The long forgotten images from 1971 of a night out at Manchester's lost landmark pub

Images unseen for 50 years capture a night out at the landmark Manchester pub which was demolished last week.

Michael Kay was a 21-year-old photography student when he decided to take his camera into Birch Villa, the pub which stood at the junction of Wilmslow Road and Dickenson Road in Rusholme.

Last week the pub, which dated back to 1837 and later became known as Hardy's Well, was demolished after a fire. It's imposing position on one of Europe's busiest bus routes and proximity to MCFC's old Maine Road stadium made it a Manchester landmark.

But it was the verse written by Greater Manchester poet Lemn Sissay on its gable wall that fixed it in the minds of many. Sissay moved to Manchester from Wigan when he was 18 and often drank and played pool in the pub.

During a conversation with a pal and the then landlord in 1994, in which he said poetry should be more widely seen, Sissay was challenged to write a piece for the side of the building. The result was a tongue twister of a mural that was one of the first of its type in the country.

But the poem, along with the building, came crashing down last week - following a fire that tore through the derelict building, leaving the structure unsafe.

Now, the M.E.N can reveal brilliant, time capsule images from inside the lost pub, captured by former Manchester Polytechnic student Michael Kay back in 1971.

Speaking to the Manchester Evening News earlier this week, the now 73-year old photographer said: "We used to live on one of the roads off Dickenson Road, so it was fairly close to that pub. I only ever went there that once to take those photographs because I thought it looked like an interesting old pub.

"I put my head inside and I saw the ornate bar and things, and I thought