Some Manchester pubs also organised courses and discussions; for many pub customers the normal accompaniment to drinking was — and remains — conversation. At the George & Dragon in the first decades of the 19th century the serious topics of chat may have included:
In the early years the only direct competition to the George & Dragon for the pub trade in Swan Street was the Rising Sun at the north end, a bigger enterprise, with its substantial stables for visitors’ and residents’ horses. At the other end, and only 100 yards away was the Crown & Kettle, still extant at the corner of Great Ancoats Street and Oldham Road, and first mentioned in the 1800 directory 11. This pub had the distinct trade advantage of overlooking New Cross, an important meeting point for traders, travellers and carriers, as well as a ‘rendezvous where all kinds of opinions could be ventilated: politics, socialism, religion, literature and multitudinous other subjects’ 12. It also was an open market. By 1815, another pub across the road from the Crown & Kettle also overlooked New Cross. This was the St Vincent that was still in business into the late 1980s; now on the site is an office building – its façade not unlike the original pub – and appropriately called St Vincents House, built in 1991.
Figure 6 – New Cross: 1820 (top) and 2012 (bottom). On the right of both pictures is the Crown & Kettle; the building on the left, in 2012 the HBL Bank retains a similar curved façade to the 1820 building; St Vincents House can be seen, just left of centre, in the location of the St Vincent pub in the 1820 picture. Photography by Rosanna Freedman
Into the 1820s, the trade advantage that the New Cross market gave to the Crown & Kettle and the St Vincent would be lost, and the loss would be to the George & Dragon’s gain.