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.
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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.
Lorimers Arms Osborne Street Collyhurst ManchesterM40 7PZ
The Lorimers Arms was an estate pub that was situated in between Rochdale and Oldham roads in the Collyhurst area of Manchester. The pub had two rooms with a fairly basic bar and a more comfortable lounge, I had a drink in the bar which was a decent enough room to have a drink in.
When I visited this pub it was a Vaux tied house and there were no real ales on the bar, I had a drink of keg Samson bitter and this was a pretty poor drink. The pub is still standing but has closed down and been converted to other use.
Typical of its time, developed to meet the needs of the new estates which replaced the slum clearance of the Sixties, in an area surrounded by industry.
Once home to the Osborne Street Baths and Wash House, and a pub of an earlier age – The Osborne, still standing – ceased trading.
Much of this is now gone – the buildings the people and the work.
The pub had briefly become the centre for a telephone chatline service, prior to its current use as a place of worship – for the Christ Temple International Church
I chatted for a while with Kath who lives opposite, she had been a barmaid in the vault at Billy Greens.
Boarded up and then demolished.
We recalled pubs long gone and the loss of trade:
The folks that drank in there have all passed on, The Vine is still open butnobody goes in there.We have to go into Town but it’s dearer there, I like the Millstone and the Wheatsheaf.
Thanks for taking time to chat, at a distance – in these troubled times.
1964 the old Hulme, the old Hulme of tight dense dark terraces, shops, industry and hubbub.
Swept away by the waves of progress that washed over the area in the 1970s – a system built concrete haven, for a brave new world.
Thus heralding the birth of the Gamecock in 1974 as a Wilson’s house – very much in the Estate Pub manner.
The pub survived the demolition of the brave new Hulme from 1993 to 1995.
As fresher waves of progress heralded the expansion of Higher Education.
Seen here as a Belhaven house in 1993 – The Gamecock ever in the shadow of one of the few remaining housing blocks.
Photograph Alan Winfield.
Nobody knows precisely when it ceased to be a pub, suffice to say that at some point, it sadly ceased to be a pub.
It now stands abandoned, slowly reclaimed by nature – as bramble and dock scramble over its sharp interlocking volumes of brick and once bright white cladding.
The national divinity of the Greeks, Apollo has been variously recognized as a god of archery, music and dance, truth and prophecy, healing and diseases, the sun and light, poetry, and more.
Better known to us through the NASA space programme, from whom I assume the Inn got its name – we were rocket mad in those days.
Many thanks to Mr David Dunnico and his photograph for confirming my suspicions – whatever happened to the sign one wonders?
For after all pubs are by their nature Dionysian relating to the sensual, spontaneous, and emotional aspects of human nature rather than the more rational and ordered Apollonian – enough however of Teutonic dialectics.
The area having been cleared of it victorian terraces.
Then proceeds to reconstitute itself with a surprising space-age alacrity.
Apollo son of Leto and Zeus is born with a big block of flats for company.
A typically functionalist boozer with a two storey pitched roof home at its core with outrigger bars and commodious car park.
Thanks again to Alan Winfield for his neat appraisal:
An estate pub that had a large block of flats next to it. The pub had two rooms, I had a drink in the bar which had a very rough edge to it. The Apollo was a Boddington’s tied house so I was pleased, there were two real ales on, I had a drink of Boddington’s Mild which was a nice drink, there was also Boddington’s Bitter on.
Sadly now closed down.
A familiar tale of demolition and rebuilding, empty plots of land, shifting demographics and economic downturns, state enforced austerity and stasis.
Welcome to the low paid, low skilled world of the tinned up local.
The unnatural history which fails to learn from itself and endlessly repeats ad nauseam.
The land of buddleia, barbed wire, ragwort, willow herb and grass cracked tarmac.
The final indignity the theft of your apron of paving stones.
A suspected thief was spotted ripping up nearly 200 flagstones and loading them into a shopping trolley.
He took his time tearing up the paving stones from the front of a derelict pub in Miles Platting.
A Police Community Support Officer spotted the suspected thief pushing a trolley loaded with flagstones away from The Apollo pub on Varley Street.
One local resident said: They’ll take anything round here if it’s not nailed down.
Cleaner Claire Bevan, 38, a mother-of-two, said: I’ve heard about a lot of things but never that.
Desperate times call for desperate measures, I suppose.
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.
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.
Manchester's Estate Pubs 