It was the annual get together with some of my old work colleagues last Saturday in Manchester visiting a few familiar places across the city, whilst on Sunday I was back in the town where I grew up....
Manchester, Manchester, so much to answer for sang someone once. And I think that applies to me too, like how the place has weaved in and out of my life ever since the days when my Grandad would take me there sometimes as a young lad in the 1960's. He was the head of the local Co-op and sometimes he had to visit the head office in the city for important business, the details of which we were never to know, but it never took him long.
We would catch the train from Sowerby Bridge station on a Wednesday afternoon which was early-closing day for the Co-op and most of the shops in town back when that was a part of the weekly routine. In those days, the station had the presence of somewhere important, a grand facade with a booking office within, waiting rooms, and the like, now long gone of course. When we arrived in this distant land at the other side of the Pennines, it was a short walk from Victoria Station, across Corporation Street with its huge and daunting buildings and we were there, then left abandoned for a short time in an imposing wood-panelled reception with a noisily ticking clock and a sharp-featured, unsmiling receptionist keeping a stern watch over me and my younger brother as Grandad disappeared into the mysterious world beyond the door.
Growing up in Sowerby Bridge, the traditional mill town beside the River Calder two miles from Halifax, Manchester seemed like a different world when we went on those visits. Sowerby Bridge back then still had plenty of businesses, a thriving number of shops of with the local Industrial Society, as the Co-op was known, at its core. The town had its own urban district council until 1974, a police station, and fire station, and there was a strong sense of civic pride. There was no need to go to Halifax let alone Manchester or Leeds for most of your needs.
Looking back I suppose it was almost inevitable that I would go to Manchester when I left Sowerby Bridge to go to university. It was somewhere I felt I had a vague connection I suppose and I lived there for around 5 years, starting and abandoning a teacher training course and then working after I'd got my degree in geography. And over the years it has been a regular presence in my life ever since, with my son moving there for a time with his mum at one point, and then working a few miles away for many years it was a regular haunt for social events.
And it was the work connection that took me there again last Saturday for the annual catch up with some old work colleagues. We reckon we must have been doing this for about 15 years, starting with a couple of trips on the Trans-Pennine Rail Ale Trail when we we were all still working together, but with the other guys finishing working there over 10 years ago and me getting on for 5, we have all moved on to work elsewhere or retire. So whilst our former workplace was what brought us together, our friendship has far outlasted our working time together.
We met as we had done last year at the Victoria Tap at Victoria Station. I was the first to arrive but everyone else was there within 15 minutes or so. Handshakes and greetings were exchanged. "What do you recommend, CD?" I was asked. Well I had gone for a pint of Best Bitter from the Three Acres Brewery from Uckfield in Sussex, who I had first encountered on my recent visit to Hull. It was a traditional bitter, brown in colour with a rich maltiness and a good pint with which to start the day as we decided where to go next.
Fil was as usual wanting some food having not eaten, so we decided to go to visit the taprooms behind Piccadilly, where we would be able to grab something. So we got the tram to Market Street where we had to bale out as no trams were going through Piccadilly due to engineering work. So we walked the rest of the way and as we walked under the railway bridge and approached Sheffield Street I suggested we popped in to the Sureshot Brewery Taproom as the other guys had not visited before. And so 5 minutes later we were all on a pint of Small Man's Wetsuit from the keg options, with the boys all seeming to enjoy this excellent 3.9% hazy session pale.
We moved on and headed to the Track Brewery Tap which was as busy as it usually is. We all went for pints of Sonoma from the cask range and whilst it was good, it had been even better when I'd had a pint at Dukes in Halifax the previous evening. We got parked at one end of one of the bench tables in this light and airy room with the gleaming stainless steel brewing vessels overlooking proceedings. A couple of pizzas duly arrived, with a couple of slices helping to prepare for the rest of the day's beers. There was a great friendly buzz about the place as usual and having visited a few new brewery taprooms in recent months I can still say that Track has one of the best.
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| Catching up with the boys at Track |
We called in at the Cloudwater Taproom across the way which was busy, where we enjoyed a pint of Freedom at the 45th Floor, a 5% DDH pale, sat at a table next to a group of rather eccentric-looking characters wearing pointed hats who by their general demeanour had been here since the place had opened a few hours earlier.
