The Black Lion Hotel on Chapel Street is set for a rear extension refurb which will see the pub add space for 25 more punters downstairs.
The red brick, flat roofed extension into the rear yard will add around 327sq ft, bringing the total ground floor area to 2,595sq ft.
It means the rather cramped bar and front drinking area will gain more room, with the toilets and kitchen moving backwards into the rear yard.
One of the pub’s confusing second front doors, which opens onto Chapel Street, will also be removed and replaced with a matching window frame under the plans.
It will be the first building work done on the pub since at least the mid-1990s.
The current ground floor layout
The proposed ground floor changes, with larger bar area
Solihull-headquartered pubco Enterprise Inns, which owns the Black Lion, says an increase in trade from concert-goers to the nearby Manchester Arena merited splashing out on more space.
“The welcoming of the large number of customers of the public house means that further trading space and facilities are required,” they said.
It re-opened for trade in February 2014, returning to a pie-and-mash city centre boozer with rooms upstairs under the stewardship of local landlord Deborah Maughan.
You can read all about that here.
Its previous incarnation as a relatively experimental pub-cum-community arts facility (complete with John Cooper Clarke cinema) had failed and the pub was forced to close in November 2013.
Part of the Flat Iron Conservation Area, council documents state that the pub’s “well-preserved frontage…makes an important contribution to the area’s character.”
While not Grade-listed, the three-storey late-Victorian pub does appear on Salford City Council’s Local List for its aesthetic and social value.
It’s famed mainly on two counts, the first in 1889 as the birthplace of the Showmen’s Guild of Great Britain, then in the 1970s as a venue for the early career of the Bard of Salford, John Cooper Clarke.
It does sit next door to the Grade-II listed former Baerlein’s warehouse, built by Oldham & Wilson in 1877.
Now this palazzo-style former engineering manufacturers, which produced machinery for the textile industry, is converted into flats called the Textile Apartments.
Planners didn’t believe the changes to the Black Lion would “detract from the architectural or historic significance” of its listed neighbour.
Warrington-based DV8 Designs acted as agents on the proposal, which was passed by Salford City Council last week.
30 neighbouring properties were notified of the changes and there were no objections.
Enterprise now have up to three years to complete the refurbishment.
