Spread Eagle, Chapel Street

Former location of Spread Eagle, Chapel Street. (c) googlemaps.

Opposite the Ship (later the Old Ship) and a couple of doors up Chapel Street from the Canterbury in its previous guises, was the Spread Eagle [1].  It was one of Salford's oldest inns, dating back to the 1750s; in the 1772 directory the innkeeper was John Swain, the chap who built the first coach that travelled from Manchester and Salford to Liverpool.  The pub had a 10 year spell as The Phoenix in the early 1800s before the pub gained local fame as being the launch site of Salford's first balloon ascent from the Spread Eagle yard.  The extension of the railways around here cut through behind the pub and later when Exchange Station was built, the pub was bought by the railway company who built the Salford Approach over the back yard. The pub survived until the Lancashire & Yorkshire Railway Company and Courts conspired to close it in 1888-89.  In a booklet printed soon after it was written of the Spread Eagle: "the plumes of its ancient glories have been stript, and it has not a single feather left to fly with [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).