Pub Sign Study The Salutation Manchester City Centre

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A very popular pub among students at Manchester University which is very close by. Recent threats to close the bar known to many simply as The Sally have met with fury, and given its history this is not surprising. The pub appears on maps dating as far back as 1844 and undoubtedly predates that. The Salutation remains a common pub name despite actually being controversial. While most signs depict a friendly handshake reducing salutation to a pleasant greeting, the name is actually Biblical, referring to the angel announcing to the Virgin Mary that she was chosen to bear the infant Jesus in her womb. 17th century Puritans and 19th century Methodists have objected to such a sacred event becoming a pub name, but the name has endured. This particular Salutation pub has had some highly illustrious visitors. Frederick Engels, co-author of The Communist Manifesto is believed to have been in, and as Karl Marx visited his friend in Manchester it is not impossible he went in on some occasion too. One visitor whose presence there was highly documented is Charlotte Bronte. In 1946, her father, the Reverend Patrick Bronte came to Manchester to have a cataract removal operation at Manchester’s famous (and still open) eye hospital. Charlotte came with him and took rooms in the pub to be on hand to visit him. While in her rooms she wrote the first pages of her masterpiece, Jane Eyre. A plaque adorns the pub wall to commemorate her visit. Whether she met Engels or Marx is unknown, and therefore perhaps sadly unlikely. Given that she lived nearby and received later visits at home from Charlotte Bronte, Elizabeth Gaskell may also have been into the pub at some point. Each glass raised there silently celebrates our history and literary heritage – a true salutation. Arthur Chappell