Grapes, Union Street

Grapes, Union Street, Ancoats. (c) Adshead at Digital Archives [1].

The Grapes was an old beerhouse on Union Street facing the Rochdale Canal.  The street was described in 1849 by journalist Angus Reach:  "A more perfectly ugly spot you shall not find between sunrise and sunset.  Fancy a street one side of which is all mills... the grimiest, sootiest, filthiest lumps of masonry in all Manchester... On the other hand lies a canal... a ditch of muddy water, very much like rotten pea soup [2]."  The Grapes was just on the corner of New Islington, opening in 1811 and closing exactly a century later as a Chesters house [2].  Union Street used to run along the canal between the still surviving New Union Street and St Vincent Street.


Former location of Grapes, Union Street. (c) Google 2014. View Larger Map.

1. Adshead's Twenty Four Illustrated Maps of the Township of Manchester divided into Municipal Wards, 1851 at Digital Archives.
2. The Old Pubs of Ancoats, Neil Richardson (1987).