Month: February 2025

Manchester Venues 157 to 160

The central thoroughfare in West Didsbury is Burton Road which contains a profusion of independent shops, bars and restaurants. As you turn into the street from Barlow Moor Road you initially encounter Didsbury Mosque followed by a 200-yard stretch of houses before Withington Hospital appears on the left. I first visited there in 1993 when Gill’s mum was gravely ill but remarkably 32 years later, she still remains with us.

Around that time, there was a famous photo taken in the lounge of the one properties on a side street that then adorned the cover of Oasis’s debut album ‘Definitely Maybe’, the house belonging to the guitarist Bonehead. They still have sightseeing tours that visit the house in question but that is always a logistical challenge for them as it is a very thin road with cars parked on either side.

Definitely Maybe album cover. Image Credit musicbrainz.org

Returning back across the road takes you to Manchester Withington Hospital Car Park, which is the location of a large monthly maker’s market. Thus, one Sunday morning in April 2024 Gill and I alongside Tris made our debut visit and were met with the sight of a proliferation of market stalls of every hue. Down at the bottom end of the market was a tiny stage where the local Cancer Research band were playing a set.

On the corner of Nell Lane, you will find one of my favourite bars, the George Charles where they serve Thai food by night. Across the road is in my view the best stocked Co-op in the city which then invokes the old advertising adage ‘if Carlsberg did Co-op’s’!  

Just beyond there after you pass the Folk and Volta bars, you reach the Old Bakery. When I first visited, I discovered to my astonishment and pleasure that they served the Preston delicacy, Butter Pies. However, it obviously couldn’t be as simple as picking up a stash of those healthy snacks there and then, they had in fact to be ordered two days in advance, so naturally that’s what I did!

A butter pie ready to be devoured! Image Credit qualitypies.co.uk

The pie reference then brings to mind the animated heroes of Wallace and Gromit who were created around 40 years ago by the proud Prestonian Nick Park who went to the same secondary school as me, though attended about 10 years prior to myself. There is a bench commemorating his achievements which now sits proudly alongside Preston Market.

Contained within the movies over the years, he has always thrown in sly local references and the odd patently obvious one like the character of Preston the Dog. His piece de resistance though was on his latest film shown on Christmas Day 2024 when Feathers McGraw was escaping on a canal barge and a crate was pictured behind him containing Madam Butter Pies, priceless television!   

Selfie with Wallace and Gromit. Image Credit John Dewhurst

Further on you arrive at Manchester Rustik, which is an independent family run Irish bar. It is a homely establishment with additional tables and when surveying the menu, it appears they serve what look like wholesome belly busting food portions!  

They have live music on from Thursday to Sunday each week and I enrolled Marcus to accompany me on 02/05/24 as I was deeply ensconced in my Project 200 (to visit 200 different Manchester venues) at that stage. On the night of our visit there was an Irish trad band playing.

There is then a trio of Indian restaurants, namely Namaste Nepal, Great Kathmandu and Indique, the latter on the far side of the Burton Road metro stop. These establishments have been visited by Gill and me, quite often with Jo and Paul in tow and alongside sampling their cuisine, we have also naturally compared their Onion Bhaji quality, but still in our combined view nowhere surpasses the Royal Tondoori in Burnage in this regard!

As you arrive at the corner with Lapwing Lane, there is the large Elizabethan pub and across the road is the Manchester Railway. This hostelry for many years was a John Smiths brewery house before being taken over by Joseph Holt in 1999. Apparently prior to a transformation in 2004, it was recognised as the smallest pub in England. The refurbishment and increase in square yards was a result of taking over the cobblers next door and the removal of the archaic outside lavatories!  

The Railway pub. Image Credit zomato.com

It is a cosy old-fashioned venue, and they have regular live music and on the same night as visiting Rustik we saw a singer called Jeff Smith perform there. On one side of there was Simon Rimmer’s Greens vegetarian eatery which recently closed after around 30 years, however that site has recently been reopened by the Porta tapas restaurant. On the other wing is Manchester Zaranda, a soulless cocktail bar where I once witnessed a local singer called Sophie play.   

