Page 7 - Didsbury Pubs

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Introduction

Didsbury 1818

January 1793, was an uncertain time across the country.
The weather was unseemlingly cold, the harvest had been
poor, and in France the survival of the monarchy was in doubt.
All of which might explain why a crowd gathered to watch as
an effigy of that well known radical, Thomas Paine, was burned
on the village green in front of the two village pubs.*
And after the event some of the crowd will have settled
down in The Old Cock, and The Ring o’ Bells which would be
rebuilt as The Church Inn and is now The Didsbury Hotel.
Just how many of those swapping stories in the two pubs
were in favour of Tom Paine, and how many had taken against
the man who supported both the American and the French

*Axon, William, The Annals of Manchester, 1885, page 120
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