Glass towers crowd the skyline in Manchester, encroaching a bit more each year on the legacy of this northern English city with a musical soul.
The sprawl is now creeping toward the Star & Garter pub, a slab of Victoriana built in 1877 with checkerboard turrets, fancy brickwork and scrolled pediments. It’s one of the first buildings new arrivals see when the airport train rolls into town, and it bills itself as “the last truly independent music venue you will ever know.”
The kernel of truth in that claim is cause for concern.
The pub, whose curious name is derived from a royal insignia, was once part of a national network of music venues sometimes called the “Toilet Circuit” — scruffy boozers with back rooms for gigs. Countless British bands sharpened their live acts in these pubs. Radiohead toured the circuit in the early 1990s, as did Oasis and PJ Harvey.
“I first saw Oasis play to 30 people, and when I say that, I’m not trying to boast,” said Dave Haslam, a Manchester-based author and D.J. “I’m underlining the fact that Manchester’s small venues are where those bands served their apprenticeship.”
In the decades since, Manchester has sacrificed many of its iconic music clubs at the altar of development. The Star & Garter has emerged as an exception — but, ironically, only because it was recently rescued by a developer. The £1.5 billion Mayfield development aims to transform a slab of dilapidated brick warehouse spaces and disused transit stations into a mixed-use wonderland with nearly 1,500 new homes, shops, restaurants and one of the biggest nightclubs in Europe. Some of that is already in place. The apartments are yet to be built — work is expected to begin imminently — but many will be covetable homes designed for the skilled professionals whom Manchester hopes to lure from London and beyond.
“Manchester is an increasingly blingy city,” said Laura Percy, development director of LandsecU+I, the private developer of the Mayfield partnership. “There was uncertainty over the Star & Garter’s future, and that was an obvious moment because it had become an icon for a different sort of Manchester. It wasn’t part of the bright new city. It was a home for people who didn’t necessarily have others.”
Mayfield says it bought the Star & Garter to help preserve the city’s small music-venue scene. But the developer understands that the commercial value of these buildings may far outstrip the land on which they sit. Previous proposals to close the pub were met with noisy resistance by locals. And the young professionals whom Mayfield hopes will buy its high-end apartments choose Manchester, at least in part, because of the city’s raw appeal.
The rescue of the Star & Garter is a sign that the city may finally be learning to preserve some of its culture rather than constantly try to replicate what it has lost.
The music groups who sprouted here — including post-punk icons Joy Division, the Fall, the Smiths and New Order, and later Britpop pioneers like the Stone Roses and Oasis — rose from the rubble of an industrial city pulverized by the Luftwaffe in World War II, and again in 1996 by an IRA bomb, leaving much of its center derelict. Many local artists who achieved worldwide success were from poor families and flourished because the erstwhile mills and abandoned factories could be commandeered at low cost.
Today Manchester, whose metro population has grown to 2.8 million, still calls itself “birthplace of the industrial revolution,” and still trades on that musical heritage, but those buildings are no longer available. The Boardwalk, a club where Oasis played their first gig in 1991, is now offices. Brunswick Mill, a former cotton mill just outside the city center that once was home to musicians’ studios, is soon to be apartments.
“The issue of Manchester trading in its past is controversial because a lot of what’s talked about is about what previous generations have done,” Mr. Haslam said. “We need the small venues because we need emerging bands.”
Britain as a whole lost nearly 10 percent of all its small music venues in 2023, according to the British charity Music Venue Trust, which blamed rent demands and increased complaints about noise, among other factors. In May, alarmed by their decline, a House of Commons committee published a report on the demise of small music venues, with recommendations on how to save them, including tax relief and a voluntary tax on stadium ticket sales.
As Paul McCartney said via the Music Venue Trust, “if we don’t support live music at this level then the future of music in general is in danger.”
After the Mayfield partnership bought the Star & Garter in conjunction with other private and public bodies in 2019, it handed a 10-year lease to Andy Martin, a Mancunian music fan who had run the bar since 1997. There were no conditions, and no plans to smooth its rough edges.
“It’s not going to be a place that will sell Cronuts,” Ms. Percy said.
The deal is unusual. Cities around the globe are wrestling with this gentrification conundrum: When they capitalize on a distinctive cultural history to attract investment, the ensuing development threatens to obliterate that history.
