'No smackheads' and 5am lock-ins: My life as a Hulme Crescents landlady'
A crumbling former pub building stands as a lonely relic of a lost estate, demolished just 20-years after it was built.
Some of the most notorious estates built in Manchester in the wake of the clearances were Hulme Crescents, built in 1971. The titanic U-shaped tower blocks, built to house over 13,000 people, were a key part of Manchester Corporation's brutalist solution to its housing crisis. These days The Gamecock's former landlady, Julie Maguire, says it's "sad to see" the pub's sorry state when visiting family still living in Hulme. Julie, now 62, took over the pub when she was 29-years old, running it from 1989 to 1995.
Before becoming a landlady, Julie worked for years in pubs and bars around Manchester, including the famous Tommy Ducks. But as soon as her name was above the door of The Gamecock, she felt right at home serving the community she grew up in. "Customers would say to me he'd had two or three and I'd say he's not getting paid. Wacky would say he needed a couple of beers to 'stop the spiders coming for him'."In a scene that wouldn't have been out of place in the classic American sitcom Cheers, Julie laughs as she recalls another story about regular barfly, Jackie Wacky. He was sat at the bar one day when a well-to-do lecturer walked into the Gamecock.
"[The lecturer] told him what he was looking for in his crossword, so Wacky answered him," Julie said. "He went, 'oh right'. He said 'I've got another one', and Wacky answered that as well. "I was hauled to the police station many-a-time. They said 'we'd had to bang the door Julie because you couldn't hear us'. I said the music was on.
Another problem in Hulme at that time was the derelict tower blocks had begun to attract drug users. "I used to have signs up saying 'no smackheads inside or outside'," Julie said.Despite the rough-and-ready reputation of the pub, Julie said there was rarely any trouble. "Everybody all looked after each other," she said."It would take me two days to put the decorations up. We used to call it the adults grotto.
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