{"id":395664,"date":"2025-09-03T22:29:29","date_gmt":"2025-09-03T22:29:29","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/395664\/"},"modified":"2025-09-03T22:29:29","modified_gmt":"2025-09-03T22:29:29","slug":"was-the-north-westward-ho-manchesters-quirkiest-club-ever","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/395664\/","title":{"rendered":"Was the North Westward Ho! Manchester’s quirkiest club ever?"},"content":{"rendered":"

– Advertisement –\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

Manchester has never been short of peculiar pubs. Ask any local and they\u2019ll have a favourite: the Temple Bar, once a Victorian public toilet and now a dimly lit bolthole for the city\u2019s creatives; the diminutive Circus Tavern, which squeezes punters into what it proudly calls \u201cthe smallest bar in Europe with the biggest welcome in the world\u201d; or The Washhouse, which requires you to bluff your way past a fake laundrette fa\u00e7ade before slipping through the door to a hidden cocktail bar. And that\u2019s just naming a couple. <\/p>\n

We\u2019ve got historic pubs<\/a>, cutting edge taprooms<\/a>, clubs, and every variety of shape and size watering hole you could imagine.<\/p>\n

\u00a0The North\u00a0Westward Ho!<\/p>\n

\"NorthA flyer for the North Westward Ho! <\/p>\n

But as eccentric as today\u2019s modern drinking dens are, they\u2019re outshone by a long-forgotten 1970s experiment: a full-blown nightclub docked at Pomona, the North Westward Ho! Packed with six bars, a restaurant, a disco, and, most bizarre of all, a De Havilland Comet airplane converted into a restaurant and overflow dance floor parked up next door.<\/p>\n

\"NorthA De Havilland Comet in flight <\/p>\n

Clubbers would clamber aboard the ship via a gangplank to dance, play pool, or enjoy a meal, while the airplane next door added an extra layer of airborne surrealism to the night.<\/p>\n

The history of Pomona Island <\/p>\n

In the early-70s, Pomona Island was not the gleaming landscape of apartments and tram stops it\u2019s (slowly) becoming today. The Ship Canal\u2019s heyday was long gone, and the docks were a quiet, derelict sprawl. But one man, entrepreneur Jud Evans, decided that the waterlogged industrial island was ripe for reinvention.<\/p>\n

His idea? To bring glamour back to the canal by opening Manchester\u2019s first and only floating pubship.<\/p>\n

Jud found a suitable vessel, a former Ferry on the Isle of Wight , bought it, and had it sailed up the coast and into the Ship Canal. Once docked at Pomona, the ship underwent a lavish 12-month refit. By the time it opened, the North Westward Ho! was billed as \u201cplush,\u201d boasting a restaurant, six bars, a late licence and a disco. In an era when Manchester was just starting to embrace club culture, it was an audacious move.<\/p>\n

And then Jud went a step further. To handle demand, he bought a decommissioned jet and parked it next to the ship, fitting it out with a dancefloor and restaurant. If you couldn\u2019t get into the pubship, you could party in the plane.<\/p>\n

A pint in a barge? Perhaps. A pint in a former toilet? Absolutely. But a pint on a ship, followed by a boogie in a jetliner on land? Only in 70s Manchester.<\/p>\n

\"NorthThe North Westward Ho! in her seafaring days <\/p>\n

It wasn\u2019t exactly built with high heels in mind. Piccadilly Radio<\/a> youth presenter Rikki Wright, who chronicled the era in his 2017 book The Dirty Stop Outs\u2019 Guide to 1970s Manchester, recalled the hazards of boarding after one too many Babychams.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe ship\u2019s steps were tricky for women in heels or platforms to negotiate,\u201d he wrote. \u201cIt wasn\u2019t unknown for those having had a good night on the Cherry B to fall from top to bottom \u2013 and yet, the drunken body bounces, so most of the fallers seem to have walked away with nothing worse than a bruised bottom.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n

To find out more about the Dirty Stop Outs\u2019 Guide to 1970s Manchester, click\u00a0here.<\/a><\/p>\n

Inside, the atmosphere was equally raucous. Banisters doubled as slides during late-night abandon, low beams caught out tall revellers, and the gangplank back to dry land was a trial for anyone who had overindulged. It wasn\u2019t glamorous in the conventional sense, but it was unforgettable.<\/p>\n

Clubbers memories of the North Westward Ho!<\/p>\n

An ex-punter who had his stag do on the boat told us the goss, saying: \u201cBasically it was a big disco on a boat!\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s where we all went to when the pubs shut. It had a 2am license. At the same place they had a massive airplane too, but that was more of a restaurant.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u201cIt was a great place for a dance and a few pints. I even had my stag do there!\u201d They told us that they always had a great DJ spinning Motown and Northern Soul, with a great atmosphere to boot. <\/p>\n

\u201cIt was a big like Fagins on Oxford Street, and some of the other clubs down there. It was a great place to be and a great time to be out clubbing.\u201d Although they never saw anyone end up in the water, I\u2019m sure plenty did. \u00a0<\/p>\n

\u201cIt was basically somewhere to go after the pubs, and everyone there was there to have a good time. It was still a bit of a barren area, like it is today full of industrial units and not much else.\u201d <\/p>\n

The North Westward Ho! is also said to have had resident bands, including jazz bands, and DJ\u2019s spinning popular discs, including the \u201cever popular \u2018Rock The Boat\u2019 by Hues Corporation.\u201d<\/p>\n

The pubship was part of a broader 70s trend of experimental nightlife. Britain\u2019s club owners were eager to stand out, and Manchester was no exception.<\/p>\n

The Football League even commissioned a specially built \u201cdisco train\u201d to ferry fans to away games in style, complete with a sound system so supporters could dance en route to matches. Against that backdrop, a floating nightclub with an overflow jet didn\u2019t seem so far-fetched.<\/p>\n

You can read more about that here<\/a><\/p>\n

\"NorthPomona Island in the 1970s <\/p>\n

Despite its popularity, the floating pub was never destined to last. The ship closed for good in 1981, barely a decade after it opened. Maintaining a vessel as a nightclub on the Ship Canal was costly and complex, and when the tide of fashion moved on, the Love Boat was left stranded.<\/p>\n

Pomona itself fell back into neglect. For the next forty years, it became an overgrown wasteland, a strange, empty patch of the city that many people forgot about, except as a handy hideaway for illegal raves. Today, a tram stop sits where once a nightclub bobbed on the water, and of course, gnome island.<\/p>\n

Ask someone today about Pomona, and they\u2019ll likely picture cranes, half-built apartment blocks, or stretches of scrubland. Few would guess that it was once the site of a nightclub so unusual it made national headlines.<\/p>\n

– Advertisement –\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"– Advertisement – Manchester has never been short of peculiar pubs. Ask any local and they\u2019ll have a…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":395665,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[8813],"tags":[748,393,4884,2348,2465,136753,16,15],"class_list":{"0":"post-395664","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-manchester","8":"tag-britain","9":"tag-england","10":"tag-great-britain","11":"tag-history","12":"tag-manchester","13":"tag-north-westward-ho","14":"tag-uk","15":"tag-united-kingdom"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@uk\/115142732593639855","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/395664","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=395664"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/395664\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/395665"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=395664"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=395664"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=395664"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}