Victoria Hotel – Urmston

Atkinson Road Urmston Manchester M41 9AD

Once the was a hotel here – the Victoria Hotel.

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.

Urmston Net

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.

I Love Manchester

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.

What Pub

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.

Unfortunately they lost 6-1

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The Gamecock – Hulme

Booth Street West – Boundary Lane Hulme Manchester M15 6GE

Manchester Local Image Collection

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 Apollo Inn

2 Varley Street Miles Platting Manchester M40 8EE

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.

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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.

Brown Cow – Ancoats

Corner of Butler Street and Woodward Street Ancoats.

How now Brown Cow?

No Brown Cow now.

Tanning studio, former organic goods store and one stop shop now.

I came in search of unclad flats and left with the inkling that this building must have been a former pub.

A little online research confirmed my suspicions, there had in fact been two Brown Cows.

The former licensed in the 1820s to the John Taylor & Co Pollard Street Brewery until Walker & Homfray took the firm over in 1929, who in turn merged with Wilson’s in 1949.

Serving the emergent industrial city and its citizens in an area dense with 19th Century housing and industry.

The Pubs of Manchester blog details the pub’s somewhat chequered history.

Mick Burke remembers the Brown Cow being frequented by the then notorious Whizz Gang from the Woodward Street area.  These were a gang of local criminals going by names such as Flinka – Alf Flynn – tobacco and cigarettes man and Reynolds – Alfie Lacy a safe-breaker.  One Sunday night in the 1930s the Whizz Gang did over a Post Office on Ordsall Lane and nicked the safe.  Despite a huge police search it was never found, and rumour was that it had been dumped in the canal at Ten Acres Lane in Newton Heath.  The robbery was the downfall of the Whizz Gang as they were caught selling stolen stamps in the Brown Cow.

John Logan has a very different tale to tell:

I got back to Manchester and in the meantime my family had moved. Two and a half years out there and they’d moved. They sent me a message saying our new address is The Brown Cow Hotel, Butler Street, Ancoats.

They’d moved into a pub.

So I go out looking for it, hammock on one arm and kitbag on the other, and I see this copper stopped at the traffic lights. I ask if he can tell me where the Brown Cow is. Goodness gracious he says, I was going there later. This is half ten at night, you see, when it would’ve been closed.

So he takes me to it and he says: this is what you do after time, he knocks on the window. The door opens a bit, I’ve got someone to see you Kitty he says. The door opens fully and there they are, my family.

You usually get a fortnight of leave but I had two months. You can imagine what a time I had.

The area was part of the Manchester post-war slum clearance scheme during the 1960s and rebuilt as a mix of low and high rise homes.

But beginning with a brand new pub – Wilson’s Brown Cow.

Archive photographs Local Image Collection.

Alan Winfield recalls:

A very grim looking estate pub in an equally grim area of Ancoats, the pub had the usual two room layout with a basic bar and a lounge, I had a drink in the bar which had a boisterous atmosphere. This was a Wilsons tied house with one real ale on, this was Wilsons Bitter which was a decent drink.

As I wandered around Woodward Street snapping, I was stopped by a local resident, fifty years or so living next door to the pub.

It was a mint boozer.

As a lad I would fall asleep listening to the sound of the turns in the pub.

The Brown Cow is now no more.

Much of the 60’s redevelopment has been swept away, Ancoats the hippest place on the planet is on the move close by. Estate pubs, it seems have yet to designated as hip, so the Brown Cow along with countless others moos no more.

Little details have been retained – the delightful balcony rail, concrete window frames and angular porch.

On a quiet night you may pause to hear a feint echo of the Whizz Gang at work opening up their ill-gotten Ordsall safe, good luck with that Flinka and crew.