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.

Lancaster Venues 23 to 25

This week I return to the Lancaster Live festival I attended in 2023 to review the final venue visited that year which was Lancaster Tite & Locke. This establishment opened on the northbound platform 3 on Lancaster train station on 8th April 2022. It was named after the original architect and engineer of the station, when that was first built back in 1846.

It is a very cosy welcoming bar with the wooden surrounds and exposed brickwork providing a vintage feel. It has four rooms, the initial containing the bar and the others named as first, second and third class lounges!

Tite and Locke. Image Credit flickr.com

There are 24 beers on tap including the five different variations of the very fine Lancaster Brewery ales, and they also offer a takeaway service in advance of your upcoming journey. There is also a large covered outdoor area where you can watch the trains departing to Glasgow, Edinburgh and the Lake District.   

We had a cheeky head wetter there when we first landed around lunchtime and had a relaxed hour at the end of the day prior to the members of our group jumping onto Manchester and Carlisle trains respectively. We managed to commandeer a large table in front of the small acoustic stage in the bar area.

The first act we saw was local band Diverted Traffic who undertook some cover versions including Johnny Cash’s ‘Folsom Prison Blues’ including the amended line of the day which became ‘Shot a man in Tesco, just to watch him die’!

The other performer was Chris Barlow, who is the Senior Lecturer in Education at the University of Cumbria and has been instrumental in driving forward the Eden Project inspired Morecambe Bay curriculum.

The commendable initiative links to place based learning including staging Glastonbury Festivals at the local Sandylands school featuring live music, songwriting workshop, face painting and weaving workshops. That sounds like a whole lotta fun to me and top trumps the double physics classes in my day!

When he needs what I am sure is a welcome break from academia he transforms by night into acoustic guitar man! He has released two albums, one called ‘Hiroshima Twinkie Sunset over Morecambe Bay’ which has tunes featuring lyrics devised by the afore mentioned Sandylands school pupils.

The other is titled ‘Lunar Landscape’ under his stage name Chris Twinkle containing songs with Half Man Half Biscuit sounding titles such as ‘Hey Jules Verne’ and my personal favourite name of ‘Iggy Pop’s Trousers’!

Iggy Pop. Image Credit madelinex.com

So, then I will move forward two years to Gill and I’s return to attend the 2025 festival. The event itself was initially under a modicum of doubt as the original organisers decided to take a well-deserved year off, but thankfully a separate local co-operative took up the mantle. They did a fine job with the usual 50+ venues in operation over the four days of the weekend.

We decided to avoid the risk of relying on train transport home and bagged a room at the Sun Inn in the centre of the city. This allowed us to have a full day’s gigging on Saturday and a half day on the Sunday resulting in a Jimmy personal best of 37 gigs and 23 new venues!

There obviously had to be the traditional false start to proceedings with our local trains having a meltdown, but this was swiftly resolved by an uber to pick up our connection at Manchester Piccadilly, landing in Stockport about 1pm. Our first port of call was the Lancaster Storey Café, where we attended a gig in the gardens last time, but this was the first event inside the building.

Thus, against the backdrop of cappuccino makers and tempting looking cakes there was a local singer called Grace Dawson performing. Prior to our departure we managed to purloin a programme with valuable schedules contained in the pages within.

Our next destination was the Lancaster Toll House Inn, situated near to the canal. There are records of a public house being in this location since 1820. There then followed many derivations before the Thwaites brewery owners undertook a £2m refurbishment in 2007. It was renamed the Penny Street Bridge Hotel complete with bar, brasserie, courtyard and 28 bedrooms.

Toll House Inn. Image Credit Visit Lancashire

In 2015, it obtained its current name reflecting the fact of its location at the original toll house, At the turn of the 19th century local football teams, even ones like Scotforth and Galgate which are only a couple of miles away, were quantified as southerners and thus charged a toll to enter into Lancaster!

It is a grand old Victorian building, and we saw a three piece self-styled jukebox band called the Beets who were actually playing as a duo on the day. They were exactly as they stated on the tin, by playing any song on request from the audience.  

A postscript this week is I do not think the pictures will display, which could be a pesky AI problem, so I shall endeavour to resolve for next week!