Sunday 30 March 2014

Farmers Arms, Bridgeman Street


The Farmers Arms pictured around 1973. The pub is closed and boarded up ready for demolition. Fletcher Street runs down the left-hand side of the pub. The large building on the extreme left was the Windsor, originally a cinema but which, like so many cinemas, ended its days as a bingo hall.


Situated on the corner of Bridgeman Street at the junction with Fletcher Street, the Farmers Arms was in existence by the middle of the nineteeth century. The Bolton map of 1849 shows the building in a sparsely populated area.

In 1886 the licensee of the Farmers, one Henry Tongue, went out of business and a meeting of his creditors took place on 12 March that year. [1] A few months later  - in  August – the Farmers underwent some external renovation work but one man was killed and two were seriously injured after scaffolding erected outside the pub collapsed.[2]

Licensee James Ramwell owned the Farmers in the 1870s but by 1900 it had passed into the ownership of a local wine and spirit merchant, George Munro & Co, whose premises were situated on Deansgate. It subsequently passed to two more wine merchants, Swan’s Vintage Wine Stores Ltd and Thomas L Robinson, both based in Preston. [3]

The Farmers closed in the early seventies. The pub is pictured here  by the Bolton Evening News in a story about the proposed traffic lights for at the Bridgeman Street/Fletcher Street junction. 

The whole area bounded by Bridgeman Street, Fletcher Street as far as Lever Street and up to the Park Hotel was cleared away around 1973-74. New housing was subsequently built on the site.



The site of the Farmers Arms pictured in 2012. The only common denominator between this and the photo at the top of the page is the traffic signal. The Park Hotel - Bridgeman Street's last surviving pub - can  just be seen in the distance on the extreme right of the picture. Copyright Google Street View.

[2] Annals Of Bolton, John Clegg, 1888
[3]Bolton Pubs 1800-2000, Gordon Readyhough, published by Neil Richardson (2000).

Friday 28 March 2014

Church Inn, Bamber Street

Church Inn Bamber Street Cannon Street Bolton

The Church Inn on Bamber Street photographed in the 1960s. Although the pub was never supplied by Magee's the brewery tower can be seen in the distance. Photograph by Bolton Revisited.

The Church Inn was a beerhouse situated on Bamber Street at its junction with Cannon Street and Weber Street in the built-up area between Derby Street and Deane  Road.

The Church took its name from the nearby Emmanuel Church, a fine building which still stands although it is no longer used for religious observation.

The pub was owned by William Tong’s at the beginning of the 20th century. Tong’s brewed at the Diamond Brewery on the corner of Blackshaw Lane and Deane Road – just a few hundred yards from the Church - until being taken over by Walker Cain Ltd of Warrington in 1923. However, the Church was leased to the Moss Side brewery of Hydes for a while until being taken over by Burtonwood. [1]

The pub received a full drinks licence in 1961 but it closed around 1970 and was demolished shortly afterwards as part of the wholesale redevelopment of the area.

The picture above shows the Church towards the end of its working life. Bamber Street runs up the side of the pub and the tower in the distance belongs to Magee, Marshall & Co, whose brewery stood on the other side of Derby Street.

The picture below shows Cannon Street with the former Holt Hosiery mill in the distance. The houses to the side of Cannon Street roughly mark where the Church Inn once stood.




[1] Bolton Pubs 1800-2000, Gordon Readyhough, published by Neil Richardson (2000).

Church Hotel, Crook Street

Church Hotel Crook Street Bolton

The Church Hotel photographed in March 2011. Copyright Lost Pubs Of Bolton.

The Church Hotel was situated on Crook Street at the junction of Moncrieffe Street and was built in the 1830s, soon after the consecration of the nearby Holy Trinity Church.  

It became a Tong’s pub late in the nineteenth century before being one of 21 pubs taken over by Walkers of Warrington when they bought out Tong’s in 1923. It became a Tetley pub in 1960. [1]
During the seventies the Church gained a reputation for its live entertainment. At that point cabaret artists were largely confined to politically-affiliated clubs but the Church put on a number of top acts in a smaller, pub setting. 

By the early eighties the Church became a meeting point for Bolton’s ‘New Romantics’ and later that same decade it became a gay pub after the landlord and landlady of the Railway on Great Moor Street moved to the Church.

