Manchester Venues 228 to 229

Halfway down Deansgate opposite the John Rylands Library you will Manchester Box Deansgate. Back in 1986 on that particular spot on the corner of Brazennose Street there was an all glass building erected which housed amongst others many residents of the legal profession. That structure was subsequently demolished in 2017 and in 2020 a new building replaced it and became known as One Two Five Deansgate and they endeavoured to encapsulate Manchester’s industrial heritage with a terracotta style design.      

The Box. Image Credit www.tripadvisor.co.uk

The pub sits on the ground floor of the building, and its name derives images in my scattergun brain of the current Gary Lineker fronted The Box TV game show. Alternatively, it also sparks thoughts of Cube which was a cult 1997 Canadian sci-fi/horror movie with a high body count where a disparate group of people with different sets of skills needed to work together to try and navigate several devious challenges and escape the cube.

Thankfully though it is neither of those two scenarios and is in fact primarily a sports bar with thirty five TV screens dotted around and the obligatory unhealthy snacks are served whilst you are watching the match. There are outside tables at the front which I have resided in on sunny days, and they also have shuttle boards and dart boards on site. The business is run by Arc Inspirations who also own the Banyan Bar & Kitchen and Manahatta brands. The Manchester Box site was an extension of the three original branches in Leeds and Liverpool.    

Cube Promo. Image Credit collider.com

They stage live music every week from Thursday through to Sunday with the first night being classed as Bandeoke which consists of a karaoke but with a twist of a live band providing the musical background. On a Friday they concentrate of music with an Irish hue and on one of my visits I saw a chap called Drew Palmer performing. He is a locally based artist who has been on the circuit for around fifteen years and for a considerable spell was a resident artist at the famous Cavern Club in Liverpool. He is currently on a tour around Scotland with Kyle Falconer of the View including a date at the Dreadnought venue in ‘Bathgate No More’!

Continuing the Gaelic theme, I shall then take you further down Deansgate and a left turn into Oxford Road brings you to Manchester Katie O’Briens. The building at 23 Peter Street has an interesting lineage rolling back to its original incarnation as the Grand Theatre in 1883. It than had spells as a music hall, cinema and for several decades as the Fourth Church of Christ’s Scientists.

Around the turn of the 21st century it morphed into the Life Café cocktail bar and was at that stage positioned between Squares and Brannigans (latterly Albert Schloss). Intimate gigs took place here from the likes of Beautiful South, The (Beautiful!) Corrs, Stereophonics, Fun Lovin Criminals and Alanis Morrissette. They also had a venue downstairs called the Late Room and though I never had the opportunity to visit either, I do recall Uncle George telling me about a solo trip he undertook there to see British Sea Power in 2003.

Katie O’Briens. Image Credit www.msn.com

It then had periods as the Chicago Rock Café and the Sakana Pan Asian restaurant before in 2018 opening up an unauthorised Peaky Blinders 1920s style theme bar based on the fact that a proportion of the scenes for the TV series had been filmed in the city. Within there they also opened a dim sum restaurant linked with Ocean Treasure who have their original site within the Manchester 235 Casino located close by.     

I think I only visited the once before Peaky closed its doors for the final time earlier this year before it swiftly reopened under its current moniker and has been designed as a large traditional Irish bar room layout. On my one attendance thus far on 08/05/26 I saw a Salford based artist called Joe Knowles. He is also the resident guitarist in an enterprise called ‘I Like Singing’ who encourage and develop local choirs. Additionally, he is the driving force behind a four-piece dream pop band called Vala who have performed live on Radio 2 and have also worked with Gordon Raphael, who produced the seminal Strokes debut album ‘Is This It’.    

Stockport Venue 18 – Cheadle Village

Cheadle is a small suburban village contained within the borough of Stockport which has a 15k population and is a gentle 30-minute walk from our current residence. It is the home of the large sportswear company Umbro, who were founded originally in 1924 and used to supply the British Olympic kits for a couple of decades and also the kits for my football team Preston North End in the 1930’s and 1940’s.

Famous Cheadle residents contain the sci-fi writer Christopher Priest, actress Diane Darvey who used to appear on the Benny Hill Show, novelist Nigel Williams who provided the screenplay for the Emmy award winning Elizabeth I TV dramatisation in 2005 starring Helen Mirren and the current England international footballer Kobbie Mainoo.

Diane Darvey. Image Credit www.imdb.com

From 1866 onwards Cheadle contained two separate train stations, the last one closing in 1964 but you can still see the original line which runs past the Cheshire Line Tavern pub. The former one was located in the centre of the village and shut in 1917, but there is now formal approval to build a new station on the existing Altrincham to Stockport line. The development has dragged its feet for years, but it is now believed work on it could commence imminently.   

Our walking route takes us from the Parrs Wood cinema complex before crossing the River Mersey and passing the aforementioned Cheshire Line Tavern hostelry. You then walk past Victorian Abney Hall which was the location of Cheadle Town Hall for a period, and which contains bonny parkland grounds to potter around.  Opposite there is the Alexandra Hospital, which is the largest private hospital in the UK outside of London.

After you mulch past the Ashlea pub you reach the traffic lights at the main Cheadle High Street. If you take the road to the left, you reach the Wobbly Stamp which opened in Covid by taking over an old post office and they occasionally stage live music, with Tom Hingley of the Inspiral Carpets having played a couple of acoustic shows there.

It is a lovely little bar and stocks some strong ales resulting in us seeing some ‘wobbly’ punters on our maiden visit! Prior to there is the Red Lion which is run by a member of the Emmerdale cast and in my humble opinion they serve the best Sunday roast in the district.

Wobbly Stamp. Image Credit www.facebook.com

Back at the lights you will find the Royal Oak which was a rundown establishment when we first visited but following an extensive refurbishment by the local Robinson brewery it is vastly improved now. Next to there is a locally run carpet shop which we have frequented and bought their wares. There also used to be a Nationwide building society branch which I once had to make an emergency dash to for some outstanding paperwork when buying our current pad.  

As you enter the busy high street there are a suite of charity shops and many food outlets and I can recall us having some fine tucker at Aamchi Mumbai, Bellini’s and Istanbul Grill restaurants, the latter is one of a number of kebab joints in the area. The George and Dragon and White Hart pubs are a tad too brassy for my tastes, but the James Watts and Crown Inn are very fine destinations and have been visited on a regular basis. 

I also recently visited one of their charity shops following a clear out of my CD collection so there was a swathe of obscure but high quality indie albums for sale for a while which replaced the usual pot pourri of Julio Inglesias and Celine Dion CD’s.  

Further down the road is the Grade 1 listed St Mary’s Church which has been in that spot since the 12th century. On one particular bank holiday Sunday a couple of years ago we were having a sally around the village and reached the church grounds and discovered much to my chagrin that there had been an outside gig taking place for which I had just landed a little too late to hear the musical notes!

Caffe Grande Luna. Image Credit facebook.com

There is also a plethora of independent cafes in the village, with one of these being the Stockport Cheadle Caffe Grand Luna. It is a homely, licensed café bar and we have visited just the once and whilst in residence and imbibing a cold beverage we saw a singer/songwriter called Shirley.