Please note, this is an archived story. Please check the date above.

The City Arms, Kennedy Street, with Empress Brewey sky sign in the 1930s

Etched in the wall of the office building on Chapel Walks now occupied by Grinch wine bar are the words 'Old Half Moon Chambers'. The building covers the site of the Old Half Moon alehouse. The pub, brewhouse and other outbuildings stood on 250 square yards of freehold land which were sold for redevelopment in the 1860s. A new Old Half Moon was included in the office block, but unlike the Wheatsheaf this pub didn't last and the premises were converted into a restaurant.

Several pubs and many beerhouses didn't survive because they were beyond saving. Among these must have been Thomas Cooke's beershop in the cellar of an old house on Miller Street. During alterations to the upper part of the building, the roof caved in, smashing a beer barrel and damaging furniture. It was raining, the cellar was soon flooded and until the roof was fixed Mrs Cooke had to serve her customers whilst sheltering under an umbrella.

The brewers sometimes acquired old properties just for the licences, which they could surrender in exchange for a new licence or permission to make improvements to a pub in a better area. In the 1930s several of the city's old licences were transferred to pubs on the new housing estates. The Market Restaurant on Edge Street was originally a pub called the Kind Richard II and when this closed in 1934 the licence was transferred to a new venture in Gorton, the Gorton Mount Hotel.

One licence which was transferred, but not very far, was that of the Old Garratt on Princess Street. The original building was a few yards lower down the street from the present site, next to the railway bridge. In 1905 it was over a hundred years old and Boddingtons Brewery wanted to transfer the licence to better premises. They owned a bearhouse on the corner of Granby Row called the Masons Arms, so they gave up this and two other beer licences in return for permission to transfer the Old Garratt's public house licence to the Masons Arms building. The present Old Garratt replaced this one in 1963.

The Crown, Deansgate, in the days when it belonged to Walker and Homfrays of Salford and draught Bass was a fixture along with Guinness

Some out-of-town brewers had pubs in the city. Chadwick's of Bury supplied the Ducie Bridge, the North Cheshire Brewery (Macclesfield) owned the White Bear on Swan Street (now Bar Fringe) and Creese & Co of Hyde had an interest in the Waggon and Horses (now Mulligans).

Of the big brewers, Bass had the Burton Arms, the Town Hall (now Copperbutts) and, for a time, the Britons Protection. In the post-war years, Tetleys of Leeds acquired a number of pubs in the city, such as the Britons Protection, the Hare and Hounds and the Circus. These pubs were later supplied by Walkers of Warrington when Tetley merged with Walkers.