Wednesday, 10 March 2010

Gog & Magog, Downing Street

Gog & Magog, Downing Street. (c) Manchester Local Image Collection. Click here to view full image [1].

Probably the strangest named pub yet on our list, the Gog & Magog was a Walkers of Warrington house on Downing Street.  It was near the bottom end of London Road, near Jackson's Mill which still forms part of the UMIST / University of Manchester Sackville Street campus.  You can just make out the Gog & Magog here in this photo from the 1960s, and from the rear in this 1930 photo.  A couple of chaps reminisce about the pub on the Manchester Beat site - bands played weekend night in the early 1960s, locals The Vincents and The Neutrons played here in 1963/64, and the landlord was a jovial Irish chap.  The Gog and Magog is actually an unlikely sounding Biblical reference.
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Downing Street and London Road. (c) Google 2010. View Larger Map.

1. www.images.manchester.gov.uk.

5 comments:

  1. The Gog and Magog was on Downing Street (not London Road). There is a poor photograph in the Manchester City Archive. Follow this link and expand the photograph to maximum and you can just make out the pub name on the white building to the left.
    http://www.images.manchester.gov.uk/web/objects/common/webmedia.php?irn=37489

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  2. The Jovial Irish Chap was my uncle Joe McCartney who was the tenant during the 1950's before moving to The Britannia Hotel in Pemdlebury. It was demolished to make way for the mancunian Way.

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    1. I have a photograph somewhere of a group of people inside the Gog & Magog pub. Circa early 1950's
      I will find and upload to this thread.

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    2. If you have been able to find this photo it would be wonderful to see. The Vincents still perform today as an all but one original line-up. I am researching venues they performed in.

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  3. In 1939 the publican was Thomas Bennett

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