Do you want a Flake with that?

LEE GRIMSDITCH SERVES UP MEMORIES OF WHEN BODDINGTONS BITTER WAS THE 'CREAM OF MANCHESTER'

AT the height of its success it was the cream of Manchester’ but now _ Boddingtons Brewery is a name associated with the city’s past.

In the 1990s, Boddingtons was swept along on a wave of Madchester cool, where everything the city produced seemed to attract an eager audience across Britain and beyond.

Thanks to a corporate takeover and some genius marketing by 1997 its creamy, bitter was being exported to more than 40 countries.

The brewery in Strangeways was an institution in the city for over 200 years. Founded by grain merchants Thomas Caister and Thomas Fray in 1778, the business of selling beer to factory workers was a winner.

Henry Boddington, born in 1813, rose through the company to become a partner and, in 1853, took out a loan to become its sole owner. The business continued to boom, with 100,000 barrels of beer a year being brewed by 1877 the same year a fire almost destroyed the brewery.

Henry Snr died in 1886 to be succeeded by his son Henry Jnr. Boddies continued to brew its bitters and ales on through World War One, the Depression of the 1930s and World War Two though German bombers left the brewery in flames in 1940.