Category: Stockport

Stockport Venues 5 and 6

In the continuance of my ongoing Stockport story, I am going to initially backtrack to new venues visited in areas that I have already covered. The first one in that regard is the Stockport Dog and Partridge located at the junction of Didsbury Road and Burnage Lane just outside the East Didsbury metro station.

Stockport Dog and Partridge. Image Credit yelp.com

The D&P is a large, detached pub that originally opened in 1959 replacing an older pub a couple of doors down. It was at that stage under the jurisdiction of Boddingtons Brewery and was a sister to the nearby Griffin hostelry owned by the same company. It underwent a significant refurbishment in 2017, shortly before I moved into that area. I initially cited this as a Manchester establishment, but I then subsequently discovered it is in fact about 20 yards over the Stockport border.

There are benches facing the main road at the front of the pub and a more enclosed beer garden at the rear which Gill and I utilised a couple of times during the pandemic. Inside it is brightly lit and caters quite heavily toward live sports and on occasions can be a tad rough and ready.  I had noted that in the last couple of years they began referencing live music on Saturday nights, so a Didsbury Road pub crawl was arranged with Marcus in tow to take advantage of this fact.

We started further up Didsbury Road and visited the Crown, Heatons, the aforementioned Griffin before arriving at the Dog and Partridge about 9.30pm. We grabbed a table in the corner and caught a local singer called Dennis playing.

Progressing then over to Moor Top you would find Stockport Nook. This café bar first opened in 2015, and I visited for the first time three years later where on the outside tables you can nuzzle a coffee during the day or a craft beer in the evening. At that stage they rather bizarrely had the lavatories behind the bar. Since the pandemic they have created a shared space with the chippy on the left and Roost at 113 on the right which encompasses three restaurants with tapas, Mexican and Italian cuisine available under one roof.     

Stockport Nook. Image Credit stockporthub.co.uk

Around this time Nook totally refurbished their establishment with repurposed timber and other artefacts. They also linked up with North Manchester based pizzeria Dough So Good who have now built a pizza shack in the covered beer garden downstairs (previously a car parking space) which is accessed from the back of the building. They also have on their schedule vinyl nights and Open Door Thursdays with music acts performing and on one of those very evenings we saw a chap called Acoustic Al play there.

Martin Stephenson and the Daintees were a folk based band from the Northeast of England who were formed in 1982 after the lead singer and self-taught musician had previously commenced busking at the age of fifteen. They were signed initially to a local independent label called Kitchenware Records alongside other bands such as the Kane Gang and Prefab Sprout. The label also struck gold a couple of decades later by capturing The Editors at an early stage who recorded their platinum selling album ‘The Back Room’ with them.

Martin Stephenson’s combo who also contain his wife Kate took an eight-year hiatus in 1992 but then reformed and have operated continuously since 2000. They released their most acclaimed album Boat to Bolivia in 1986 and like many other bands have undertaken full tours since playing that album in full.  He also collaborated with Billy Connolly in 2018 on a documentary about the comedian’s colourful life.

Martin Stephenson live at Plot 20 Allotment Music Festival. Image Credit youtube.com

In a previous blog I referenced the Blue Cat in Heaton Moor where the band played in 2009. My good pal Mark was there, and he told me the tale of a request then being made of Martin to play at a local allotment. He had a renowned predilection for playing obscure unusual venues, so he readily accepted the challenge.  Thus on 06/09/09, you would find him undertaking a gig with large sunflowers in the background and the set even includes a Postman Pat/Muppet Show medley! Slightly wonky footage of his performance there can be found on You Tube under Plot 20 Allotment Music Festival.

Stockport Venues 3 to 4

Continuing my journey through the Stockport suburbs brings you to the area of Heaton Moor and the thriving street of Shaw Road with its plethora of restaurants and bars. At the Heaton Moor Road end, you find Leoni’s Italian restaurant who also owned a short-lived pizzeria on the other side of the street. In the building where the restaurant now resides there used to be a Kro Bar branch, their first outside the city centre which ran from 2008 to 2016 before a short stint then as cocktail bar Tusk.

A smidge further down you reach a Stockport institution Kushoom Koly, a curry house that first opened in 1971, known locally as the ‘Kush’. We attended there in late 2018 and the owner Faruk Uddin made a beeline for us as ‘newbies’ to the establishment and was a thoroughly lovely chap and we had a very fine meal. I surmise we would have returned many more times, but unimaginable tragedy struck when the owner’s son Jordan was killed in a road traffic accident and the proprietor felt he could not carry on and the restaurant closed for good in 2019.

  

The Kush. Image Credit facebook.com

On the other side of the street there are two separate ale bars called Pale and Bottle respectively. Beyond those you find Pokusevski’s Mediterranean restaurant which has expanded from its original tiny café when it first opened in 2004. It is an inviting place with dangerously delicious cakes and their own home made ginger tea. It was one of the first places to open locally during the pandemic and I recall our palpable excitement in those surreal times for something as abundantly simple as a takeaway coffee!

Next to there is Hula, a tiki late night dive bar which I have never frequented, however within this location the music venue called the Blue Cat used to reside.  A local chap called Danny Donnelly, a former electrician, spotted a large gap in the Stockport live music scene and bravely opened up the venue in 1996. The premise was to provide a platform for upcoming bands as an antidote to the gruel diet of tribute acts at other local sites and they actually instilled this ethos by having a no covers policy in place. With the opening of the venue, he actually kickstarted the subsequent regeneration of Shaw Road.

The Blue Cat. Image Credit Manchester Evening News.com

Luminaries such as The Blossoms, Johnny Marr, Nick Harper, Ian McNabb, Kiki Dee and 1975 have played there and local acts Haven (from Heaton Moor) and Isobel Heyworth were supplied opportunities to make a name for themselves. Comedy nights were also staged, and John Bishop, Alan Carr, Sarah Millican and Jack Whitehall have graced the stage. He also set up his own record label named Out of the Blue.

As a result of Stockport’s inflexible licensing laws with their 11.30 curfew, the venue was sadly forced to close for good in 2015 after a 19-year residency. The final band to play there was the band Man Made featuring Johnny Marr’s son Nile. I never had the chance to frequent as this was in the pre-Manchester Jimmy period.  

A couple of doors away is Stockport Cassidy’s Bar which was opened by a chap called Martin Cassidy in 2004. It has an odd lay out with a split level from the entrance up to the main bar. There is sport constantly booming on the many screens and they also have music on at the weekend. There have also been karaoke performances with one previous event led by Blossoms frontman Tom Ogden. On the night of our visit in 2019 a local singer called Sally Walters was playing.

Cassidy’s Bar. Image Credit The UK

On a monthly basis the Stockport Heaton Moor Market takes over Shaw Road with its numerous market stalls. On one occasion at the tail end of 2021 there was a set from the Heatons & Reddish Ukelele band who practice every Friday at the local United Reform Church.