Of the four main city centre train stations, Victoria would probably be my least attended as it has always been slightly on the wrong side of the tracks for me! Now if you depart the station down the approach heading alongside the tram tracks towards Shudehill Interchange but deviate marginally to the left down Hanover Street, you reach the Sadler’s Cat public house.
Sadler’s Cat pub. Image Credit secretmanchester.com
The Sadler’s was originally known as the Pilcrow which was purpose built as part of a regeneration programme commitment by the Co-operative Society, following the demolition of the Crown and Cushion pub to make way for a new public road. The current name reflects the commemoration of the very site of the first hot air balloon flight in 1785 and the pilot being one James Sadler who took his feline friend with him on the trip! The pub is contained within the NOMA complex and is now owned by the Cloudwater brewery and is a good basking spot in the summer with a suite of outside tables.
Staying with the Co-op theme, across the square from the hostelry you find the New Century Hall which was built as their 1000 capacity Insurance Society building in 1962 and sits adjacent to New Century House. They had many major acts play there in the 1960’s including Rolling Stones, Tina Turner, Jerry Lee Lewis and the Kinks. There is also an anecdote of the Jimi Hendrix Experience performing there in 1966 and a young John Cooper Clarke being denied entry as he was not wearing the obligatory tie, despite being bedecked in Fred Perry and a striped sports coat, bouncers eh!
John Cooper Clarke. Image Credit pinterest.com
It is a three-storey building with the basement containing the Access Creative College where you can obtain degrees in music and gaming. The ground floor houses the Manchester New Century Food Hall where I first visited in December 2022 on a Christmas works do where we partook some tucker from one of the many food vendors and watched the England v Wales World Cup match. Where the big screen showing the match was located, there is normally a stage, and I have seen a couple of local singers perform there.
Upstairs from there is the Manchester New Century Hall which on first sight I was instantly impressed by with the wood surrounds and tasteful lighting. Even when busy it remains an accessible venue with ability to scoot down the sides to obtain a spot nearer to the stage. I can see myself in the future checking their listings from a venue viewpoint ahead of many others in the city where they become an almighty scrum when reaching capacity, the Albert Hall being a case in point.
My first attendance was in May 2023 with Gill and our good friends and fellow rabble rousers Jo and Paul. We had a couple of drinks around the Kampus area near Piccadilly and in the Northern Quarter. The band we were going to see was The Beths from Auckland in New Zealand. They were promoting their hugely recommended third album ‘Expert in a Dying Field’ which I have given serious airplay to as I love the upbeat nature of it, and I thoroughly enjoyed their set. Their sound reminds me of a fellow upcoming band called Fortitude Valley.
Manchester New Century Hall. Image Credit manchestereveningnews.co.uk
My next attendance was with Gill in June 2024 where we only shamefully discovered the Abel Heywood Hydes brewery pub for the first time, but we have rectified that by attending a couple of times since. The band that night was the Lovely Eggs who I didn’t enjoy as much as their previous times I have seen them.
There then followed two attendances in Sept 2024. The first was remarkably for me to see Ride for the first time, however I had previously seen an individual set by Mark Gardener at Preston Continental back in November 2011 where they also showed a screening of ‘Anyone Can Play Guitar’ which provides a story of the Oxford music scene featuring Ride alongside many other bands.
For the uninitiated, Ride were prime shoegaze pioneers releasing two highly touted albums on Creation records in the early 1990’s. They broke up in 1996 before reforming in 2014 and were touring their latest album ‘Interplay’. The sound quality was poor early on but once they sorted that out, they were excellent.
My latest visit involved a large group of us including my pals Jason Gill and Barry Jury going to see the Go Team for the fourth time and for my first time for 14 years. They played in full their superb debut album ‘Thunder Lighting Strike’ with other tunes interspersed in their set.
As a postscript I have managed to obtain some degree of numerical symmetry as New Century Hall was the actual 150th Manchester venue that I had visited.