Lancaster Venues 20 to 22

This week, I am continuing the tale of my inaugural visit to the annual Lancaster Music Festival on a bruisingly cold day in October 2023. The next haunt on our list was Lancaster Cornerhouse located on the junction of New Street and Church Street; a stone’s throw away from the Sun Hotel. The Cornerhouse, formerly Paulo Gianni’s and Sphere Bar, went through a major transformation in 2018.

The driving force of the reformation was Gemma Rowlands from nearby Cockerham, who had previously worked at the site in Paulo Gianni’s days. She then converted it into a gin style palace with a restaurant with accompanying comprehensive menu, a plethora of craft beers and live music offerings from Thursday through to Sunday.  

Lancaster Cornerhouse. Image Credit lancastercornerhouse.co.uk

When we arrived, the place was extremely busy, and we navigated the queues to obtain an aperitif from the bar. We grabbed a seat before being politely moved on as we were inadvertently squatting in the restaurant area! On a small stage in the corner of the main room we encountered a local three-piece band called the Beets. They had ensured they would have maximum exposure across the day by volunteering to play a remarkable seven venues across the city in an overall time span of eleven hours!       

A five-minute walk away brought us to our next port of call which was the Lancaster Royal Kings Arms Hotel.  The place has considerable history in that the Grade II listed building was originally constructed in 1625 and revamped in 1879 after a habitual great fire (arsonists abounded everywhere in that era!). Many royals stayed there and in its early days it was owned by King Louis XIV.

The local archives contain a letter that was sent from Carlisle to the hotel on 11th September 1857 requesting that a room be booked there for a certain Mr Charles Dickens who would be accompanied by his friend Wilkie Collins. They also requested a comfortable dinner (tea in the North!) for two persons at half past 5.    

Lancaster Royal Kings Arms Hotel. Image Credit blog.conferences-uk.org.uk

They were in a midst of a walking tour of Cumberland at that stage which was chronicled the following month in Dickens ‘Household Words’ under the title of ‘The Lazy Tour of Two Idle Apprentices’. The hotel is also cited as the location that Dickens scribed ‘The Tale of the Bridal Chamber’ and there remains to this day a ‘Dickens Suite’.

We had been in splinter groups for a couple of hours, but we all reconvened here. There was an excellent band on stage called Native Cult who were also playing several shows on the day. The duo hailed from Barrow and had a pot pourri of influences in their sound. Following there we grabbed some much needed tea and a sit down at the Golden Dragon Chinese restaurant next door.   

Our next destination was Lancaster Atticus on King Street which initially came into being in 1974 as a bookshop coffee bar above Probe Records in Liverpool. Probe Records is an interesting tale with its initial commencement as an independent underground/hippy establishment and it then morphed into a punk site when it moved to a new location, as a result of their new address being in close proximity to the legendary Eric’s venue.

Many future musicians were employed there including Frankie Goes to Hollywood’s Paul Rutherford, Pete Wylie from the Mighty Wah! and Pete Burns from Dead or Alive. The final named was renowned as faithfully adopting the house ethos of issuing ‘constructive criticism’ when parlaying with customers and thus influencing their selections! Julian Cope references the shop in his ‘Head On’ autobiography and the band meetings that took place there with Ian McCulloch when they were in The Crucial Three together.

They set up a record label Probe Plus whose most famous signing was undoubtedly Birkenhead’s Half Man Half Biscuit, a band who refreshingly took a break from the music business between 1987 and 1990 as they didn’t want to become ‘too successful’! They also famously turned down a slot on The Tube Channel 4 TV show as it clashed with a Friday night Tranmere Rovers match.

Half Man Half Biscuit. Image Credit pinterest.co.uk

The shop struggled for a spell through the initial downloading era, but the vinyl renaissance has boosted their turnover, and the record store remains to this day in its current location in the Bluecoat Arts Centre.

The Atticus name was chosen as it has literary connotations but is also useful alphabetically, from a commercial viewpoint, on any book shop listings. They opened a second shop in Lancaster in the 1990’s which subsequently closed in 2001.

The original owner Tom Flemons then returned to the area in 2014 to reopen the store as a not for profit enterprise supporting the Tasikoki Animal Rescue Centre in Indonesia where he had previously volunteered. At this stage it also expanded to incorporate a coffee bar. When we wandered past there was a band called Bay Big playing who are a large host of musicians who play a repertoire of Swing, Jazz and Latin.