Pub Sign Story Saint Margarets Hotel Prestwich Manchester

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Though later called a hotel, the pub started life in 1847 as St. Margaret’s Tavern, offering food and drink but no accommodation. The pub was named in honour of the Catholic church being built across the other side of Bury Old Road, which opened in 1851. The tavern was converted to a small hotel inn at the start of the 20th century. It is now a tavern again, as it no longer offers overnight accommodaton. The church gets quite a write up on Wikipedia, as a major listed architectural building, It was built with money donated by the 2nd Earl Of Wilton, who hoped the church would be called St. Thomas’s but this was rejected for its monumental egotism Seeing as the Earl’s name was Thomas Egerton. Margaret was chosen instead, much to his disappointment. Surprisingly, some commentators writing her story get the wrong St. Margaret. David Rowlinson wrote ‘A History Of Prestwich Pubs’ where he claims she Is Margaret, daughter of the Saxon King, Edgar Aetheling. After the arrival of the Normans in 1066, Margaret fled to Scotland where she tirelessly promoted Catholicism, and inspired great Scottish religious promotion. She married King Malcolm, a real historic figure later used fictitiously in Shakespeare’s Macbeth. This Margaret died peacefully, granted a sainthood for her tireless evangelism, and good deeds. The problem is that the church is clearly dedicated to another Saint Margaret, (and there are at least six others). The one who matters is Margaret of Antioch, known a Margaret The Virgin, though it has been questioned as to whether she ever existed at all. The canonized Scottish Queen undoubtedly did. Margaret The Virgin seems to have been quite mercenary in her very active short 15 year life, dying in 304 AD. She sold relics of herself and paid well to anyone willing to help promote her story. She was the daughter of a pagan priest, but converted to Catholicism by her nurse, for which she was thrown out of the family home by her disgusted father. Her missionary work took her to Turkey where she fell in love with a Roman Governor, Olbrius, but he refused to marry her because she wouldn’t renounce her Christian beliefs, even under torture from him. Alone again after briefly escaping him, Margaret was swallowed whole by a dragon, who she took for Satan incarnate, but her cross burned through its belly and she stepped out of the carcass unscathed. She was captured the next day by the Romans and brought back before Olbrius. She then supposedly survived multiple attempts by her Roman executioners to burn and drown her before they finally settled on her decapitation. The sign captures a classical portrait of her in stained glass colour, bearing a shepherd’s crock. Arthur Chappell