The Mersey Hotel was a huge interwar roadhouse pub on Princess Road between Chorlton and Didsbury in what I suppose is technically West Didsbury. At the archive there are a couple of 1961 photos of the pub. Here you can just make out the Groves & Whitnall sign; and this shows the proximity of the it to the still-standing neighbouring houses.
The Mersey Hotel became the Snooty Fox and then the Mersey Lights before it closed. Towards the end it had something of a rough reputation and was also a popular stop-off point for coaches of away football fans to stop off and smash up before they hit the M56 motorway. The nail in the coffin for the Mersey Lights was by traditional means - a mysterious fire which caused irreparable damage.
As the Pub Curmudgeon perceptively pointed out 10 years ago, visitors driving into Manchester from the M56 along Princess Road are these days met with a pub-free route through the city boundaries, since the demise of (from south-to-north) the Royal Thorn, Mersey Hotel, the Oaks and Princess (and a shyte brewery):
Large communities on either side of the main road are now more than half a mile from the nearest pub. These pubs were not in blighted inner-city areas... These oversized, echoing drinking barns probably never gave anyone much of a positive reason for visiting them and have now paid the price [2].
Large communities on either side of the main road are now more than half a mile from the nearest pub. These pubs were not in blighted inner-city areas... These oversized, echoing drinking barns probably never gave anyone much of a positive reason for visiting them and have now paid the price [2].
Former location of the Mersey Hotel, Princess Road. (c) Google 2013. View Larger Map.
