COME on now, who of our readers regularly hangs out in The Sawyers Arms on Deansgate?
The latest transformation comes from Orchid Pubs which has 290 boozers with food across the UK. This pubco seems to try a little harder than those pub mass-murderers Enterprise Inns and Punch Taverns.
Despite that gorgeous exterior swishing round the corner of Deansgate and Bridge Street it’s been a pub of last resort for decades. If cities are about choice then anybody with a discerning bone in their body has run a mile.
The Sawyers has been pure small town.
For anthropologists studying the Friday night fighting pub the Sawyers has been the perfect model for decades. This is the sort of place you run away from once you leave Rochdale, Rotherham, Rochester and Wrexham. For decades food has been called ‘fayre’, every football match has been shown, and every forty year old male’s head is shaven.
Yet the place has pedigree.
In some records it’s Manchester’s oldest pub in terms of a continuously held licence, one that stretches back to the 1730s. Just over a century ago, the more modest Georgian building was turned into a gin palace with its name writ large with an Art Nouveau flourish. It was owned by the local brewers Wilsons.
No photographs survive of its interior but the external extravagance hints at mosaic, mahogany, tile and etched glass, numerous rooms, games and big Barnsley chops. It must have been quite something.
Then the rot set in with the sixties and seventies. Breweries got marketing departments and time and motion men who came up with new ideas about packing more people into the pubs and ripping them open, increasing footfall. They forgot what a pub was all about.
Sawyers with corner capWilsons Brewery was eaten by Watneys and eventually the pub ended up in the hands of the asset-stripping pubcos.
The Sawyers was disembowelled, once, twice, three times and more. It lost any charm it may have had. It lost its extravagant cap. It became that small town, fighting pub.
The latest transformation comes from Orchid Pubs which has 290 boozers with food across the UK. This pubco seems to try a little harder than those pub mass-murderers Enterprise Inns and Punch Taverns.
Orchid have now re-invented again.
This is their blurb about the latest renovation, which starts off with a refreshingly honest sentence.
‘The Sawyers Arms on Deansgate is being transformed to breathe new life into a tired local icon. Steeped in history, the city centre pub will retain its character and charm but new features including fresh dough pizza will put a modern twist on what today’s great, high quality pub should be about. A new landlady at the helm, Rocky Quinn, brings with her 25 years of experience.
‘Art works will be highlighted by the tasteful lighting, quirky lamps and feature pendants. Throughout the pub there will be antique tiles, cut glass mirrors, dark ornate Victorian bar counters, velvet curtains with gold tassels and Chesterfield sofas’.
Rocky Quinn, proper landlady's name that, but pizzas? Andof course football on big screens.
“The changes we are making, with a fresh new look, fantastic menu and the top sports every week, all add up to plenty of good reasons to visit,” says Rocky Quinn.
The pizzas - those easy to prepare and cheap to produce pizzas - will be ‘hand-stretched to a thin, crispy base, topped with high quality, fresh ingredients’. The range will include ‘the classic Serrano ham and chorizo with cherry tomato, fresh red chilli and rosemary or the Americana with pepperoni and rocket to the more exotic crispy duck and hoisin with spring onions, cucumber and fresh coriander.
‘Every day between 12pm and 3pm customers can take advantage of the lunch club and get a main course plus a drink for under £7. Tuesdays and Thursdays are 2 for 1 day, with offers on pizzas and cocktails and 10am early opening for coffee mornings with cake’.
Confidential will take a look in a week or two at this Orchid renovation of the ancient pub and see if it has blossomed beyond small town. But honestly folks, pizzas.
The Sawyers Arms is at 138 Deansgate Manchester, M3 2RP.
Sawyers
