Tucked away on the corner of Grace Street and Tutbury Street, between Every Street and Palmerston Street, the Grove Inn only closed in 1981. It was known locally as "Old John's" as Frank Pritchard describes in Neil Richardson's indispensable book on Ancoats pubs. It was a Groves & Whitnall's house which was just like drinking in someone's front room. There were no pumps so beer was brought from wooden barrels in the cellar in enamel jugs. The beer would often be flat "so Old John, the landlord, poured it out from a height of about three feet to try to put some life and froth back into it [1]." In those days the Grove Inn had no sign on the outside and drinkers often never knew its real name; by the 1970s it had passed to Greenall Whitley's who rectified this, as shown above when the pub stood alone amongst new flats. Tutbury Street still runs through this part of Ancoats today, the site of the old Grove Inn is now residents parking in this new small estate.
1. The Old Pubs of Ancoats, Neil Richardson (1987).
I reckon you've now covered 27 of the 28 pubs that were featured in the Ancoats section of the 1975 Manchester Pub Guide. You're just missing the Mitchell Arms which along with the Bank of England and the Shamrock seem to be the only 3 remaining. That's virtually 90% devastation - they may as well have dropped an atom bomb. Even in 1993, What's Doing were still listing around 20 - it almost makes me feel like we've looked after our pubs in Salford. Everything's going - I'm doing Curmudgeon's South Stockport crawl quick before we lose it all.
ReplyDeleteYou should join us on our next excursion... Didsbury, Prestwich, Chorlton or Cheadle Hulme. Social historians.
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