The Rat & Pigeon

And the award for most disgusting pub name, anywhere in the world, ever, goes to…

‘Rat & Pigeon’ is an impressively grim name for a venue in modern, shiny Manchester. Is it a shot across the boughs at the skyscraping Spinningfields lot? Probably. 

Many of the once-gritty live music venues in the city centre have sourced funding and cleaned up their acts. Which is all well and good – it’s nice to be in nice places. But an exciting, creative city also needs a ragtag bag of truly outsider spaces. Places like Aatma, Eagle Inn and, of course, a venue named after vermin. 

The Rat & Pigeon doesn’t just have a horrible name, it has a horrible past too. It’s the location of the Mother Mac’s Massacre in 1976, which we’re not going to discuss in a relatively light-hearted venue profile. Go Google it if you fancy a downer. 

As a pub, it’s great. At the downstairs bar, you’ll find a smart selection of beer, cheery staff and a motley crowd of old-school Manchester misfits: rockers, geeks and musos. 

There’s an unpolished, faintly lawless feel to it all – from the glitchy strip lighting on the staircase to the all-over-the-place soundtrack. Naturally, it’s hidden down the kind of back street that an enterprising film location scout will soon identify as ‘the next Gotham’. 

Upstairs, there’s a live music space that looks straight out of a Sham 69 video. If you’re an up-and-coming band and want to play a gig away from the 6 Music Dad schooner circuit, get booked in here, stat. 

After some intensive research, ie. we checked their website, we discovered it’s ran by the team behind Crown & Kettle, over on Oldham Road. Also, a great pub, sure, but Rat & pigeon is the younger, renegade sibling, a good distance (in vibe, not locality) from the modern, safe, Northern Quarter pub old guard. 

If you have a craving for a time when Manchester really did do things differently, rather than just marketing agencies and grifters saying it, ad infinitum, then Rat & Pigeon is likely your new favourite spot. Just don’t mention the massacre.