The building that is now The Old Wellington Inn was built in 1552 next to Manchester's market square. In 1554, it was purchased by the Byrom family and became part residence and part drapers shop. The writer John Byrom was born there in 1692. The premises were licensed in 1862 and became the Vintners Arms, then the Kenyon Vaults and later The Old Wellington Inn. The building was extended in the 18th century to house John Shaw's Punch House which, as the name suggests, was licensed for the sale of strong alcoholic punch and became a meeting place for High Tories and possibly Jacobites Shaw was master of the punch house for 58 years until he died in 1796 at the age of 83. After Shaw's death the punch house was kept by Peter Fearnhead, with the assistance of Molly under the same rules, until it was sold about ten years later to William Goodall, who had been the proprietor of the Fleece Tavern at the opposite end of the Old Shambles. The new landlord demolished part of the building and converted the rest into The King's Head Tavern in 1807. It later became known as Sinclair's, until oysters were introduced to the menu in 1845 and it became Sinclair's Oyster Bar, the name it retains to this day In 1974, most of the old property between Shudehill and Market Street was demolished to accommodate the new Arndale Shopping Centre. The Old Shambles was underpinned with a concrete raft and, according to the Greater Manchester County Records Office, jacked-up 4 feet 9 inches to fit in with this development in the newly created Shambles Square In June 1996, an IRA bomb exploded in nearby Corporation Street and badly damaged many of the surrounding buildings. The buildings were subsequently dismantled and moved 70 metres northwards to their present location, close to Manchester Cathedral, in 1999. The Old Wellington Inn and Sinclair's were rebuilt at 90 degrees to each other and joined together by a stone extension to form two sides of the new Shambles Square
