The Kings Arms

The Kings Arms on Bloom Street in Salford is a pub and small arts venue that has been a consistent presence on the Manchester and Salford cultural scene for years. The ground floor is a proper pub with a good rotating selection of real ales and a crowd that is substantially different from what you’d find in the Northern Quarter – more Salford-local, less tourist-adjacent. The upstairs function room runs theatre, comedy, live music and spoken word events, making it one of those pub venues that genuinely contributes to cultural life rather than just calling itself a “music venue” and running a playlist.

n

The Kings Arms is independent, unpretentious and cheap by city centre standards. It sits on Bloom Street just over the river from the city centre, which is close enough that it draws people from Manchester but far enough to feel like Salford rather than a Manchester overflow. The arts programme tends toward the experimental and the locally-rooted, and the pub itself has the character that comes from not having been refitted recently. Worth knowing about if you’re interested in what’s happening in Salford’s arts scene specifically, rather than just in the greater conurbation.