Venue: Grand Central (pub)
Town: Manchester, GB

Grand Central is a rock and metal pub and music venue on Oxford Street, near Oxford Road station and opposite The Principal Manchester hotel, in Manchester city centre, England. It occupies a three‑storey building with a cellar which is typical of buildings that were originally houses in the late 18th and early 19th centuries. Wakefield Street on the south side leads to the station via a pedestrian stairway. The name "Grand Central" is relatively new and was adopted because of the nearness of Oxford Road station, alluding to New York's Grand Central Station. Until the renaming the pub was the Beef & Barley and included a separate steak bar, having been modernised in the late 1960s. The beer stocked at that time was Watney/Wilsons from Wilsons Newton Heath Brewery. Earlier still the pub was called the Oxford Bar. The oldest records found featuring Grand Central suggest that it was originally eight separate residential properties. This is shown in an 1849 map of Oxford Street. Nineteenth‑century directories and census returns record a mixture of uses at the site, including eating houses, dining rooms and domestic accommodation. By the 1860s the premises were run by Peter and Hannah Bostock, who remained associated with the property for several decades. Later records list a succession of residents, servants and tradespeople, reflecting the building's mixed commercial and residential character before its development as licensed premises in the early 20th century. First-hand accounts recall 80 Oxford Street being known as 'The Oxford Wine Bar' in 1953, and later in 1960 as simply 'The Oxford'. In 1970 it became the 'Beef & Barley', a steak house, and a year later in 1971 'A Schooner Inn' was added to the 'Beef and Barley' pub sign. Between 1977 and 1978 it was known as the 'Cork & Screw' and it became 'The Shady Lady' in the late 1970s. The pub was refurbished in 2004 and has since hosted Carved Photography's exhibition of work by Sabrina Ramdoyal, featuring bands from M