Kings Arms, Great Ancoats Street. (c) Manchester Local Image Collection. Click here to view full image.
The Kings Arms, a Wilsons house seen here in 1962, was three doors down from the Cotton Tree, towards New Cross, also in 1962 (Kings Arms on the left). Also shown here later in 1970, the Kings Arms was known in the past as the Dancing Weasel, La Tavernetta and was the Crystal Palace in the 1860s and 1870s, being renamed the Kings Arms after the same-named beerhouse further up the road it replaced.
MM2 complex, Pickford Street, 2010. (c) Pubs of Manchester.
The Italian-sounding name came about when it was run by an Italian and was one of several of Little Italy's Italian boozers. One of its first landlords was the wonderfully-named Horatio Nelson Harrop from 1831 to 1848, who went on to manage the Railway on Oldham Road for a brief time.
Dancing Weasel, Great Ancoats Street. (c) Manchester District Music Archive.
The Dancing Weasel was still standing into the early 1990s, as shown by Alan Winfield at Pubs Galore. The pub was also a music venue and the restaurant on the first floor at this time was called La Tavernetta, a nod to its past. The MM2 apartment and business complex now stands on this site.
