Sarah Studd & Mr Thomas’s Chop House
Make it stand out
It’s easy to walk past Mr Thomas’s Chop House and see exactly what the name asks you to see: Mr Thomas.
It’s easy to walk past Mr Thomas’s Chop House and see exactly what the name asks you to see: Mr Thomas.
A historic Victorian chop house.
But one of the most interesting stories here belongs to Sarah Studd.
Born Sarah Townsend, she was Thomas Studd’s wife, a Yorkshire farmer’s daughter and waitress, who married Thomas at All Saints, Chorlton-on-Medlock in 1855. Together, they opened the chop house on Cross Street in 1867, near the old Town Hall and close to Cross Street Chapel.
But only a few years later, Thomas became too ill to work. By the time he died in 1880, aged just 45, Sarah was no background figure. She was running the place.
And not quietly.
She oversaw one of Manchester’s busiest chop houses, reportedly serving 300-400 meals a day, while also raising a large family. In 1871, she also established a ladies’ room - a strikingly progressive move at a time when chop houses were overwhelmingly male spaces, places of business, drinking, dining and deal-making.
So behind the name Mr Thomas’s is also the story of Mrs Sarah Studd.
A woman running a major city-centre dining room before women were even generally welcome in the kind of rooms she was helping to shape.
The building we see today came a little later - rebuilt in 1901 in red Accrington brick and buff terracotta, all narrow frontage and deep plan, stretching back towards St Ann’s Churchyard. But the story began earlier, in the older premises behind it, with Thomas and Sarah’s ambition.
That’s one of the things I love about stopping here on the tour.
At first glance, it’s “just” a pub.
Look again, and it becomes a story about migration, work, food, gender, architecture, and the hidden labour behind Manchester’s public life.
Mr Thomas’s Chop House features in my Introduction to Manchester walking tour - one of many familiar city-centre places with a less familiar story behind it.
