It was the oldest pub in Manchester and thought to be the inspiration for television's most famous boozer.
When the Rovers Return was built at Shudehill in 1306 the Black Death was still 40 years away and William Wallace had been hung, drawn and quartered just 12 months earlier. But it's long history counted for little when the council decided to flatten a large part of the city centre in the 1950s and 60s during a modernisation drive that would eventually pave the way for the Arndale.
Originally one of the outbuildings of Withingreave Hall, a medieval mansion house that would later become home to the 17th-century philanthropist William Hulme, it's unclear exactly when The Rovers Return became a pub.
