The past is another country. One, it seems, where they take lots of drugs.

However, in 1971 it was gutted and turned into a bizarre shipwreck theme pub and renamed the Wrecker. This was after the maritime trick of luring ships to onto the rocks to loot, as the corner of Victoria Avenue and Chain Road with the pub was said to resemble a ship’s hull. Mike Morris remembers that the inside looked like a wrecked ship at an angle in a lagoon, with the ship mast in the middle of the bar area. There were aged portholes and a video playing of palm trees in the distance. This would occasionally switch to dark thunderstorms and real water would fall down from the ceiling. If you looked down the big ‘wrecked’ hole in the floor you would see a real alligator in the ‘lagoon’!

Pubs of Manchester: Lion & Lamb / Wrecker / Mariner, Victoria Avenue.

Pubs of Manchester is a great themed blog. I’ve found out about buildings I didn’t know used to be pubs, establishments I should have visited whilst they were still around and places I’m glad I never frequented.