“It’s a pattern we see,” said Paul Swinney, director of policy and research at the Centre for Cities, a British think tank. “There’s an early phase where not many people want to be there. Then come the risk-takers doing something edgier on a budget but willing to take up space. As demand picks up and money flows in, people feel disgruntled. There’s always going to be tension, but the question is: What do you do about it?”
The Mayfield project, he said, is a step in the right direction, “because the developers have seen the benefit of character.”
Manchester’s most lamented casualty is the Hacienda, a dance club that opened in 1982 in a 19th-century warehouse. It was financed by Factory Records, home to new-wave pioneers Joy Division and New Order. The club closed in 1997 and was demolished five years later to make way for Hacienda-themed apartments.
The club’s enigmatic black doors are valuable relics. This year, they were on display in the public auction rooms at nearby Omega Auctions. In 2023, a Haçienda brick signed by Peter Hook, New Order’s bassist, sold for £500. Today, where the entrance once stood, an estate agent’s office displays Hacienda-style black-and-yellow branding. Endless bars around town borrow the Hacienda’s 1980s industrial aesthetic, with varying degrees of success.
“Exposed piping, brickwork — it’s kind of a cliché,” said Ian Jones, a promoter and DJ whose electro-indie, anti-nostalgia night Keys Money Lipstick was a fixture in the 2000s.
A mile down the road from the old Hacienda, the Star & Garter stands proud, a wobbly old tooth in a mouth full of shiny dentures. “This might sound dumbed down, but I would describe the Star & Garter as the Hacienda’s little brother,” Mr. Jones said.
Upcoming attractions include a mix of startups and veteran punk bands, as well as regular fixtures like Morrissey/Smiths Disco, a long-running night dedicated to Manchester’s indie heroes. Downstairs, the barroom has battered Victorian bones, a scruffy vinyl floor and black paint on the ceiling. The menu offers no-frills booze at low prices: lager and Guinness at £5.50, cider at £5.
Meanwhile, a couple of miles east, Manchester’s brand-new, 23,000-seat Co-Op Live Arena is now Britain’s biggest music venue, backed partly by City Football Group, which manages teams including Manchester City and New York City FC under the majority ownership of Abu Dhabi’s United Group.
“A soulless enormo-dome doesn’t offer itself as a place to nurture local talent and add to the sense of Manchester as an interesting creative place, because it isn’t interesting or creative,” said Mr. Haslam, one of the Hacienda’s original D.J.s.
Much like the local music scene, Manchester’s city center has been transformed following waves of regeneration efforts. At every turn is the sound of jackhammers, and around every corner the glitter of new apartment blocks. People want to live here. The university sector and new tech, biotech and media industries mean high-paying jobs. The population in the center grew nearly 10 percent between 2011 and 2021.
Locals call the arrivals “New Mancs,” mostly with affection. In November, a two-bedroom loft-style apartment in a converted Victorian shipping warehouse could be rented for £1,720 ($2,234) a month. In London’s artsy Shoreditch neighborhood, a similar apartment was advertised at close to £5,800 ($7,534).
But where can they find that Manchester musical experience?
“In the home of the warehouse, you’re unable to find a warehouse,” said Oliver Wilson, founder of Beyond the Music, an international music conference and festival, a showcase for young Manchester bands. Mr. Wilson is also the son of the late Tony Wilson, founder of Factory Records and the Hacienda.
These days, the adventurous listeners head out to the suburbs. “There’s one called Rainy Heart in a disused shopping mall about five miles out,” Mr. Wilson said. “Live music for £5 and you can’t get a ticket because they’re queuing around the corner.”
This past March, Mr. Martin, the old Star & Garter landlord, died suddenly at age 52. About 100 people attended a memorial event. Dan Philips, Mr. Martin’s nephew, who has worked behind the bar for a decade, said his family and friends will continue to run it in the same way. Mr. Martin’s wife, Helen Kitchen, is now in charge.
It may not be Manchester’s last independent music venue, but it is precious. “If people had ideas, Andy would give them a chance to explore them,” Mr. Phillips said. “That’s the point of the Star & Garter. It’s a sand pit. Trial and error stuff.”
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