Mrs Sarah’s Chop House
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. A familiar old pub on Cross Street. One of those Manchester places that feels as though it has always been there.
But one of the most interesting stories here belongs to someone else.
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, close to the old Town Hall and 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, with its 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 my Introduction to Manchester walking 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.
And then, while doing the tour recently, I spotted Sarah herself, or at least her image, peering out from behind the window of the pub she once ran.
For International Women’s Day in 2019, Mr Thomas’s was temporarily renamed Mrs Sarah’s Chop House, honouring Sarah and her daughter, also Sarah, who later ran the business too.
And it looks like Sarah is still there.
Not quite on the main signboard now, but behind the glass. Half hidden, half watching, with a slightly eerie Victorian stare.
Which made me wonder: what would Sarah have wanted?
Would she have preferred Thomas’s name to remain exactly where it is? Would she have wanted her own name beside his? Or would one side of the sign for Thomas, and one side for Sarah, have felt about right?
Either way, it’s a reminder that buildings don’t always tell you the whole story from the outside.
Sometimes you have to peek through the window.
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.
