Category: Stockport

Stockport Venues 15 to 17

In the Stockport suburb of Heaton Moor you will find the Stockport Moor Top public house. There was originally a batch of six houses that were built on that spot back in 1875 and named Belmont Terrace. In 1953 the Wilsons brewery obtained four, then swiftly demolished them and built the hostelry in their place.

For a spell it was owned by Steve Pilling who at the time owned the well renowned Damson restaurant across the road, but that has now long gone. The pub had a dubious reputation back in the day and more recent refurbishments have endeavoured to change the ‘housing estate pub’ look, though its appearance does remind me of the old 1980’s Preston boozers such as the Spindlemakers and the John O Gaunt.   

Spindlemakers pub in Preston. Image Credit bloggergoogleusercontent.com

They have a large partially covered outside area that is very well populated in the summer months, the inside can be a little soulless with a large open room, but they are always friendly behind the bar. They don’t normally have live music, but I struck lucky one night when I saw a local singer called Marvin performing.

If you then weave off down Green Lane, you reach six bonny self-detached cottages on the left. These are a group of almshouses (defined as originally founded by charity) which are known locally as the ‘Ainsworth Homes’ and were originally built in 1907.   

A right turn from there takes you to the Nursery Inn which at the rear contains a beer garden which overlooks a large bowling green. Opposite the pub is the Bowerham chippy which has proper old fashioned opening hours of 11.30am to 1.45pm and 4.30 – 8.30pm, the latter times surely enabling punters to pick up their fish supper on their bumble home! A downhill path then guides you through to the huge Stockport Pyramid roundabout.

Backtracking onto Green Road brings you to the Stockport Heaton Moor Sports Club. Within their extensive grounds there is contained a rugby, lacrosse, tennis and cricket club and they were originally formed in 1899. They also stage a monthly comedy club that is a sister initiative to the nearby Didsbury comedy club.  

Heaton Moor Sports Club. Image Credit themanc.com

My one and only attendance was on a sunny day to attend the annual beer festival in August 2025, with a cricket match in full flow when we arrived. They were also staging outdoor live music, and I was finally going to see the nattily named Reservoir Dads, who are a South Manchester covers band.

I have missed them thus far on their regular appearances at the Crown pub down the road, and totally unjustifiably had the hope that their name would imply some performance in the domain of Arthur Brown or Ozzy Osbourne in his bat biting stage! I could not have been much wider of the mark as after much faffing they finally hit the stage and were exceedingly limp and even had a mum in the band that day!     

I am now transporting you from there into the heart of the city centre and the grand old marketplace where there is a plethora of pubs surrounding the indoor market hall. One such hostelry was Stockport Doctor Feelgood, which was named after the band who were formed in Essex and gained their initial following on the renowned pub rock circuit in the early 1970’s. Their most famous track would be ‘Milk and Alcohol’.

Doctor Feelgood. Image Credit manchestersfinest.com

They remain an act to this day with a much changed line up, with previous members including the original singer David Brilleaux who went on to form the influential Stiff Records in 1976. Perhaps their most famous alumni would be John Andrew Wilkinson (more regularly known as Wilko Johnson) who developed a highly unusual percussive guitar sound by playing with his fingertips and not the standard plectrum. In 2011 he garnered a part on Game of Thrones where for a couple of series he played the mute executioner Ser Ilyn Payne.

In June 2021 the pub opened as a rock bar staging live music most nights a week, but due to rising costs it closed a couple of years later. It then reopened under a new venture Amp which then closed itself eighteen months later. During its tenure the likes of Bez, Clint Boon, Miles Kane and You Me at Six performed there. My personal single foray was to see Rock Doctors, a band I had previously witnessed at the aforementioned Crown.     

Stockport Venues 13 and 14

In March 2024 Gill and I decided to have a gander at the events contained within the Stockport town of Culture Weekender. After some Steel Band action at the Viaduct Park, we continued up the A6 to reach the Stockport War Memorial Art Gallery located on the corner of Wellington Road South and Greek Street.

