Former site of Ducie Arms Hotel, New Bridge Street. (c) googlemaps.
This plain looking Boddies house sat right on the edge of our boundaries (and is not to be confused with the old official Boddingtons brewery pub, the Brewery Tap up Great Ducie Street, also gone). The Manchester Evening News Arena has been crudely plonked near to this part of town, diagonally opposite the row of premises which contained the Ducie Arms seen in the 1964 and 1967 photos, as well as part of Victoria Station. The Ducie Arms faced the huge Boddingtons Brewery with its famous chimney. This now stands alone since the rest of the brewery was demolished when Interbrew / Inbev decided to kill off one of our most famous ales by moving production to Scotland and Wales, thereby ringing the death-knell for Boddies cask, once a glorious pint. Thankfully Manchester is still blessed with four excellent and popular local brewers in Holt's, Hyde's, Lees and Robinson's (Stockport), with an abundance of microbrewies, meaning every pub in town really has no excuse not to serve local ales.
This was a dosser's pub back in the late Seventies. (The brewery tap opposite was a postman's pub.) I've fond memories of this place -the Boddingtons bitter was on electric pump and was a superb, viciously bitter brew with no Challenger hops or maltiness. The floor had been laid in lino squares stuck down. The dossers tended to be an easy-going lot, with some of them pissing down their trouser legs -which was not much of a problem as the floor was regularly hosed down after chucking out. A more basic pub than this was hard to find, even in Seventies Manchester/Salford.
ReplyDeleteDo you remember Joyce and her sister behind the bar and bobbi the dog lying in the grate with a roaring fire?
ReplyDeleteI remember Joyce but I was only a lad. My Dad and his brothers used to go here land I would play pool . I remember one day when we had an afternoon lock in, I needed a piss, my dad said use that bucket and carried on talking, I pissed in the wrong one. I believe the mild didn’t taste the same the day after, I’d apparently pissed in the mild overspill that was to be put back on the next day 😂
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