With the rain starting to come down again, we set off walking back up Great Ancoats Street towards the city centre with the plan to go to Port Street Beer House. But instead we ended up first at Fell NQ on the corner of Dale Street where despite the numbers there enjoying a drink the beer options were disappointingly limited, particularly on cask where there was only the 6% Tinderbox West Coast IPA available. We went therefore for the 4.2% Oats & Galaxy off the taps which was pleasant enough. From there it was round the corner to Northern Monk on Tarriff Street where we enjoyed a couple of pints of Faith. One of the guys behind the bar recognised me and it turned out to be Fin who used to work at the much-missed Lantern in Halifax who has since moved to Manchester. Small world! The bar was pretty busy with a great lively and friendly atmosphere as we continued our reminiscing over our former workplace and colleagues.
We did make finally it to Port Street Beer House, where we had an enjoyable of pint of Allsopps Special, a 4.3% Pale Ale which as far as I know is still being brewed at Kirkstall in Leeds with the long-term aim of bringing this famous old brewing name back to its traditional home in Burton-on-Trent. And then I bade my farewell and left the boys behind, having had a great afternoon catching up and seeing where everyone is at in their lives at the moment. We may have stopped working together many years ago but our friendship has long outlasted our working time.
The following day I was back in Sowerby Bridge. I walked down past where we used to live and whilst there is plenty of new housing in the town and several of the old buildings are no longer there, there are still plenty of traces and places with a distant familiarity to spark off an old memory and recall some long-forgotten face. I heard the distant sound of children playing. I walked past the site of my former junior school and then past the two tower blocks which I can still remember being built to replace the rows of back-to-back terraces like Chapel Street that led off what was formerly Tuel Lane. I walked past St Paul's Methodist Church along Dale Terrace in search of the entrance to a footbridge over the canal and was pleased with my memory of where it was.
I crossed over the canal and down the steep and worn steps just as I had done many years ago. I turned right at the bottom of the steps on to Hollins Mill Lane. I could hear the sound of conversation and laughter as I approached the Puzzle Hall Inn, where there was a number of people enjoying a drink in the beer garden high above the river below. The Puzzle wasn't the first pub I went in as a lad, but it was the first one that became anything like a local, and one that I have visited many times since that first visit back in the 1970's.
In those days this former brewhouse was a Wards tied house which made it stand out as something rather unusual in an area dominated at that time by Websters, Tetleys, and Whitbread. And it marked probably the northernmost limit of the Sheffield brewers' pub estate. It was run back then by a pleasant elderly couple called Jack and Edith who welcomed a wide mix of people to this tiny pub a little off the beaten track. It had a small room behind a glazed partition to the left as you walked in, with the bar in the corner of the small room to the right. The toilets were were outside at the bottom of the yard which now forms the pleasant beer garden.
Wards were eventually taken over by Sunderland brewers Vaux and over the years it became a free house and a favourite with musicians and its somewhat bohemian clientele. It had a number of characters as licensees over the years, none more so than the unforgettable Gerry Melonie, who was a former customer who used to regale all in the pub with his tales delivered in his strong Gloucestershire accent. The pub eventually fell on hard times and was closed for several years before it was rescued, restored, and re-opened in 2019 as a community-run not-for-profit benefit society after a long campaign.
I walked in the pub where a couple of musicians were setting up. The bar is still where it was, the room with its small leaded windows pleasantly decorated. The beer selection has moved on from those days when they only had Wards bitter and mild dispensed by electric pumps on the bar, with today beers from a number of different breweries on hand pump and several on keg. And as I sat enjoying an excellent pint of Wooden Ships from Neptune Brewery surrounded by happy smiling faces with the music wafting through from round the corner, I reflected on the memories stirred up by the weekend's events and my plans for the week.
And where was I going the following evening for a gig? Manchester, of course....
Join me on bluesky: @chrisd55.bsky.social
As a frequent visitor to both Manchester & The Puzzle, I really enjoyed your latest trip! I was thinking, when Big Trip open their tap, the crawl around Piccadilly will be complete! By the way who did you go see? I was at The Apollo on Saturday for Bonnie Raitt....
ReplyDeleteHi Steve, thanks for your kind words. I was at the Albert Hall seeing Waxahatchee.
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