The gallery is this very year celebrating its centenary as it was initially opened on 15 October 1925 by Prince Henry. At the time, the local residents decided against a singular traditional war memorial and instead built this as a place of reflection and healing and to commemorate those lost in the First World War. They have a constant rotation of events and there is currently a special exhibition to mark the anniversary with items of hope featuring artworks from local artists, and it is titled ‘Beautiful Things’. 

Stockport War Memorial Art Gallery. Image Credit onestockport.co.uk

It is a neo classically designed building with ‘Rocky’ style steps leading up to the entrance and it achieved Grade II listed status in 2007. It has a marble paved hall and fluted Greek columns and contains four individual gallery spaces. There are plaques inscribed with the names of the 2200 World War 1 casualties and further plaques have been added since to include the later 20th century conflicts.

On the day of our visit there was a highly sobering exhibition in place containing health workers testimonials on their reflections of the realities of working on the front line during the recent pandemic, it brought tears to your eyes!

In the memorial hall at the rear there was a local musician with a fine voice called James Holt who was playing some acoustic tunes. I thought he sounded and looked familiar, and I later confirmed that I had seen him previously at the Tribeca venue in Manchester as part of one of the Dot to Dot festivals. Despite a pretty good memory of previous performers, it is an ongoing occupational hazard when witnessing the artists again in a completely different setting from the first time I encountered them.

Just off the M60 and within walking distance of the town centre there is a large retail park called Portwood. It has the usual ‘delightful’ retail outlets but has been enhanced recently with the addition of an M&S Food Hall, though a second mortgage is sometimes required to shop there!

Also, there is a branch of Dunelm where shortly after we relocated I had to navigate the traffic to make two visits in one day, as I had a ‘middle age shout out’ of having to return some curtains as I had measured them incorrectly.

Whilst I was searching through the tsunami of choices the curtains must have read my rare grumpy mood and all decided in unison to collapse on the floor around me, causing me to utter the phrase ‘For F£$%’s Sake’ rather loudly before stomping off in a ‘Piers Morgan leaving the ITV Studio’ style strop to the nearest lavatory to calm down. Not my finest moment, but undoubtedly my finest ‘Dunelm’ moment!

Arden Arms. Image Credit pubgallery.co.uk

As you head back into town, you cross the main drag at what surely has to be the slowest pedestrian crossing in the whole of Cheshire and if you swing a left on Millgate adjacent to Asda you reach Stockport Arden Arms. This Grade II listed olde-worlde pub was built in 1815 as a replacement for Ye Blew Stoops, a coaching inn that dates all the way back to 1650. It is believed to be the oldest hostelry in the centre of Stockport and there used to be five large inns in that vicinity, but the Arden Arms is now the sole survivor.

There must have been some nefarious activities being undertaken there back in the day as it used to have a secret passage that enabled punters to flee from any danger and which led them through a tunnel to the nearby St Mary’s Church. I cannot envisage anyone taking that route would then have stopped a while in the church to repent!

The story goes is that the original builder of the Arden Arms, George Raffald Junior, used to hide in the nearby trees to catch any would-be burglars and the cellar was used to store bodies during influenza outbreaks. The original stables that date back to Ye Blew Stoops days can still be seen in the beer garden.

Arden Arms beer garden which the stage normally located at the end of the room. Image Credit facebook.com

My initial visit there was to grab some lunch, at which point I identified that they stage live music every weekend. Thus, in September 2024 Uncle George and I made a pilgrimage there on a Saturday night and discovered that the small indoor pub opened into an unexpectedly large and very impressive outdoor space, with half of the area being covered in front of the stage. Thankfully it was dry and reasonably mild on our visit, but I did think that the heated sheltered space would be a godsend in the winter months.

On stage were Blues with a Feeling, a Manchester five-piece blues band named after a track of that name performed by Little Walter. They provided a pleasing blast of 1960’s Chicago blues inspired sound.