Guest Pub - Broadway Inn, Ordsall

Broadway Inn. (c) John Bulmer at How to be a Retronaut

This fantastic photo by John Bulmer was featured on the the How to be a Retronaut site and also on the blog, Unpopular.  In Alistair's own words:

This shot from 1977 pictures an England from my own childhood.  Not that I grew up in an environment anything like the Manchester in the photograph, but still, it gives some context to times that we all too often allow to be cloaked in rose-tinted nostalgia.  I'm not sure that we were particularly aware of this kind of Britain in 1977, despite John Bulmer's work for the Sunday Times.  Perhaps I was just far too young to notice it of course, but nevertheless it remains true, surely, that this kind of reality is not one widely pedalled in the nostalgia business.  Even ‘Life On Mars’ and ‘Control struggled to truly capture this kind of strange wasteland.  What images will people look back on as capturing some essence of 2010?  And will those images evoke a world as alien as these two do?

Broadway Inn, Joseph Holts house. (c) John Bulmer at How to be a Retronaut

There is no other clue as to the Broadway Inn's location other than the clearances that are going on around it and the fact it's a Joseph Holt house.  I suspect that the Broadway Inn was in Orsdall, Salford, and in common with council policy, was originally spared demolition whilst the terraced houses around it were demolished in the '60s and '70s.  It didn't last that long though, as it appears that a new Broadway Inn was built in its place, on or near the site of the original, possibly as part of the redevelopment which would eventually become Salford Quays.  The fact that today's Broadway Inn is modern and a Holt's house is the only real evidence for this conclusion, so if anyone can clear this one up, please let us know.

Broadway Inn, Broadway, Ordsall. (c) Salford_66 at flickr.


UPDATE:


The Broadway Inn was originally on the corner of Broadway and West Clowes Street having opened in 1878.  First licensee was Moses Bayley and the next few included Richard Gibson and William Whiteley.  It became a Holt's house in 1886 and the brewery extended it to include the house next door a couple of years later.  Seen below in the 1970s, the Clowes Hotel can been seen in the background on Trafford Road.

Broadway Inn, Broadway, Ordsall, 1970s. (c) Neil Richardson [1].

The tenant now was Harry Nichols who kept the Broadway Inn until the 1940s, followed by George Bramley and John Hayes in the '50s and Fred McCormick in the '60s.  The location on the corner of Broadway and West Clowes Street is confirmed in the below snap from the late Neil Richardson's book (pub number 163 being the Clowes Hotel, now gone).  As we suspected, all the terraced houses on Broadway were demolished in the 1970s and on 5th December 1980, Holt's opened the new Broadway Inn on the same site [1]

Former (and present) location of Broadway Inn, Broadway, Ordsall. (c) Neil Richardson [1].

1. Salford Pubs Part Two: Including Islington, Ordsall Lane and Ordsall, Oldfield road, Regent Road and Broughton, Neil Richardson (2003).