The Good Samaritan and The Jolly Angler

A morning of Canal & Rivers Trust meetings this morning found me in Manchester early looking for cheap rate parking. Thus it was that I found myself in Ancoats on the road to Paradise (Mill) and passing by The Jolly Angler (pub).

Both took me back to 1988 when first back in UK with MrsB. This was literally her first taste of Manchester culture after I got a job for an architect at the then derelict Paradise Mill. Here I worked out of a small wooden hut in the main courtyard as we redesigned the mill whilst also running a car park commercially.

The tiny Jolly Angler comprises of just two small front rooms and quickly became our regular after work call-in. So small is it, there was then a sawn-off pool cue for when the white ball was craftily sent to baulk cushion down at the cigarette machine end by the Ladies toilet.

The North West CAMRA branch website states that the pub was once a Good Samaritan Temperance Hall. I don't know about that, but I do know this welcoming Mancunian institution was one of MrsB's first inductions to Hydes best bitter, as well as the live Irish diddly-diddly music the place is still famed for.

The memory of her doing a merry jig on her first night there with the Irish locals made me smile today, and it is a thing (that and an inglorious ride home in a wheel-barrow once after a late party) that is still talked about by my old drinking buddies today.