White House, Great Ancoats Street

White House, Great Ancoats Street. (c) Luddite Bicentenary [1]. 

The White House was one of Manchester's better pubs on the outskirts of the city centre, on the corner of Laystall Street, opposite Ancoats Retail Park.  With well kept Holt's always on and a couple of guests it was a popular enough locals' pub, so it was shame to see it closed and demolished in 2005.  I managed a few pints in here en route to the Commonwealth Stadium in summer 2001 (later to become the City of Manchester Stadium), and the White House's location meant it was well placed to pick up match day trade, so a pity it's gone.  The render below shows the monstrosity that sit here how - these flats will be knocked down themselves in a decade or two no doubt.  Quite why the White House had to go I'm not sure, as the land where the pub once sat just lies derelict next to the new builds.


White House, Great Ancoats Street (c). SteKnight at skyscrapercity.

The White House was originally known as the Prince Regents Arms, where one of the first meetings of Manchester radicals was held in 1812, not long after it opened [2].  The meeting was meant to have been at the Elephant in Tib Street but the organisers had been tipped off that the Deputy Constable would be coming to break it up.  They changed the venue to the Prince Regents Arms but that didn't stop soldiers, with guns and bayonets, arresting 38 weavers in the pub (it's easy to see how the Peterloo Massacre ended up happening seven years later at St Peter's Field).  The pub ceased being called the Prince Regents after 1838.  By 1840 it was known as the White House, and became a Walker & Homfray house, then Wilsons (seen in 1967), before becoming a free house in 1985 after a two-year closure [2].

White House, Great Ancoats Street. (c) Neil Richardson [2].

1. http://ludditebicentenary.blogspot.co.uk.

2. The Old Pubs of Ancoats, Neil Richardson (1987).