Just over the River Irwell into Salford on the corner of New Bridge Street and Greengate stood the Finney's Arms in the mid-1800s [1]. These days, this neglected corner of Salford, just a stones throw from the centre of Manchester, is nothing more than a huge car park. The 1849 map shows that the pub faced out onto the site of the Market Cross and the site of the Court House - the whole area known as Salford Cross [2]. The Green Gate fruit & veg market was opposite the Finney's Arms on a triangular plot.
Former location of Finney's Arms, New Bridge Street, Salford. (c) googlemaps.
Finney's Arms was originally the Blue Cap in 1785, but was also known as the Jolly Hatters & Blue Cap, and the Blue Boy. When Elizabeth Barge took over the Blue Cap in 1825 she renamed it the New Legs of Man (there was a Legs of Man over the road), before the Finney's Arms title was bestowed by Richard Finney in about 1840. The pub was described as comprising "a bar, bar parlour, club, sitting and tap rooms, all newly painted and papered... arched cellaring and a brewhouse with a 12-barrel copper brewpan [2]." Holt's Brewery had the pub until its closure in 1915 when the licensing authorities decided that, as it was in an old district where dwellings had been taken down and replaced with factories, that there was "no necessity for the Finney to continue [2]."
1. Manchester Victoria 1849, Alan Godfrey Maps (2009).
2. Salford Pubs - Part One: The Old Town, including Chapel Street, Greengate and the Adelphi, Neil Richardson (2003).
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