Tag: Coldplay

Lancaster Venues 29 to 31

I return this week to the ongoing review of the Lancaster Live Festival in October 2025. Our next port of call was Lancaster Dalton Square which is a public space that is located at the top end of town and is named after John Dalton, who built the area back in the 18th century. The previous occupants back in the 13th century housed a Dominican Friary there, while their church and cemetery are buried beneath the adjoining streets.

To the right resides Palatine Hall, which has had former lives of the Hippodrome variety hall, opera house, county cinema and catholic chapel, one might say they have certainly had their usage of that building. It is also overlooked by Lancaster Town Hall, and the centrepiece is the Queen Victoria monument donated to the city in 1907.

Dalton Square. Image Credit photonorth.co.uk

During the afternoon of our visit, they had some family friendly events on the square, and we caught a segment of the Milnthorpe Steel Band’s set. The band had an unusual derivation as it sparked from a steel band in London selling a small number of pans to a primary school teacher in Milnthorpe in Cumbria in 1996.

The enthusiasm of teacher Andy Whitfield then led to the creation of a school steel band, which evolved into a community group which was known colloquially as ‘Din in a Bin’. In 2005, the two combos joined together to form the band who play together today, and in 2016 they obtained charitable status. I have always loved the steel sound, and they were terrific fun and they played a festival friendly set by incorporating Coldplay and Abba covers.

In one corner of the square resides a rather impressive Grade 2 listed three storey Georgian building with Victorian frontage. It has previously been the Mayor of Lancaster’s house, a working men’s club and also the Blob Shop, but since 2006 it has been the home of the excellent award-winning Lancaster Borough public house. Those commendations include winning Lancaster’s best pub award in 2016, which is no mean achievement with the plethora of fine hostelries located in the city.

Lancaster Borough. Image Credit booking.com

The Horner family opened the establishment and undertook a major refurbishment in 2013 with the addition of fourteen en-suite bedrooms and their own purpose built brewery. They hold comedy nights on a Sunday, have a beer garden space at the rear and the venue can also be hired out for weddings and private functions. They are linked up with the nearby independent Dukes cinema, and they have a commendable environmental ethos including initiatives such as solar panels and their own purified tap water. 

When you enter you arrive initially in the pub space where they always have a fine selection of ales available and they also have received continuous CAMRA recognition. From there you reach a restaurant area where they serve terrific gastropub fare. Over the years we have had many excellent meals and have chosen it specifically for birthday visits, resulting in regularly leaving in a relaxed and replete state for the walk back to the station and the last train home.  

I have never been aware of any music being staged here but they made an exception for the festival. So, on the day in a very busy front room I saw a set by local singer/songwriter Molly Warburton.

A couple of minutes trot from there to Church Street brings you to Lancaster Mint Café Bar. This is a small cocktail bar that has been in play for a few years and opens until 2am at the weekends and they also have ‘Mint’ cards, I wonder if they are in spearmint or peppermint colours?!

Mint Cafe. Image Credit thingstodoinlancaster.co.uk

Apparently, a couple of years ago a few local students formed an inaugural Lancaster Cocktail society where they utilise Mint for their monthly cocktail society meetings. When we arrived, we discovered there was a mini stage inside the main door where a very personable acoustic singer called Olli Heath was performing. He was taking requests, but the shout outs were a tad commercial for me.

I am pleasantly surprised when I reflect that this blog has been running now for 6.5 years as I initially did not think it would have this longevity. As you may have deduced by now, I am an avid ‘statto’ and have periodically reflected that in my mind by comparing the blog numbers against other lengthy time span achievements i.e. highest individual test cricket scores.  

Thus, as this is my 333rd edition, I have married that up to Graham Gooch’s famous 10-hour 28 minutes innings of that very number in 1990 against India, a performance so renowned even a 333 model version of a cricket bat was created in his honour!

Manchester Venue 178 – Stage and Radio

A couple of years ago I was persuaded to make my debut in attempting an escape room with my pals  Clare, Hayley and Lottie, the venue being located down Port Street buried deep in the Northern Quarter. My first sighting of this concept was on the Crystal Maze TV programme in the early 1990’s which was very popular with hosts including Richard O’Brien (Rocky Horror Show) and Ed Tudor-Pole (lead singer of punk band Tenpole Tudor). It then evolved in 2003 into physical locations across the world, totalling 50,000 by 2019.

The Crystal Maze. Image Credit justwatch.com

It is based around a team using mental agility to solve clues and puzzles to ensure you can escape the room (or rooms) within a specified time limit. In our instance it was an interesting dynamic to watch four project managers and their different approaches, a couple were in the hyper harum-scarum camp and the remaining two in the considered analytical mould (myself contained in the latter more horizontal category!). The synergy coalesced and everyone wholly contributed to enable us to make our exit in time to head to the nearest pub for an after action review!   

Further down the road you will find the Port Street Beer House which does exactly what it says on the tin with a rotation of 18 keg and 7 craft beer lines. They opened their doors initially in 2011 and were the forerunners of the craft beer pubs that now proliferate widely across Manchester. They have a compact bar area downstairs with a function room upstairs and outdoor seating available for those sunny evenings. 

They stage ‘meet the brewer’ sessions, one of which I inadvertently witnessed, where they ran through the merits and tasting notes of each beverage on sale. They also introduced the innovative concept of the Indy Man Beer Con, which was a four day festival and reportedly the first of its kind across the country specifically for the craft beer trade. The successful events ran for eight years being before stalled by the pandemic.

Port Street Beer House. Image Credit pubgallery.co.uk

On the corner of Port Street and Great Ancoats Street a remarkable discovery was made in 2016 when preparations were being made to build a 13 storey skyscraper. Builders were astonished to find an ancient underground pub, complete with untouched brandy bottles and personalised crockery emblazoned with the name of the former landlord Thomas Evans. He owned the Astley Arms pub in 1821 which was eventually demolished in 1986.

Next door to the Beer House is Manchester Stage and Radio which is located within a 200 year old four storey warehouse, which is so synonymous with many other venues in the Northern Quarter. I have just discovered it has a long and illustrious history with the site being the city’s oldest nightlife venue. It originally opened its doors straight after World War 2 in 1946 and was a renowned jazz venue for many years led by renowned promoter Eric Scriven. It was named Club 43 after its address of 43 Port Street and luminaries such as Miles Davis, Ronnie Scott and Ella Fitzgerald graced the stage there.

An old flyer for Club 43, probably dated early 1960’s. Image Credit crj-online.org

Fast forward half a century to 1998 and at an ‘In the City’ showcase Muse and Coldplay both played, and the rumour goes that the latter were scouted by the Universal Records representative Debs Wild at that very show, thus subsequently signing their first professional recording contract. It was then for a spell a salsa dancing location trading as Cuba Café. In 2016 it morphed into its current iteration and three years later it moved under new ownership, and they developed it into a specialist electronic dance venue.

They have an outdoor space and upon entering you have a jazz influenced ground floor bar and upstairs is the Attic with seating and table service which can be hired out for functions. They have also converted the downstairs space into a dimly lit nightclub with a capacity of 150 and an accompanying licence until the post witching hour of 4am.

They have greatly improved the sound and acoustics by subtle but effective changes such as repositioning the booth. The booth is also adaptable to allow it to collapse so allowing bands to play. The initial launch involved CROP Radio undertaking an epic 15-hour live stream, I am sure punters needed some kip after that one!

On one of my sporadic visits to the establishment I discovered my attendance was on one of the live music nights and a chap called Steve Johnson was playing in a corner of the main bar.