Category: Manchester

Manchester Venues 188 to 190

The Manchester Didsbury Salmon of Knowledge is situated on Wilmslow Road in Didsbury village. It has had previous incarnations under the names of Dockyard, Stokers Arms, O’Neill’s and Times Square. In the early 90’s it was listed under the latter name and was a Bass Brewery house serving in my view the worst beer ever, the infernal Stones Bitter. It changed in 1996 to O’Neills and was for a couple of decades a traditional ‘Irish pub’.

The Salmon of Knowledge. Image Credit geograph.org.uk

In 2014 the ownership moved over to the Stokers Arms, and it was under this derivation I first encountered the establishment, and it was one of the first pubs we visited after our relocation to Manchester in 2017. It was a decent sized pub and had a battered charm about it and I recall having some tidy pub grub there.    

It has always been a good spot to watch sport thus Marcus and I were in residence there in the balmy hot summer of 2018 to watch England’s World Cup quarter final win over Sweden. We returned trying to play the ‘lucky pub’ card for the semi-final, but it didn’t work out as we then witnessed the slightly unfortunate defeat against Croatia. On both occasions the place was packed to the rafters.   

The further changes in ownership did not materially change the layout of the pub, the latter being the second branch of Salmon of Knowledge to open alongside the original version located in the Northern Quarter.

One welcome addition though was the introduction of live music staged on a small area near the front door. I have seen two acoustic acts performing there, one called Sally and Steve, and the other was Electro Gang. 

Diagonally across the road at the traffic lights there has always been a large unit on one of the Wilmslow Road/Barlow Moor Road corners. The building was previously the Clock Tower pub, then a branch of Zizzi before morphing into a steak joint called Cau. The restaurant was in situ when we first moved to the area, but we never had a chance to visit and in 2018 it closed for good when the parent company Gaucho fell into administration.

Kennedys Bar. Image Credit kennedysirishbar.co.uk

Despite its prime spot, the site remained empty for 7 years though there were rumours in that lengthy time span of bar One Eight Six taking over but that never came to fruition. Unexpectedly in the middle of 2025, it was announced Manchester Didsbury Kennedys Irish Bar would soon be located there.  

It opened as a sister chain to the already established branch in Altrincham which was established back in 2021. The original branch also recently expanded by diversifying into a spare unit next door to the pub with the addition of an Irish Deli.  

The Didsbury version stirred up a veritable ‘fuss over nowt’ before it had even opened by painting the exterior in vibrant red paint, which generated plenty of clickbait on social media. They also stated publicly that they wished to stay separate and apart where they possibly could from the monorail of the recently renewed interest in the Didsbury Dozen pub crawl.

We first visited about a month ago and were supping the obligatory Guinness, though not as nice as the Station pub just down the road. It is a large open room bar, and they stage regular music, though the sound on entry that day was thunderously loud.

On a stage in a corner away from the entrance we saw there was an act called El Rey performing, who was born in Newry, Northern Ireland but then moved to Manchester to further a burgeoning music career. He was followed by a chap named Damon.

We then moved onto Manchester Didsbury Famous Crown which is farther down Wilmslow Road towards East Didsbury train station and which we have frequented a few times before. I have struggled to find the previous history but know it was previously a Greenall Whitley brewery house and can confirm it is a proper olde world boozer with some original features therein.

The Crown. Image Credit aboutmanchester.co.uk

The pub was a rather naughty child during covid by opening illegally which led to it being forcibly closed down. Post-pandemic it was subject to a £470K investment and refurbishment from pub operators Punch Pubs & Co before officially reopening on 01/10/2022. They now stage periodic live music and on that particular visit we encountered a local lass called Jenny performing who had a terrific voice.

Manchester Venues 186 to 187

Manchester Central Libraryis situated facing St Peters Square. It was constructed back in the 1930’s and was designed as a columned portico building in the style of the Pantheon in Rome. It was officially opened by King George V in 1934 with the writer of ‘Dirty Old Town’ Ewan MacColl ensconced in the crowd.

Manchester was ahead of the curve in being forward thinking as the first local authority to provide a free public lending facility in 1852 and the opening was attended by an illustrious writer called Charles Dickens. The library then had several homes before landing at the permanent location cited above. It is now classed as a Grade II listed edifice, remarkably alongside a fellow 237 others in Manchester.

Manchester Central Library. Image Credit Time Out.

There was an extensive £40m refurbishment in 2010 which included resolving asbestos issues which appears to be a common issue with structures of that generation.  Prior to the renovation work the Library Theatre Company was in place in the basement, but the area was restructured as part of the library with the Theatre moving into the Home complex on First Street.

The Library Company had an illustrious history with Patrick Stewart (Jean Luc Picard) appearing in Billy Liar there in 1963. Others to tread the boards are Amanda Burton, Julie Walters, Bernard Hill, Liam Neeson and rather bizarrely John Noakes.

Many folk bands played the intimate 312 seat space in the mid-1960’s including the Spinners, The Oldham Tinkers (remarkably still active) and the Moston Brook Clog Dancers. Additionally, one of the city’s music shops ‘Rare Records’ put on lunch time shows for a spell.

It is now the second largest library in Britain and there are collections dedicated to the author Elizabeth Gaskell and the composer George Handel. There are also large spaces called the Shakespeare Hall and the Great Hall.

The Oldham Tinkers record cover. Image Credit oldhamtinkers.com

Beneath the latter, at one stage there were four floors full of shelfing totalling 35 miles length and contained an astonishing one million books. The humungous library brings to mind the remarkable ‘The Book That Wouldn’t Burn’ tome penned by Mark Lawrence. Methinks, that would take a little while to read your way through that lot!

During his school years the Clockwork Orange author Anthony Burgess was a regular visitor. Very periodically gigs have been staged including Slow Readers Club and Every Everything in 2014 and in 2016 Thurston Moore had a book tour date there and naturally Noasis performed earlier this year.

Another area is the Manchester Henry Watson Music Library named after the local composer who donated his works to the library. It contains one of the largest assemblages of sheet music and was opened in 1947 by Sir John Barbirolli, who was the conductor of the Manchester Halle Orchestra.

I have only crossed the threshold into the impressive building a couple of times, the first being for a photography exhibition and the latter to attend a show in the afore mentioned Music Library where I saw a combo called Jam Crew playing, whilst I listened and mulched around the bookshelves.  

The aforementioned Manchester St Peters Square was in the late 17th century located on the fringes of the town of Manchester with three open sides, one wending its way down to the River Medlock. St Peters Church was then constructed, and the square was named in 1801.

On Monday 16th In 1819 the area gained national attention for all the wrong reasons when a large crowd of approximately 60k protesters gathered to demand parliamentary reform. Astoundingly at that juncture only 11% of adult males had the right to vote, let alone women!

They were met with a staggeringly disproportionate show of force when the 15th Hussars on horseback were ordered to disperse the crowd which they did with sabres drawn. In the resultant carnage, 17 people were killed and around 700 people injured.

The shameful events were subsequently coined the ‘Peterloo Massacre’, the name being a nod to the Battle of Waterloo which took place four years earlier.  I recall in 2019 a memorial statue was designed and installed commemorating the 200 year anniversary.   

Nowadays, it is a busy transport hub with a large metro station with four platforms located there which was initially opened in 1992.

St Peters Square. Image Credit greenblue.com

When I was traversing the square a couple of years ago, I noticed there was a random event taking place on a temporary stage in one corner. I discovered the lass performing a short promo set was a K Pop artist called Mirai, who has appeared in bands called ael and The Hoopers.