Wednesday 18 January 2012

Manchester pubs, a new blog and a link to a Chorlton family

Sometimes you come across the most delightful blogs and web sites, and by sheer chance I fell across Pubs of Manchester, Past and present, http://pubs-of-manchester.blogspot.com/


Now once into the site it becomes addictive as you roam from one old drinking haunt to another. But there is much more. Here laid out with pictures is a history of many of the pubs in and around the city.

Now as a historian they make fine reading and I would suggest for the casual visitor there is much here as well. The posts are not dry descriptions but bounce with lively detail and popular information. Of course you can’t help but pick some out, like the description of the Castle on Oldham Street, http://pubs-of-manchester.blogspot.com/2010/01/4-castle-oldham-st.html

Here in the backroom in the early ‘70s I spent my time talking and discussing revolutionary politics and it was a real pleasure to take one of my sisters and her partner in last year. They were up from London dubious with what the city had to offer and were enchanted with the pub.

Likewise who could not feel at home in the Peveril of the Peak http://pubs-of-manchester.blogspot.com/2010/02/19-peveril-of-peak.html


But I suppose for me it is when the history of a pub coincides with my own research. The Sawyers Arms http://pubs-of-manchester.blogspot.com/2010/06/sawyers-arms-deansgate.html was one of the first pubs I visited when I came to live here in 1969 and for a while was owned by one of our own families here in Chorlton.

"The Cope family owned and were living at Oak Bank House which was a substantial home near the end of Needham Avenue. The house had belonged to William Morton who stipulated that on his death which was in 1838 the house should be sold within five years. 

The Tithe schedule for 1845 shows Frederick Cope renting the house and land to a John Hilton until 1850 when the Cope family take up residence there. Frederick was a wine and spirit merchant in partnership with his brother Richard, and they had various outlets, including the Exchange Tavern on St Mary’s Gate and the Sawyers Arms on the corner of Deansgate and Bridge Street. 

By 1851 Frederick Cope w widower is living at Oak Bank with his family. They can be found in the census return for 1851 and the Rate Book for that year and a number of Directories from the 1820s through to the 1850s. The Cope’s left Chorlton in 1855 and rented Oak Bank to Charles Clarke finally selling it in 1860. Oak Bank was set in gardens with extensive fruit trees, and consisted


"of three entertaining rooms, six bedrooms, excellent kitchen, scullery, cellars, &c. The outbuildings consist of two coach houses, stabling for four horses, gardener's room, wash house, laundry, &c. There are good gardens well stocked with fruit trees and about three acres." The Manchester Guardian June 28 1845, Valuable Property in Chorlton” *

*From my forthcoming book on Chorlton http://chorltonhistory.blogspot.com/search/label/Chorlton%20the%20Book


Picture; The Sawyers Arms from the collection of Andrew Simpson

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