The backstreet city centre pub with a grisly past that’s set to reopen
17.04.2024 - 05:51
/ manchestereveningnews.co.uk
A historic backstreet pub building in the city centre with a dark past is set to reopen under a new name and ownership.
For almost 35 years, the Mother Mac's pub, on Back Piccadilly in the Northern Quarter, became a Manchester institution known for being a ‘proper pub that makes no excuses’ due to its traditional and no-frills set-up.
But having shuttered towards the end of 2022, the pub building - which has served as a public house since as far back as the 1870s - has remained vacant and up for sale. But, that is, until now.
READ MORE: 'I took my kids to my old Manchester nightclub for a great value Sunday roast'
A alcohol licence application has been filed with Manchester Council that would see the pub taken over by new management and renamed the Rat & Pigeon. If approved, the three-floor pub would be open from 10am until midnight or 1am throughout the week, and until 3am on Thursday to Saturday.
Posts on social media show that the pub building is currently undergoing renovation works that will transform the pub with a new, modern look. But, whilst many will know the pub building for its selection of ales and beers, it also has a dark and eerie past to it.
Known as The Wellington before changing names to Mother Mac’s in 1969, the site is also known as being the scene of a massacre just a few years later in 1976. As recalled by the M.E.N in 2021, then-landlord Arthur Bradbury killed his wife, her three children and a cleaner before starting a fire that would then claim his life.
The murders are even commemorated with a plaque outside the pub, which reads: “In 1976 the pub manager Arthur Bradbury was given notice to quit, so he revenged himself the coward’s way by killing all around him. His wife Maureen, his six year