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Fifty years before that the Theatre Royal was putting on Shakespeare, but there were few purpose-built halls for popular entertainment and pub concert rooms were venues for free-and-easys and paid music hall artistes. Hardy's Concert Room was at the Dog Inn on the corner of Quay Street and Deansgate and typical of the turns advertised in 1856 was Ben Williams, who gave popular comic readings from Hamlet. Light relief from the serious stuff going on up Peter Street at the Theatre Royal.

Ring o'Bells

One proprietor who overstepped the mark and lost his licence was Ben Lang, who ran the Victora Music Saloon at the Trafford Arms at the top of Deansgate, next to Victoria Bridge. After he had been fined a few times, he lost his public house licence in 1843. Ben obtained a beerseller's licence, continued to run the music hall for another twenty years and regularly tried to get his spirits licence back, but he never did.

Across Victoria Bridge Street from the site of Ben Lang's, Victoria Street sweeps along from Deansgate and past the front of the Cathedral towards Great Ducie Street. In the early nineteenth century there was only a footpath here, with some buildings between the path and the river. One of these was the Ring o'Bells, handy for wedding parties coming out of the church. A writer recalled a long room upstairs and from the window you could look down on boats on the river. In the room, old, worm-eaten and dilapidated, he saw 'step-dancing in perfection, and the beat of a Lancashire clog seems an excellent accompaniment to the violins…' The Ring o'Bells was shut in 1833, with the comment that the place had been 'most infamously conducted for a long time'.

In earlier times, Manchester's inns and alehouses were the venues for a wide range of gatherings, from edifying lectures to more basic forms of entertainment. In March 1788 the Lower Swann Inn on Market Street offered a three-day course on experimental philosophy, including a discussion on electricity. Or you could see one of the shows at the Kings Arms at Smith Door (near Shambles Square, as was). In 1784 there was an exhibition of trained animals there. This included a pig that could tell the time by a watch, country dancing by six turkeys, and three cats which imitated the Italian manner of singing.

Some Manchester pubs exhibited 'curiosities' to bring in the customers. When James Stell took over at the Crown and Mitre on Spear Street (where the bus station on Level Street is now) he installed a collection of stuffed birds and exotic artefacts in the music room. Admission to his museum was free, but there was a stern warning at the bottom of the advertisements: 'No person allowed to enter the room in a state of intoxication'. Mr Stell eventually took his stuffed birds to bigger premises in Collyhurst and after that it was downhill for the Crown and Mitre. The pub lost its licence for being an exceedingly badly conducted house.

Not far from Mr Stell's museum was the Britannia Inn on Newton Street. In 1840 Thomas James opened the Albert Saloon in the first-floor club room. He installed a piano and engaged a comic singer and some musicians to entertain. The Albert Saloon was short-lived and a more refined type of entertainment was tried by a later licensee. This was John Bolton Rogerson, a local literary figure who renamed the pub the Britannia Inn and Poet's Home. In April 1857 he advertised a celebration of Shakespeare's birthday: tickets were free and available at the bar. The turnout may have been disappointing as Mr Rogerson left two months later.

Of the present-day pubs which advertised music saloons, the Millstone on Thomas Street claimed to have one of the largest in town, capable of holding two hundred patrons. An unusual feature in the centre of the room was a large 'branch fountain' with an ornamented glass basin and a constant supply of water for the convenience of spirits drinkers. A free-and-easy with some of the best amateurs in the city was promised every night at the White Hart on London Road (the predecessor of Monroes). The show was hosted by Peter Malley, 'Irish comic and sentimental singer'. On Sundays, customers were treated to a concert of church music.

The music room at the Mechanics Arms on Chorlton Street (now Churchills) was quite smart. When the pub's fittings were sold in 1842 there was a grand piano and adorning the walls were a few oil paintings and engravings. The Mechanics also had a table for bagatelle, a pub game which was popular then. A bagatelle table was about ten feet long, half the width of a billiard table, had a slate bed and was covered in green cloth like a billiard table. At one end were nine numbered holes in a circle. There were several versions of the game, which usually involved potting four red and four white balls after first hitting the black.

Bagatelle had the advantage of taking up less space than billiards and some tables were hinged in the middle so they could be folded up and put away. There was one at the Rising Sun on Queen Street and at the Oxnoble on Liverpool Road a room upstairs was for a time designated the bagatelle room.

Along the pubs which had billiard rooms were the Town Hall Hotel on Tib Lane (Copperbutts) and the Royal Central on Windmill Street, where Charles Cox (of Cox's Bar) was an early promoter of billiard matches in Manchester. There was a skittle alley at the Hanging Bridge Hotel, which was in the building with the 'Hanging Bridge Chambers' datestone in Cathedral Yard, near Mitre. This beerhouse lost its licence in 1904 because it was also a venue for the less salubrious pursuits of prostitution and drunkenness.

Manchester even had an American-style bowling hall over a hundred years ago. The building in Back Mosley Street had a beer licence and claimed to be the biggest bowling hall in Europe. There were five alleys downstairs (3d a game) and two private alleys upstairs (6d a game). The proprietor promised 'health, exercise and recreation' but the sport didn't catch on and the hall closed after a few years.