It has been confirmed today that one of Manchester’s oldest and most iconic pubs has been saved from permanent closure.
The Lower Turks Head & Scuttlers Wine Bar at Shudehill has been sold to Cheetham Hill-based brewery chain, Jospeh Holt – an independent family business which operates 127 pubs throughout Greater Manchester and the North West – for an undisclosed sum, and forms part of the brewery’s “ongoing commitment to rejuvenating Manchester city centre” as we begin to emerge from lockdown.
The brewery has plans to drop the name ‘Scuttlers Wine Bar’, and so the pub will become known purely as Lower Turks Head.
Dating back to 1745, The Lower Turks Head was once an old stagecoach stop and enjoyed a proud heritage through successive centuries, before closing its doors last August.
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If you’ve ever stepped foot inside the deceptively-deep and roomy venue, you’ll know that the pub is crammed with distinctive fixtures and fittings, including a long wooden bar, checkerboard floors, wooden staircases, cut tables and cubby hole seating.
Its ornately tiled façade makes it a distinctive landmark in the centre of Manchester too.
The Lower Turks Head
Lower Turks Head is set to reopen to the public by first offering the full range of award-winning Joseph Holt cask ales and lagers, followed by plans to introduce a unique food offering later in the year, and on top of that, as one of central Manchester’s few small pub hotels, it’s also known as a place to enjoy bed and breakfast accommodation, which the brewery has confirmed it will keep operating and let out as the city centre starts to recover.
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Lower Turks Head joins Joseph Holt’s already established collection of city centre pubs, which includes the Ape and Apple, the Crown and Anchor, the Old Monkey, the Eagle Inn and The Shamrock, the latter of which is set to reopen following a full re-development in 2022.
Meet the newest Joseph Holt pub – The Lower Turk's Head, Manchester!
“Joseph Holt is deeply entrenched in the history of Manchester and sees the Lower Turks Head as part of that heritage too,” Marketing Manager, Paul Longmire, said.
“Our brewery has a keen sense of nostalgia but as much as we treasure the past, Joseph Holt regards it as a way of guaranteeing the future of the city too [so] we’re sure the Lower Turks Head, along with our other central Manchester pubs, will lead the way in bringing drinkers back into the city”.
James Corden is trending as football fans joke loser of England vs USA ‘has to keep him’
Daisy Jackson
Twitter users might have noticed that James Corden is trending again – and it’s not because it’s nearly Gavin and Stacey Christmas Special season.
The reason the British actor, comedian and presenter is trending is much funnier.
Once the World Cup games were matched up and we realised England and USA would face off in the group stages, people started joking that they would use Corden as a punishment for losing.
It’s become an ongoing joke that the loser of tonight’s World Cup match will ‘have to keep James Corden’.
And nobody seems to want that.
Corden fell out of favour last month when New York restaurant Balthazar called him ‘a tiny Cretin of a man’ and said that he abused their staff on his visit.
You can buy half Christmas trees so you don’t have to decorate the full thing
Emily Sergeant
December is nearly ready for rolling around once again.
It’s time to reach out the decorations out and get into the festive spirit, but for those who’d consider themselves a bit lazy, there’s an invention that could be a life saver, and it’s quite honestly genius.
You can now buy ‘half Christmas trees’ – otherwise known as or ‘against the wall Christmas trees’.
Unless your tree’s going to placed in front of a street-facing window for rafts of passers-by to see on a daily basis, it can be really tempting to just not decorate the back of it at all, right? The faff off trying to evenly-distribute strings of lights, tinsel and baubles around a full tree is often a lot more trouble than it’s worth, especially when it’s not going to be properly seen anyway.
Some would probably say it’s pointless, and it’s this thought that has presumably prompted companies to start selling these ‘half Christmas trees’.
If you’re wondering what a ‘half Christmas tree’ is, it’s basically exactly as it sounds – half a tree.
Half Christmas trees – which are also a great option for those with slightly less space to dedicate to seasonal decorations – are available in various places, and for all manner of budgets, so it should be fairly easy to get your hands on one this festive season.
You can now buy ‘half Christmas trees’ – otherwise known as or ‘against the wall Christmas trees’ / Credit: Very
Popular online retailer Very is selling a 6ft version for £39.99, and it comes with a folding metal stand.
According to the product description on the Very website: “This may look like a regular Christmas tree, but it’s been cleverly designed so that one side is completely flat, so no matter how limited your space might be, you and your family can still enjoy the magic of having a tree in your home,”
“Standing an impressive 6ft tall and featuring 511 tips for a lush look, you can stand it flat against the wall to save on valuable floor space,
“It also means you don’t have to worry about any of your favourite decorations being out of sight at the back”.
If you’re looking for something a little cheaper though, then there’s plenty of different options available on eBay and Amazon too, and our pick for this would be the vidaXL Artificial Half Christmas Tree – which is currently being sold on eBay by a number of different sellers for prices starting at £24.
Emily Sergeant -
30th March 2021 
