I walk past the Black Horse every time I head into Manchester. It’s not in a good state, and really needs and deserves refurbishment.
What it doesn’t deserve is to be knocked down for bland, expensive flats, which is what could be happening.
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.
I never got to enjoy The Mark Addy in its more recent foodie guise, but I have fond memories of the cheese platters it used to do. It was an option as a food stop on my upcoming birthday pub-crawl, but may now be by-passed (if it’s even open to sell beer) as it’s off the route a little.
THE well-known and much loved Mark Addy pub is to close as a restaurant with immediate effect. This means it will not re-open after the Christmas/New Year break which was due to finish on Monday 6 January.
Costs associated with upgrading the kitchens and restaurant areas have led to the decision. The physical upkeep of the site has been an issue for some time.
via The Mark Addy To Close | Food Drink | Manchester Confidential.
At least, RIP in its current incarnation, as the landlord is being pushed out by Greene King.
The Great British Pub Award 2012 Pub of the Year winner has been forced to surrender his lease after his pub company claimed he was a below-average operator.
The Lass suffered badly from the closure of the BBC complex on Oxford Road, but it has still been running some interesting nights and tapping a geeky vein for the last few years. Sadly, my own rotten finances have kept me away from most of the good stuff they did, so I’ve been no help to them.
No doubt Greene King will put a more pliant landlord into the premises and one of Manchester’s most characterful pubs could become another bland bar.
We used to do the pub quiz in the Rampant Lion most weeks, winning it far more often than they’d like. So often, in fact, that they changed the rules- lowering the weighting of the music round- to try to stop us.
Now, it seems, the Rampant Lion may be no more.
A few months ago, I posted the photo above. I’ve been meaning to get in touch with the Pubs of Manchester blog to ask if they knew the name of the pub I’d found the remnants of. They beat me to it- it used to be the Coach and Horses.
A pub in Newbury puts grass down inside for St. Patrick’s Day.
