Month: May 2025

Liverpool Venues 13 to 16

I am this week commencing with the continuation of my sally down the Beatles influenced Mathew Street. On one of its corners bordering Stanley Street, you would locate Liverpool McCooleys whichis a sports and music bar that first opened its doors in 2017. The venue has a sister site located across town in Concert Square. The Mathew Street branch are an Irish Bar built over two floors, and they recently expanded to include a rooftop bar which accommodates a capacity of around 150 punters.

When its first opened, its overall size of 6500 square feet gained it the instant accolade of being the largest Irish Bar in the city and it has the traditional wood decor. They have regular music performers and on the day of my visit a local artist called Martha was strumming away in the corner.   

Liverpool McCooleys. Image Credit Liverpool Echo.

A couple of doors away is the Liverpool Legends Sports Bar, which does exactly what it says on the tin with live sports blasting out all day. They have stretched the concept of the happy hour to the limit by expanding it to 11am to 9pm from Sunday to Thursday. There are musical interludes every evening followed by regular DJ sets; on the one time I have visited I saw a double act called Dewey and Bill playing.

Liverpool Coopers Town House which isburied away on Cases Street near Clayton Square has a long and illustrious history. The pub has been around since 1890, but the story really starts on 16th January 1925 when a lady called Ada Cooper took over the license for the hostelry which at that stage was called The Sefton. She was an immensely popular landlady, so much so the pub became affectionally and informally known locally as The Coopers.

In the 1980’s, The Sefton was under the auspices of the Tetley Walker brewery, but the tide was changing in this decade into the free houses ethos, and this new approach resulted in the pub being renamed the Coopers in 1985. However, their early days were a challenge as in 1986 the majority of the street was demolished to create room for the Clayton Square development which resulted in its isolation from the city centre for three years.

Liverpool Coopers Town House. Image Credit Liverpool Echo.

To mitigate this commercial hit, the brewery asked John Hodges, who ran the nearby Empire pub, to take an additional rent free tenancy to preserve the licence. He developed the Coopers into a music-themed community establishment and when the area opened back up in 1989, he sold his current tenancy and moved in. Over the corresponding 35 years he maintained the popularity of the pub, and they have regular karaoke and live music nights.

The legacy of Ada was not forgotten as on the 100-year anniversary of her arrival celebratory events were held and a commemorative plaque was unveiled there. Through social media the small pub has attracted faithful clientele including Liverpool fans who live in Belgium and Copenhagen who have visited there year on year when attending Liverpool matches and it also has a commendable social media presence with 100,000 followers and over a million likes on Tik Tok. I saw a singer called Kerry on my one visit there.

Further down the same street is Liverpool Rocking Horse. The pub is located in the previous home of a TSB bank and prior to that Blacklers Department store. Blacklers was in situ there for almost the entirety of the 20th century before closing its doors for the final time in April 1988. Contained within their children’s clothing department since the 1950’s was a famous rocking horse called ‘Blackie’ (a name now from a bygone era).

‘Blackie’ the Rocking Horse. Image Credit Museum of Liverpool.

When the store closed Blackie moved on a free transfer to Alder Hey Childrens Hospital where it remained for 16 years as a well loved feature in the central admissions and cardiac clinic. In 2004 it was given a makeover after sustained usage on the wards, and it went into deserved retirement when it was donated on to the Museum of Liverpool.

So, naturally the name of the new hostelry that opened in 2021 was thus pre-ordained. It is an identikit sports and music bar with performers on 7 days a week. When I graced its doors, I was treated to a few tunes by a singer called Vera.        

Manchester Venues 172 to 174

It fills me with a warm glow that the excellent independent Sounds From The Other City (SFTOC) festival recently celebrated its 20th anniversary, though I could not attend this year as I decided to head to another festival on the same weekend. However, I shall now return to my review of the 19th edition which took place in 2024.

There is a glacial but gradual regeneration of the buildings and venues on Chapel Street near to Salford University, one such site is the Manchester Old Fire Station Cafe. The first recorded occurrence of fire fighting in the Salford area was in 1635, and the new fire station at Albion Place, Salford Crescent was built much later in 1903. It was a striking design of red brick and buff terracotta with a shaped gable, balcony and clock face, which has been retained to this day.  

The Old Fire Station. Image Credit soundsfromtheothercity.com

This was followed 25 years later by the building of an adjoining Ambulance house and additional houses were also provided for the firemen and their families. In the square of the front of a fire station you will find a War Memorial which was originally erected in 1922 to commemorate the Lancashire Fusiliers.

The fire station remained in operation for around a century before ‘Pugh, Pugh, Barney McGrew, Cuthbert, Dibble and Grubb’ closed their doors for the final time!  Salford University subsequently reclaimed and restored the site and accommodated their Council Chamber and three boardrooms and they thankfully retained the fireman’s original poles.

More excitingly in July 2023 within the auspices of £2.5bn Salford Crescent Masterplan they opened up a bar and café including a sourdough bakery. They also housed in situ the new Lark Hill brewery with a select choice of local brews and there was an initial competition instigated with University staff to find the best name for one of their new ales. I have visited a few times and sampled breakfast there and also partaken of a couple of cold beers later on in the evening at one of their outside tables. 

Heading out to the Trumpton Riots! Image Credit fia.uk.com

They have a regular weekly quiz and were sensibly chosen for inclusion as a venue within the SFTOC roster. On that particular day we saw SHEwillprovide? who are a collective trio from Manchester with their music ensconced in their Jamaican roots. We also say Ayy Den, now based in Manchester who badges herself as a genre-fluid DJ.

In 1953, two book afficionados Eddie Frow and Ruth Haines met at a Communist Party Summer School, they then hooked up and their pooled collections was the initial germination of the Manchester Working Class Movement Library. Over the next couple of decades, they continued to expand their compendium, gaining charitable trust status but conversely running out of storage room in their house in Trafford.

In 1987, Salford City Council agreed to provide support and provided a home for the library and the couple in Jubilee House, across the road from the University of Salford. The building was originally built in 1897, and it had a previous function as a nurse’s home.

Working Class Movement Library. Image Credit Geograph Britain and Ireland

In 2007, the trust agreed to provide the lease and annual costs with additional funding provided by trade unions and personal subscriptions. The 30,000 books contained in the library cover the subjects of trade unions, co-operative movement and left wing politics.  It is an old brick building set from the main road and on our visit, we saw a local hip hop artist called O’Sapien performing.  

As you progress down Chapel Street, and you reach Bexley Square you would find the Manchester Porta Tapas restaurant. Gill and I have visited a couple of times, and it is a lovely, homely spot and they also serve the excellent Pastel de Natas!

The owning brothers Ben and Joe Wright have sister restaurants in Chester and Altrincham and have recently opened a further branch in West Didsbury on the old site where Simon Rimmer’s Green’s restaurant was located for many years.  In the last couple of SFTOC events they have been added as an additional venue on the roster, and they utilise a function room for the acts to play on the second floor accessed via some cramped stairs.

When we landed there was an artist called Yeguachita playing who is self-described as a queer, neurodivergent musician from Abya Yala. I had to look up that last reference and it is apparently a term used by some indigenous people of the Americas when referring to their ancestral lands. She was very quirky and crossed many genres, and I found her performance quite intriguing.