Saturday 14 March 2015

Stories of a vanished brewery, a closed pub and a ghost sign once hidden and now rediscovered

Now one of the exciting things about Andy Robertson’s pictures is that they are beginning to record bits of the city which I have never visited or bits which I long ago forgot about.

So here is the Edinburgh Castle on Blossom Street which in its day must have done a fair trade.

According to that excellent site Pubs of Manchester it can be traced back to 1811, only closed recently and while it was not the most welcoming of places it could still have an exciting future.

The interior has fared well and for all those interested in what it looked like should visit the site.

In the meantime I am fascinated by the ghost sign which can still be made out above the door.

And like all good ghost signs it seems to have reappeared from the shadows with it’s own story.

The pub as the sign proudly proclaims was a Chester pub and Chesters merged with Threlfalls in 1961 which in turn was acquired by Whitbread’s in 1967.

There is a fine photograph of the Edinburgh in 1970 sporting the Whitbread logo and name, so our ghost sign will I guess have been painted over just a few years before.

And now it is out there again and perhaps that may be the first step along the way to the place reopening.

Pictures; Edinburgh Castle on Blossom Street, 2015, from the collection of Andy Robertson

*the Edinburgh Castle, Pubs of Manchester, http://pubs-of-manchester.blogspot.co.uk/2010/02/edinburgh-castle-blossom-street.html

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