Monica Livesey, landlady of The Gold Cup in Longsight, pulls me a pint of Guinness and looks ruefully over to a conspicuously empty corner of the lounge bar. It’s a quiet Tuesday afternoon. There are a few customers but none in that part of the lounge.

“Everybody that sits there for a long time dies, so they call it God’s waiting room,” cackles Monica, 71, who has been the licencee here since 1995.

Since November, seven regulars who would sit there have died and the remaining patrons make a point of perching themselves elsewhere.

“That used to be packed, that corner,” says Monica.

Behind the bar in the vault, the wall is plastered with yellowing pictures of regulars - Monica points out the ones who are no longer with us.

(Image: Manchester evening news)

Back in the day Longsight was full of pubs - more than 30 boozers were strung along the A6 Stockport Road and most of them would be packed with working folk letting their hair down on a Friday or Saturday night.

Now there are just two. The Gold Cup is one of them.

Monica and her regulars reminisce fondly about those who have gone, and how it used to be in this once thriving Longsight boozer.

“I lived around the corner.” she says. “I used to come in here for a drink with my mum and aunt. It was nice.”

Misty-eyed, she looks over to a small stage in another corner of her pub.

“There was an old piano there. Someone would play and people sang. They were great days, them,” she says.

(Image: Manchester evening news)

“Every day and every night it was packed. It was really good. It was always packed. It was mostly working men coming in at five 0’clock after work. On a Saturday and Sunday it was families. It was great. I used to have four or five staff behind the bar. I’m down to one now. And it was six or seven deep at the bar. It was heaving. We used to have a bit of music on, someone playing the guitar.”

In 1962, Monica came over from Dublin, aged 14, with her mum and dad, who was looking for work.

The Gold Cup, which was and still is an Irish pub, was a much-loved local watering-hole until fairly recently. Before he became a star footballer for Manchester United, a young Wes Brown used to come in with his brothers, mostly to play the slots.

So what went wrong? Monica has no doubt what was to blame, the ban on smoking in pubs that was introduced in England on July 1, 2007.

“It killed most of it, plus you have Asda up the road selling a pack of four for two quid. People thought ‘I might as well drink in my own house and smoke in my own house for two or three quid’,” says Monica.

(Image: Manchester evening news)

Monica became known as ‘Ruthless Rita’ - her full name is Rita Monica Livesey - partly because she she refused to allow customers to flout the smoking ban. And if you were barred for that or any other reason, you stayed barred. ‘Ruthless Rita’ didn’t do second chances.

“People just stopped coming in”, she recalls. “I had fights with them because they were sitting there having a cigarette in the pub. I was phoning the police until eventually they got the message. I must have barred about 20 people. They stopped coming in. They thought they may as well stop at home. That’s when the pub started going down the drain, not only this one but all these pubs.”

As custom slowed to a trickle, the pub’s football, darts and pool teams all folded.

Sitting at the bar, one of her regulars, Dennis Moores, 66, makes Monica flush a little with embarrassment as he describes her as ‘a pillar of the community - an absolute diamond’, and not just because he wants free pint.

(Image: Manchester evening news)

“All the pubs round here are turning into restaurants or shops or Arabic learning centres”, he goes on. “I have lived here all my life. I started coming in here 22 or 23 years ago. A pub is part of the community. It’s where everybody goes. It’s the smoking ban but it’s the cultural change as well. I have said it for years. You can build a pub in the middle of a housing estate but nobody in the housing estate will go to that pub. They will go to the supermarket to buy beer because it’s cheaper.”

Longsight was ‘becoming dry’ because it was a ‘community of Asian people’, he went on, although Monica baulks at the suggestion. Of course it is true that drinking alcohol is forbidden in Islam, and that there is a Longsight is home to one of south Manchester’s biggest Islamic communities.

The 2011 census recorded 55 per cent of of Longsight’s 15,429 residents as Asian or Asian British, some 27 per cent as white, while and ten per cent black (black, African, Caribbean or Black British).

However demographics don’t really explain the decline; Longsight has been diverse for much of living memory, and the Gold Cup neighbours Longsight and Ardwick’s council estates, where residents are of largely white, black or of mixed ethnicity, rather than Asian Muslim heritage.

(Image: Manchester evening news)

“I love it”, Monica’s daughter Miranda tells me as she works behind the bar. “I wouldn’t go from here to another pub. This is the only pub that’s functioning around here.”

Monica, a divorced mother of seven, still lives in private quarters above the pub with two of her 20 grandchildren, but she admits she could soon be calling time on her life as a landlady, and that would probably mean the end for The Gold Cup.

“I’m getting a bit tired. But I love it because it keeps me going and gives me something to do in the morning”, she says. “It keeps me on the go until eleven at night. I’ve got no time to sit down and think about things. If I was in a flat on my own I would lay down and die.”

If Monica declines to renew the lease - she’s not decided yet - and no-one else took it on, that would leave The Huntington as the only pub left in Longsight. Bit by bit, pieces of Longsight’s social history have disappeared over the years. The Bay Horse became a cash-and-carry. The New Victoria is a children’s nursery. Others have been demolished.

