We went down to the new location of the Freemount to talk to staff about the move and see how it has affected the famous atmosphere.
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00:00Now, here in Greater Manchester, there are things that we handle well and things that we don't.
00:05Now, beer, drinking, we tend to handle really well. It's something, in fact, that the North of England is sort of known for.
00:13Something we don't do as well with, however, is change. And today, those two things have come to a bit of a head.
00:19And that's because the Fremont, one of Manchester's most popular drinking institutions, has moved a couple of doors down the road in the Northern Quarter.
00:27I did a video on the Fremont a couple of months ago, and I've been very clear that their beer garden was one of my favourite places in this wonderful, wonderful city.
00:35It's moved to a bigger space, but a smaller beer garden, so we're going to go in there, talk to some of the staff about whether they prefer the new location or the old one, and what the benefits of the move have been.
00:46It's massive. Like I say, it's bigger than that. It's large. But, yeah, bigger space. We had 250 capacity last time. It's now 450.
00:56So, the space has grown a lot bigger. The smoking area is bigger, as you can see. But, yeah, it's just a nicer vibe overall for me.
01:05The owners thought that people would go to different bars, obviously, because it was shut for a week.
01:10People thought, oh, well, we'll find somewhere else, but we've had the same people have come back, and more so. So, we're getting a bigger crowd in.
01:19So, it used to be Dry Bar, which was owned by Factory Records, and it used to be a place you'd go before the Hacienda, and it was open for 25 years, shut down in 2015, I think.
01:31So, it's just been vacant since then for the last eight years, and now it's Fremont.
01:37There's still quite a bit of stuff we had from the Dry Bar. So, there's one piece of history which I'm a bit upset about.
01:42We had a glass pane, and no one really thought anything of it, but it was cracked at the bottom.
01:47And that was from when Sean Ryder shot a gun at Tony Wilson in the mid-'90s over a record dispute.
01:55I remember removing everything around the builders, didn't notice, and threw it out.
01:58We wanted it to be just like the old Fremont, just bigger. That was the whole vibe going for it.
02:03So, we kept all the old signs from the old place, tried to keep the bar as similar as it could be, but we're still working on it now.
02:10But, yeah, as an institution, it's still grounded. People know the Fremont, people come into the Fremont.
02:16It's definitely a big place for people to go out on a night out.
02:21But I don't feel like it's lost any character that it had. I feel like it's still the same old place, just nicer and more open.
02:29You can sit down now, which is nice.
02:31It was just making sure it's what it was, just on a larger scale.
02:34So, it's still got the same atmosphere, same music, same just general appearance.
02:40I'm happy with it. I love it.