Thomas Barritt, a renowned Manchester antiques expert, was born in the late 1700s next door to the Buck pub on Withy Grove, then literally, a grove lined by withy trees with a brook running down its centre. There were mansions in the grove and this part of town was considered the fashionable quarter. Barritt deposited many drawings and devices with the Chethams College, which may still be there today. He died in in 1820 having for many years worn a cork leg due to an early amputation [1]. There is no record of the Buck on the 1849 map of Manchester, it having been lost along with the mansions, trees and brook, when Withy Grove was "improved" in the early 1880s.
1. Manchester: its political, social and commercial history, ancient and modern, James Wheeler (1836).
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