Castle Hotel, Manchester

Early to mid C19 small city centre pub with c.1900 alterations. It has a brown ceramic frontage with raised white lettering 'CASTLE HOTEL'. This is one of a number of Kay's Atlas Brewery pubs with ceramic frontages. The interior has a layout of three rooms with a corridor down right-hand side. The partition between the corridor and the public bar was removed many years ago. A vestibule on the right has been replaced with a smaller one, but the mosaic 'Castle Hotel' floor remains and the inner door has a 'The Castle' etched panel. The small public bar has a wonderful colourful glazed faience (both ceramic and tiles) bar counter front - one of only thirteen such examples left in the whole of the UK; it has a new wooden top. Also retained is a fine old bar back fitting, 1960s fixed seating and there is a good patterned anaglypta ceiling. The left-hand door, which gives directly onto the street, is disused.

The patterned ceiling continues into the passageway to the rear. A door beyond the public bar servery has a 'Bar Parlour' etched and frosted glass panel and the room retains old fixed bench seating on two sides, some bell pushes, a baffle by the door, and has a reproduction Victorian-style fireplace. Further down the passageway at the rear left is an extended and modernised room with a stage for music events. Although containing no original fittings it does have a partition wall with old leaded windows separating it from the corridor. Note the carved corbels for the beams.

Other Heritage Pubs with a ceramic bar counter are the Black Horse, Preston, Lancashire; Burlingtons Bar (at the Town House), St Annes on Sea, Lancashire; Mountain Daisy, Sunderland, Tyne & Wear; Red Lion, Erdington, Birmingham; Polar Bear, Hull, East Yorkshire; White Hart Hotel, Hull, East Yorkshire; Garden Gate, Hunslet, Leeds, West Yorkshire; Golden Cross, Cardiff, Glamorgan, Wales; Crown, Belfast, Northern Ireland.

Other examples can be found at Horse & Jockey, Wednesbury, West Midlands where a small part on the left has been lost; Hark to Towler, Tottington, Greater Manchester where the bar has been moved; Waterloo Hotel & Bistro, Newport, Gwent, Wales which has no public bar facility; and there is one in China Red which was the Coach & Horses, Dunswell, East Yorks and now operates as a Chinese Restaurant.