As the nation recovers from celebrating Lilibet's 70 years, it's time to mark another glorious moment in history. The occasion of my two hundredth post. Yes, this is the two hundredth piece of ephemeral nonsense that I've produced since I began all this bygone boozer stuff.
The fiftieth post was marked by the Golden Lion in Monyash, the sixtieth by the Black Diamond near Blyth and the hundredth by the Century Tavern in Wembley Park. I thought that surely there can't be an appropriate bygone to mark the two hundredth. Let's just see what Mr. Google thinks. Wow! That was a surprise. I certainly wasn't expecting that.
The Two Hundred used to be a pub in Carisbrook Street, Harpurhey which is to be found to the north east of Manchester's city centre and it served the public for less than half of Lilibet's 70 years. Opening around 1979 (It's in the 1980 and subsequent phone books but not in the 1978 or earlier editions.) it was given its rather unusual name as it was Boddington's 200th pub and it operated for under three decades, closing in 2007.
Whitbread bought Boddington's in 1989 and three years later were forced to sell over 2000 pubs as a result of the 1992 tied estate orders. This might be how the pub came into the hands of former Warrington brewers Greenall Whitley, who had by then dispensed with any brewing activity to become simply a PubCo. Greenall's themselves had the pub up for sale in 1997. Whether or not it was sold or who might have bought it I've no idea, nor do I have any details of the last third of its life. Finally closing in 2007 it remained boarded up for five or so years before, unlike many of the bygone estate pubs built in the 1960s and '70s, not being razed to the ground but converted into flats.
And here endeth the brief, unexpected celebration of the two hundredth post. Number 201 will be along shortly.
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