I drove straight home from Constantine with Sis last night, managing the trip from Cornwall to home in six hours. Isn’t it supposed to take six days ? It’ll take six days to write up the 25 pubs though.
I peeped at the BBC Sport website to see if City had matched Bayern in the scoring stakes as they eased past Lion (Hull Tiger’s sister club) in the Chumps League.
Oh no. Typical City. Call Big Sam etc etc.
But the news got worse as I peeped on Discourse for the overcooked broccoli and anti-Spoons rants…
No, not the Jolly Angler !
The last Proper Pub on the walk to the Etihad. Not that I remember walking to the Etihad.
As I wrote only last year, I’d be lying if I said I popped in here before every game, engaging in anti-Liverpool bants with fellow City fans. The curtains are often pulled, it’s generally packed, and I always want something new.
But losing the Angler is as big a blow to Manchester as would be losing the Circus, or the Hare & Hounds, or This & That.
Florian knew he was in real Manchester last year when we chatted over Hyde’s. I asked him how he’d ended up at the Angler.
“The pubs over there (pointing a few streets north), they’re hipster bars. I wanted to visit a REAL pub”.
Why is it only the Germans and the Yanks who seem to appreciate our pubs ?
Get there while you can, folks.
retiredmartin 
Poppies are the symbol of death and they’re out already.
It’s not been the same since Dave kept it in the early 1980s and it was knocked into one room in the mid 1980s but it’s still a proper pub, not that I’ve been there for a few years with Manchester having so many other great pubs.
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A massive shame when pubs like this bite the dust
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You’d love this one.
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This is very sad. It would have been on our return to visit list, whenever we are able to visit.
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Nearly led with the pic of you in the Gents but didn’t want the indecency police on my back.
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Dave takes one of those on every trip. They will all be in his “Gents(Gents’?) Rooms Around the UK” book.
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I would but that book.
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Was last there in 1984. Great pub, black pudding on offer as I recall.
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If the black pudding is still on the bar I’d give it a miss !
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I often muse with some regret on the number of pubs I never went to, and never will back in the golden-era of the 80’s (aka The Wasted Years!), simply because we were so in thrall to the never ending quest for good beer rather than good pubs. It’s particularly sickening to have them close before your eyes, and a reminder to ‘never’ pass by that dodgy looking shithole that all the beer enthusiasts avoid because it only sells one real ale or less…
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Quite so. A lot of people who spent the 70s and 80s haring after rare beers are regretting missing all the unique, characterful pubs that are now no longer with us. Yes, it’s still there, but I lived for three years just a short bus ride from the British Oak in Stirchley, Birmingham, but never visited it.
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That is a beautiful pub.
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As you’ve often mentioned, pubs with rare beers can be dull, as can the Heritage pub. My attraction to Stockport 20 years ago came from the atmosphere in places like the Tiviot, Spread Eagle and Olde Vic rather than beer range or architecture.
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Martin,
But how do you define “dull”?
Lacking interest, lacking excitement, lacking brightness or lacking something else ?
And which might be the dullest pubs we can each think of ?
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For me, a dull pub lacks variety of visitors. Many of the early Kent and South London micros were insufferably dull, just blokes in their 50s chatting to each other, tasting micro beers and ignoring visitors (examples on receipt of a SAE). Same reason I find beer festivals dull. Compare that to the atmosphere in pubs in Wolves or Shifnal.
I thought the Wellington in Birmingham was dull, very “CAMRA bloke” if honest, but it’s improved in feel on recent visits.
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Martin,
Yes, I understand that and agree.
I find National Trust properties to be especially dull because they seriously lack a variety of visitors.
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Absolutely, Martin it is – it must be said – where London pubs and those in other large cities often score.
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I’ve only been in the Angler half a dozen times in 20 years, despite passing it twice a month. To be honest, I was a bit surprised the Hyde’s was SO good on the last visit (NBSS 3.5/4) quality. But then Manchester is supreme for beer quality.
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People actually drink beer in quantity in Manchester pubs.
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That’s the difference. Far more cask than in evidence in Leeds/Liverpool/Brum/London.
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Sad news indeed, about the Jolly Angler. Spent many a happy evening there, during my student days, enjoying the excellent Hyde’s Bitter. And yes, Stafford Paul, I definitely remember Dave the landlord!
The Jolly was one of the few Hyde’s pubs to have hand-pulls; most of the brewery’s outlets had metered electric pumps.
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Manchester has an embarrassment of simple riches like the Angler, Circus, Hare & Hounds etc etc. The lack of football, music, offices and overseas tourism has hit the pubs hard, my lad tells me.
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T’other Paul,
Yes, and the Jolly Angler ( a tiny pub in a declining area ), Grey Horse ( friendly single-roomed pub ) and closed-long-ago Dutton Hotel ( usually very quiet ) were quite different pubs.
I used the Grey Horse five times last year. One of those pints should have been in the Jolly Angler.
The Discourse discussion has moved on to the marvellously run down Coach and Horses opposite Piccadilly railway station. For the first delivery from Burtonwood the draymen drove past three times before recognising it as still in business !
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I made the Dutton a decade ago (it had a year in the GBG). Loved it but very quiet. The area between Victoria and Strangeways is a mystery.
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Stafford Paul, glad to hear the Coach & Horses is still going. That pub was always the first port of call when arriving back at Picadilly station, from a trip back home.
Surely Burtonwood aren’t still going? They used to have a pub close to Victoria station, back in the day.
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Sorry, I somehow thought it had closed long before then.
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T’other Paul,
No, the Coach and Horses was demolished in the late 1980s for the trams.
Burtonwood Brewery’s gone too.
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T’other paul,
I’ve just read on that discourse that “The Burtonwood pub near Victoria Station was The Castle and Falcon. It stood approx where the tram stop is now at Shudehill”.
I didn’t know the Castle and Falcon. We used the Union for Burtonwood, very rare in using metered electric pumps with brim glasses but without sparklers it worked.
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Just got done watching the City v. Lyon match. My condolences on all accounts…
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Sad to see that. Hard place to describe. Felt like a different world.
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“It’ll take six days to write up the 25 pubs though.”
That sounds about right. 🙂
“No, not the Jolly Angler !”
Ugh. 😦
““The pubs over there (pointing a few streets north), they’re hipster bars. I wanted to visit a REAL pub””
Truer words, and all that.
“Sunk in ten minutes”
Or what some of us might call, an ‘Alan Winfield’. 🙂
“Why is it only the Germans and the Yanks who seem to appreciate our pubs ?”
Plus a few of just north of America.
“Get there while you can, folks.”
Alas, that won’t include me. (sigh)
Cheers
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Yeah, cracking pub. Very possible your pictures are the only time I’ve ever seen it in daylight.
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Very sad
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Gutted to hear about the closure of the Jolly. A frequent haunt in the early 80s, and I used to run the place on a Monday night with my buddy Martin Stockdale to give Dave & Kath a night out. We never got paid but all we could drink whilst staying sober enough to run the place in a (semi) responsible way, and a cab home. Happy Days! If the current lockdown situation allows for a final night, I want to be there! Please someone keep me posted!
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Sounds like you got a decent deal back in the day, Alan !
I thought it was being closed after Christmas so touch and go if we see a last bash before that.
Sadly I don’t live in Manchester but I reckon Facebook might tell you what’s happening.
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