Baker street

Baker Street’ started life in 1812, where it was a public house called the ‘Garths Arms’. This changed its name in 1936 to the ‘Duke of Windsor’ owing to the then, upset landlord about the Kings abdication.

It stayed as that up until 1972 when its name changed again to the much loved and well-remembered ‘Maguire’s Tavern’.

This was a huge success until the owners decided to move on from the building for no known reason in the early 1990s, when the public house was changed into ‘Gaston’s’ and with the success of this led to setting up of its very own onsite microbrewery known as ‘Little Avenham Brewery’ producing ales severed across the city, until 1995. Then the pub was sold to Burtonwood brewery and the microbrewery was moved to Arkwright’s mill, the public house was then re-named in homage to its past (Maguire’s), until it closed once more in 2002.

The pub became empty for 3 years suffering significant dereliction and decay. It was taken over and converted into a late night venue know as New City Bar, Noit, SoBar and finally the Villa Bar before closing in October 2017.
It was then purchased by its current owners, the Holt Pub Co.

It is now a privately owned free house, like the rest of the chain. This being the first city centre project with over £3/4M being spent. The building has literally been taken back to its original brickwork inside, all floors and walls removed and the rebuild process started from scratch.

With 14 months intensive work, a serious amount of effort and love is going in to ‘Baker Street’ to make it the venue it finally deserves to be. With a twist on the turn of the century and the gothic feel of the building with blacks, copper and steel colours, ‘Baker Street’ was a suited name (sorry Gerry Rafferty).