Old Ship, Chapel Street

Old Ship Hotel, Chapel Street, Salford. (c) deltrems at flickr..

Seen here in 1962 as a rather plain looking Boddingtons house, the Old Ship Hotel is another of Chapel Street's lost pubs.  This one was knocked down relatively recently in 1999 [1] along with the adjoining building which abutted the larger offices/warehouse to the right in the above photo.  Just out of shot off to the right is the Black Lion, sadly closed for the time being.


Former site of Old Ship Hotel, Chapel Street, Salford. (c) googlemaps.

It looks like the Old Ship was demolished to make way for the access road for the huge "Men Arena / Printworks Premier Inn" on Victoria Bridge Street.   The proximity of this part of Salford to the centre of Manchester is evidenced by the Wheel and Arndale Centre in the background behind the Premier Inn, below.

Former site of Old Ship Hotel, Chapel Street, Salford. (c) googlemaps.

The Old Ship, or the Lower Ship as it was once known, can be traced back to licensee Robert Fairbrother in the 1760s.  Further licensees were Thomas then Alice Schofield until 1805, and the Hatton family until about 1837, who gave their name to the court at the side of the pub.  The photo from the 1870s shows the three-storey pub that was rebuilt in the early 1900s to the same specifications.  Peter Leech, the Ainsworths and Gibsons ran the Ship, before it was destroyed by the Christmas Blitz of 1940 and the two-storey Boddingtons pub we see above was rebuilt in the mid-1950s [1].

The Ship, Chapel Street, Salford, 1870s. (c) Neil Richardson [1].

1. Salford Pubs Part One: The Old town, including Chapel Street, Greengate and the Adelphi, Neil Richardson (2003).