The scale of pub closures in the UK According to figures released by the Campaign for Real Ale released last year, at least 25,000 of the country’s pubs have closed since the 1970s, leaving 50,000 boozers, although the rate of decline has fallen in recent years. And, since about 2014, the volume of beer people bought in supermarkets overtook the amount sold on licensed premises. While the cost of supermarket beer has fallen, the price of a pint has steadily risen in pubs. Using an index which takes into account inflation and income growth, a study by the Institute of Alcohol Studies released earlier this year suggested the affordability of beer in supermarkets and off-licences had risen by 188 per cent since 1987. Meanwhile the average price of a pint of draught lager was £3.58 in 2017, up 36 per cent compared to 2007, according to the British Beer and Pub Association.

Pubs have been sold for re-development

Like Longsight, the Trinity area of Salford has lost dozens of pubs. There used to be about 50 of them around the A6 but now only the New Oxford on Bexley Square (near the old courthouse) and The Eagle Inn on Collier Street remain.

“It’s quite depressing,” said Graham Dunning, 68, the director of the Greater Manchester branch of the Campaign Of Real Ale, which promotes the great British pub as well as real ale.

“Most of these old pubs have been sold for re-development. Tesco was buying up a lot of them although its slowed down now because of the economy. Others have become nurseries, day care centres or GP surgeries. In suburbs all across Greater Manchester you will find pubs have been closing. It’s quite depressing. There’s no doubt about it,” said Graham, who lamented how a way of life - centred around the local pub - was dying.

(Image: Manchester Evening News)

He said: “I like go to the pub. I like the craic and the harmony and the friendships you can get in a pub. You can have a natter with anyone in there. It’s a safe haven. Don’t forget, a lot of people are lonely and to go there and chat with old friends, or new friends, is worthwhile. A pub is a protected environment, rather than sitting on a street corner drinking a can. The pub was somewhere to go and meet neighbours or friends. It was part of the community. They haven’t got that any more.”

The Shamrock on Bengal Street in Ancoats had been serving beer for more than 200 years but it had to close earlier this year.

Speaking to the M.E.N. last month, the landlord, Gerry Ellis, said: “It is a family pub and the locals are absolutely devastated, but there’s nothing I can do. It’s a crying shame as it’s the last pub of its kind in Ancoats.

“It was a local boozer, a local family pub.

“This building was always a pub and it was always called The Shamrock from the very first day it opened. It was here before the dwellings across the road, which came in 1857. I’m surprised it’s not listed. It must be up there as one of Manchester’s oldest pubs.

(Image: Manchester Evening News)

“I 100 per cent believe that it is going to be knocked down and become flats or something like that. It’s already surrounded by flats. People these days have the power and the money to just do what they want.

“Everywhere else nowadays is a yuppy wine bar. The younger generation do not have the capability to sit and chat in pubs anymore I think. They are always on their phones and iPads. The younger generation just want trendy bars.

“It’s also gone ballistic with apartments around here, which I think are not being built here for local people. These flats are pushing local people out, along with this pub.”

The Smith’s Arms, reputedly the oldest pub in Ancoats dating back to 1775 and known as ‘The Hammer’, was torn down for apartments in 2016.

Pubs still have a future - but they need to diversify

Pubs do have a future but they don’t look much like The Gold Cup in Longsight. Things weren’t looking good for the Firbank in Newall Green in 2015 when it was repeatedly firebombed. A drug dealer tried to blackmail the landlord, Simon Delaney.

His tormentor was jailed and Simon set about re-inventing his boozer and making a mockery of the saying, ‘never drink in a flat-roofed pub’. You can still get a beer, of course, but he also offers coffee, alcohol-free drinks, food (breakfast and lunch), wifi, barbecues on the terrace, big screen football, family fun days and a roster of 13 part-time bar staff. It’s made a difference.

Pubs used to be places where you opened the doors and people would come in”, Simon, 53, said. “You didn’t have to try. If you were a landlord, you could stand at the bar with a pint and people would come in to drink beer. Everybody was happy. Them days have absolutely gone.

“The answer is diversification. Don’t stand still. What you are up against now-a-days is that you can walk into the Trafford Centre with your wife, have a nice drink and go to the pictures. So you have to make it more attractive so people want to come.

(Image: Manchester Evening News)

“You have to attract every element and every age group. We’ve got young people here on a Friday and Saturday night. You have to think ‘what do I need to do?’ It’s all about diversification. If you stand still, there’s a chance you will close and you will get boarded up. You have to be passionate and know what people want and know what’s trending.

“I’ve been here 23 years now. You have to react to everything that happens. We are always very close to hitting financial problems here. We don’t just sit here thinking ‘happy days - great - we’re making a killing’. You can get 20 bottles of beer for £20 in the supermarket. You can only get four bottles for that in here. You have to give them the whole package.”

The Star Inn, in the Broughton area of Salford, became Britain’s first co-operatively owned urban pub in 2009 when a band of regulars and locals took it on. It still struggled. Two years, ago they recruited Paul McVay, a serial reviver of ailing boozers, to be the landlord. Now it’s thriving.

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He cleaned the place up, introduced real ale and altered the cellar. The pub’s folk night remains but it also has barbecues, Greek nights, curry nights and fancy dress evenings, for instance at Halloween.

“The first day I was here, we took £60 but now we take 30 times that”, Paul says. “This was a failing pub but over the last two years we have really turned it around. It’s gone right up. It was just about looking at what the customers were looking for, what sort of drinks they were into. We changed everything. It was a lovely building, it was just that there was nobody in here. We introduced ourselves to the local people,” he said.

“Customers are not just going to come in. You have to give them something. It’s like the World Cup. Why should people leave their house to watch it? You have to put offers on and make people want to come. You have to put in on social media. We are no longer chasing our customers. They come to us.”