Take a peek inside the strangest pub Manchester ever knew
Pictured: Ye Olde Seven Stars in Withy Grove had its own torture kit, hangman's door, hidden tunnel and a secret chamber 'used by Guy Fawkes'
In the long history of Manchester’s pubs, few can claim to hold the title of the strangest boozer of all time.
Step aside for the Ye Olde Seven Stars in Withy Grove — the brick and plaster drinking den that once held the honour of having the oldest licence in Great Britain.
At just two floors high, The Seven Stars stood sandwiched betwen two warehouses opposite the present day Printworks.
It is thought to have been first licensed in 1356 under the reign of Edward III — making it older than Manchester Cathedral — before being rebuilt in around 1500.
Read on to see pictures of the pub’s legendary rooms and hear about the secrets it once held before it was lost forever.
Ye Olde Seven Stars’ 550-year history saw it become the scene of some incredible tales and every artefact inside the building had its own story — including a solitary horseshoe nailed to one of the doors.
Legend has it that in 1805, during Britain’s war with Napoleon, the pub was the billet of the Press Gang.
One day they pressed a farm-servant leading a horse along Withy Grove who nailed his horse’s shoe to the door with the words: “Let this stay until I come from the wars to reclaim it.”
He never returned — and that horseshoe was still hanging in its place when the pub was demolished in 1911.
In June that year, the Manchester Courier reported how an excavator had collapsed the pub’s roof after the Corporation rejected a bid to rebuild the frontage in one of the city’s parks.
But now you can step back through the doors of the lost pub and peer into each of the rooms with this unique set of photographs rediscovered by Manchester History Club that were taken shortly before Ye Olde Seven Stars and its remarkable history disappeared for good.
The Vestry
This room, named the Vestry, was originally the meeting room of the men of Manchester’s earliest police force, known as The Watch.
It contained a cupboard, the door of which can be seen at the right hand side of the photograph, that had never been opened within the living memory of anyone in the pub at the time the photograph was taken.
The photograph is also said to show the old man trap, leg irons and the folding doors of the condemned cell at the former New Bailey Prison, but they are difficult to make out.
The doors were from the cell where Manchester murderers slept on the night before they were hanged.
They were presented to the pub by bosses at the Lancashire and Yorkshire Railway, which ran next to the New Bailey, after the prison was demolished.
On the wall can be seen a sign that says the pub was the oldest licensed house in England and a sign sayings Ye Vestry. It is unclear why the room was given that name.
The Gye Faux Chamber
The Gye Faux Room stood on the ground floor and it was said that it was the room in which Guy Fawkes was conceiled “on the night he made his escape”.
This tall story appears to have been based on a fictionalised account of the Gunpowder Plot by William Harrison Ainsworth’s 1842 novel “Guy Fawkes”.
The novel suggests the plot may have been hatched at Ordsall Hall in Salford, where a street now stands named Guy Fawkes Street.
An oil painting in the bar depicted a scene in which Fawkes was escaping.
Sign up for a paid subsciption with a 30% spring discount to see more of the rooms inside Ye Olde Seven Stars including the Sitting Room, the Dining Room where Oliver Cromwell’s Roundheads partied, and the pub’s secret tunnel, as well as accessing my full archive.