About Us
We are a very active branch of some 1,207 pub, beer and cider lovers drawn from the south of Manchester and most of the old county borough of Stockport. For full details of boundary see the Area section below.
When the branch was originally formed in the Printers Arms in January 1974 it was initially known as South Manchester and covered a much larger area than current. Originally it also covered what are now the boroughs of Salford, Trafford and even as far as Warrington! Because we jumped the gun slightly, the Urban District Councils of Marple and Bredbury & Romiley were not included, as they only became a part of Stockport when Greater Manchester was formed in April 1974. This accounts for the anomaly of the Stockport & South Manchester Branch not covering the whole borough of Stockport! Then again, calling ourselves West & Central Stockport and South Manchester would be a real (if accurate) mouthful.
Our activities vary from social outings to other towns to visit their pubs, beer festival, through regular monthly consumer surveying (better known as a Meanders or Stagger), to campaigning about endangered beer types.
Fancy yourself as an ace reporter? Why not help with our award winning magazine Opening Times. With at least 16, and often 24 A4 pages of copy required, articles are always welcome. More details here.
Annual Awards
The Stockport & South Manchester branch has a variety of methods of selecting pubs to go forward to prestigious listings; Good Beer Guide entries (GBG), Pub Of The Year (POTY), Cider Pub Of The Year (CPOTY) Club Of The Year (COTY) and Pub Of The Month (POTM) selections. These are carried out differently to try and ensure a representative and unbiased selection. To read details of the different systems hover over the following and select the award from the options.
Club Of The Year (under construction) Pub Of The Month
Branch Boundary
The boundary (usually) runs down the centre of the indicated roads and rivers. In areas with few houses et cetera straight lines have been used rather than the exact boundary, which corresponds to the town, city or old rural district boundary (at the interface with Marple).
When the branch was formed, Marple and Bredbury & Romiley were their own Urban District Councils so were not included in the branch. Thus the branch (red shading below) doesn't include the whole of Stockport Metropolitan Borough! The 'missing' part of Stockport is shaded yellow (approximately).
A new branch, Central Manchester, was creating by 'borrowing' the city centre pubs which were previously part of Stockport & South Manchester, Trafford & Hulme and North Manchester. Thus the tiny area to the north of the Mancunian Way, coloured blue below, was donated to this new branch.
Open map in a separate window.