and at times I have to compete with my TV against the volume of it.”
Do not let the unusual design of the exterior put you off visiting this pub. When it first opened it was called the Moss Rose. An extensive refit had very considerably improved the interior decor of this once welcoming pub, with its pleasant vault and well appointed lounge.
Quiz is on Wednesdays and a Disco on Saturdays.
Lunches twelve until three.
Do not let the fact that the pub was demolished on the 26th of November 2013 deter you from visiting – we still have our memories and a few surviving snaps.
I have lived almost opposite the site for sixteen years, though ever so local it was never my local, but it provided a convenient and comfortable bolthole for the odd pint every now and again.
Once it looked just like this.
Opened in 1971, it was and always was a Hydes pub.
It had a distinctive architectural style and layout all of its own, an asymmetric timber clad dwelling at the core, complemented by a fan of single story rooms extending into the car park.
The name was changed subsequent to the tragic and unfortunate gangland killing that took place in September 1999. It never seemed to recover from such a damning reputation, and though well used by the many residents in the well populated surrounding area, the offer of hard cash for the site. must in the end have proved irresistible.
The doors closed the windows boarded up – no more karaoke, no more Northen Soul, no more free pool – no more nothing.
Early one Sunday morning I was on my way cycling somewhere else and had time to rest a spell and take some snaps.
Good traditional pub, makes a refreshing change from all these trendy wine bars, close to the Etihad stadium so a City pub. Beer was good and staff were friendly enough.
A million miles from a trendy wine bar, but ever so close to a gas holder.
And the site of the former Bradford Pit.
Along with the rest of north and east Manchester, the area has survived slum clearance, deindustrialisation, the building of ever newer homes and the arrival of fresh faces from almost everywhere.
At its heart it prevails, a newly refurbished community boozer with a clear role and identity, customers – whose ranks are swollen on match days by home and away fans, from the ever so almost nearby Etihad Stadium – Home of The Blues.
So if you’re in the area pop in for a pint of Joey Holt’s and enjoy one or more of the entertainment opportunities – open every day all day.
I passed by for years on bike and bus, never stopping for a pint but intrigued by the distinctive Sixties architecture, an exciting adjunct to the adjacent Woodley Precinct.
The physical embodiment of the post war brick and concrete optimism which permeates the post-war period. When full employment in a plethora of manual trades ensured a steady flow of post work-customers, expecting a steady flow of Robinson’s draught beers.
Then one day I passed by bike and you were shuttered up, sat silently on Hyde Road, the windows of your soul staring blankly at the passing parade.
When I pass by all the people say, just another pub on the lost highway.
High Bank Inn 138 Ogden Lane, Openshaw, Manchester, M11 2LZ.
Years ago, I came by here on the bus, the 169 or 170 on my way from Ashton to Belle Vue – seeking the thrills and spills of the Speedway or the wayward, way-out musical fare at The Stoneground on Birch Street Gorton, former Corona Cinema, turned loopy left-field hang out.
The area was always a busy mix of industry, housing, shops, markets – and pubs.
There are now only a handful – the High Bank sadly, is no longer amongst them.
Upheavals in the fortunes of East Manchester mean that the familiar hustle and bustle of densely populated streets and industrious industry, are now the stuff of memory.
It closed in 2015, had been sold on and seems unlikely to reemerge as a pub. Once a well used Boddington’s house, the cream of Manchester has well and truly soured.
On my recent visit mother nature had already begun to take over, and the tinkers had taken the waney lap fence.
Open markets were held on land owned by Thomas Whittaker, near Albion Street. The land soon became known as Tommyfield, and Tommyfield Market is still a bustling centre of activity today.
The Market Hall was destroyed by a huge fire in 1974. The blaze could be seen for miles around and damaged surrounding premises. The hall was replaced by a temporary market building, before construction work began on the new hall in the early 1990s.
There still is a market – and now there’s a pub too.
Custom built 70’s square box on the market car park. Inside it’s L shaped and smelly. The carpets are a mess and the whole place has a run down look. The pub is far better then the clientele though, most of whom seemed to be smellier than the pub when I called in one Friday late afternoon. One handpump on the bar but no pumpclip. Luckily there was no-one actually behind the bar serving. This meant that I could have a look around without having to buy a drink, bit of a result that. It’s awful.
That’s what Rob Camra of Pubs Galore thought in 2011.
Worth a visit The Tommyfield, friendly pub. Great atmosphere, good beer and busy. Fantastic entertainment in the afternoons. A must visit, compliment your visit to Oldham, a must do.
I was there some two years ago, it was looking busy on a sunny morning in April, in good working order – the usual conflation of odd angles and assorted volumes.
Playing for the high one, dancing with the devil, Going with the flow, it’s all a game to me, Seven or Eleven, snake eyes watching you, Double up or quit, double stake or split, The Ace Of Spades
Subsequently curtly shortened to – The Ace.
Lying two miles south of Oldham town centre, the Fitton Hill Estate was built during the Fifties and Sixties on previously undeveloped moorland with scattered hamlets and farmsteads.
The layout of the estate obliterated all traces of the old landscape.
Wind whips the streets above the Lancashire Plain – swirling down and around the high hills above the city below. It was once an area rich on the pickings of cotton and coal, regular work and pockets almost full of cash, slipping carelessly into the landlords’ tills
Oldham has suffered the fate of many of Manchester’s satellite towns, their energies and opportunities absorbed by the centre of the voracious city centre, as attempts to invest and regenerate flounder on the swelling tide of decline.
The Ace all high angles and Anglo Saxons continues to fight on, serving larger than life sports TV, lager and lounge music to the locals.
There are two handpumps on the bar, but according to the landlord, they tried selling real ale for a while, but it didn’t sell and they had to throw it away.
Pushing up the ante, I know you wanna see me Read ’em and weep, the dead man’s hand again I see it in your eyes, take one look and die The only thing you see, you know it’s gonna be The Ace Of Spades, The Ace Of Spades
Manchester's Estate Pubs 