Birmingham Tavern, Oldham Road, Newton Heath. (c) Manchester Local Image Collection. Click here to view full image [1].
The Birmingham Tavern was a terraced Wilsons house on Oldham Road in Newton Heath, as seen in 1961 and 1970 at the archives. Watney's takeover of Wilsons was met with a decline in beer quality (as happened in many Wilsons boozers taken over by the London giant), and in particular, the Birmingham Tavern suffered in this respect. To quote one local who remembers the pub, "the beer was crap" - probably referring to Watney's Red, a tasteless, fizzy keg beer. Chris Byrne, who lived in the pub when his father ran it from 1968 to 1970, agreed that Watney's ruined the Wilsons beer too. The Birmingham Tavern was on the right hand side of Oldham Road going away from town before the Shears Hotel and Royal Oak. As for its name, the Birmingham Tavern may have been a reference to the old Newton Heath Railway Station which was nearby.
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