The Manchester McDonald's restaurant that was the first of its kind in the UK

An unremarkable looking McDonald's restaurant in Manchester has the honour of being the first of its kind in Britain.

McDonald's is one of the most popular high street restaurants. With over 1,270 restaurants dotted around the UK, there are 28 branches in Manchester alone.

The fast food giant's began life in the US in 1940, when brothers Richard and Maurice McDonald opened the first restaurant in California. It took a mere 34-years before it came to these shores with the first UK McDonald's opening in Woolwich, London, in 1974.

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But it's not just London that has the honour of being among the firsts for the restaurant chain. Manchester holds the title of being the city with the first 'drive-thru' McDonald's in the UK.

Just pipping the likes of Dudley, Neasden (London) and Coventry to the post, the very first drive-through opened on Wilmslow Road, Fallowfield, in the summer of 1986. Unlike the other locations, little fuss was made of the event in the local press of the pioneering restaurant.

The only mention of the Fallowfield drive-through was a year earlier in 1985, when the Manchester Evening News reported that bulldozers had cleared the way for creation of the restaurant the following July. Originally, Manchester city council had rejected plans for the building of the drive-through but councillors finally relented.

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Permission was granted on the condition that the access point would not be on Wilmslow Road as McDonald's originally wanted, but via Willow Bank. McDonald's also had to provide "sufficient litter bins, landscaping and screening