WE’RE bang in the middle of Manchester Histories Week, one of the most fascinating aspects of which is the Heritage Windows, where shops and businesses display information about the history of the site.
The new Ancoats Lad bar in Oldham Street hasn’t signed up, but the building’s colourful past is much in evidence along with the melting pot legacy of Ancoats itself, plastered across its walls.
Both come together in the facade, sandwiched between Gulliver’s pub and the Holier Than Thou Body Piercing and Modification Studio (I’ve been inside one – I won’t tell you which).
Here above the entrance to this 1780 townhouse is is a mini-fresco representing some streetwise Ancoats dandies alongside a green plaque commemorating Pendlebury’s tripe shop and restaurant, which occupied the premises from 1889 to 1958, joining with other similar establishments to form the legendary UCP (United Cattle Products).
Tripe’s not on the menu at Phil Bell’s tiny new bar; the Ancoats Lad ‘Hot Roast Beef and Pork’ Ancoats Sandwich Society signs are just playful red herrings (which are also not served). There’s also no craft beer in schooners, no hipsters with laptops, no kimchi sliders or any of that stuff. Instead order a pint of Portland Stout or Anchor keg and admire the memorabilia and old photos of an Ancoats much further away than ‘’turn right and across Great Ancoats Street’.
I’m glad to welcome quality arrivals such as the artisan roastery Ancoats Coffee Co in Royal Mills – who also have an outlet in Mital Morar’s Ancoats General Store, at 57 Great Ancoats Street – along with all the activity around Cutting Room Square, where the Seven Brothers bar and Goose Fat and Wild Garlic will shortly join pioneers Rudy's Pizza, but the ghosts of old Ancoats – the Italian and Jewish community, even the notorious Scuttler gangs – must never be swept away.
As it happens, 66-year-old Phil Bell, whose bar is such a homage to his native territory, advised Jim and Kate of Rudy’s in their venture in his role as a business consultant (even the remaining Italians are impressed). It’s all part of his long-running love affair with Ancoats and the area that became the Northern Quarter, where his PJ Bells jazz club resided, in what is now Matt and Phred’s just along Oldham Street.
Speaking of which, a posse of attractive middle-aged women pile in from it, perhaps hooked by the Frank Sinatra soundtrack or the absence of artisan coffee equipment. “What did it used to be, chuck?” “A sex shop,” Phil replies. As we said, a colourful history.
The Ancoats Lad, 107 Oldham Street, Manchester M4 1LW.
Below, the new Ancoats frontier – the General Store, Kate and Jim at Rudy’s Pizza, of Ancoats Coffee Company and his swish new base in Royal Mills. Plus a celeb fan of the Ancoats Lad, the great John Henshaw.