Terry Whalebone took pictures of the Church in 2007 (see here and here) but the pub closed a few years later and was sold in 2012 for conversion into flats.


[1] Pubs Of Bolton 1800-2000, by Gordon Readyhough, published by Neil Richardson (2000).

Caledonian Inn


Vernon Street looking towards the town centre. The Caledonian Inn was situated on the corner of Lyon Street and Vernon Street, roughly where the path runs off to the right.


The Caledonian Inn stood on the corner of Lyon Street and Vernon Street and dated back to the late nineteenth-century. [1]

The pub was owned by Robert Wood & Sons of the Prince Arthur Brewery on St John Street but the brewery ceased to operate during the first world war. The pub then passed to William Tong’s brewery of Deane until that company was taken over by Walker Cain Ltd of Warrington in 1923.

The Caledonian closed in the sixties by which time it would have been owned by Tetley Walker. The pub was demolished when the area was cleared away in the early seventies and new housing was subsequently built on the site.

The pub was captured for posterity by photographer Humphrey Spender during Mass Observation’s Worktown project around 1936. The photo can be viewed here.  

[1] Bolton Pubs 1800-2000, Gordon Readyhough, published by Neil Richardson (2000).

Angel and Woolpack/Woolpack

There were two pubs named the Woolpack in Bolton. Having two pubs with the same name wasn’t unusual – there were two Three Crowns, two Millstones and two Nag’s Heads. What made this particular case worse was that the two Woolpacks stood on opposite corners of Mealhouse Lane.

The 1778 list of Bolton licensing list [1] had both Woolpacks with Mary Holden and William Mawdsley as the respective licensees – which was the licensee of which cannot be determined.

In due course, the two pubs took on fresh names, the Old Woolpack and the Angel and Woolpack and it is the latter which we shall deal with here.

By 1818 the landlord was Nathaniel Wilson (d.1839) and it was known as the Angel and Woolpack. During the early part of the nineteenth century, as in so many of the old-established pubs in Bolton, the pub played host to numerous political discussion groups [2].

Nathaniel was at the pub until the early-1830s. He was succeeded by Edward Wood and his wife Ann, but Edward died in 1834 and Ann took over the running of the pub alone. She remarried in 1837, this time to Geoffrey Taylor, and they ran the pub until the mid-1840s.

The Angel and Woolpack was then taken over by William Green who had previously run the Bay Horse just a few doors away on Deansgate. Given that Ann Taylor’s maiden name was Green there is a chance that William Green was a relative.

The Green family ran the Angel and Woolpack for around 30 years. William was the landlord until he died in 1870. He was succeeded by his 30-year-old son John Edward Green who appears not to have made a good fist of it. The pub closed in 1874 and its full public-house licence was transferred to the Vulcan on Great Moor Street. By 1881, John Edward Green was living with his widowed mother in Arkwright Street and working as a draughtsman at a local foundry.

Marks and Spencer’s store in Bolton town centre now stands on the site of the Angel and Woolpack.

[1] Pubs Of Bolton Town Centre 1900-1986, by Gordon Readyhough. Published by Neil Richardson (1986).

[2] Leisure In Bolton, 1750-1900, Robert Poole (1982).

NB This article was re-written on 8 January 2016. Updated with information on the Wood and Green families.

Thursday 27 March 2014

Victoria Buffet/Angel/Angel and Trumpet


The former Number 15 Bar, part of a sixties development built on the site of the Victoria Buffet and Theatre Royal.

The Victoria Buffet on Churchgate began life as the Angel and Trumpet although its name was later shortened to the Angel. It was licensed by the 1770s. [1]

The pub, along with the Museum Music and Concert Hall, along with a wholesale brewery, was sold on 17 August 1877 for the sum of £8450 [2], the equivalent of around £830,000 in today’s money. It seems that the pub’s was changed shortly afterwards and by the early part of the twentieth century it was being run by the Bolton Theatre & Entertainment Company Ltd with the Victoria Buffet – as it was now known – leased to Allsop’s Brewery of Burton-on-Trent.

The Victoria’s licence application was refused in 1912 and the pub was incorporated into the Princess cinema the following year. The nearby Theatre Royal was extended into the Princess in 1928 until its closure in 1962. Photographs of the Theatre Royal can be seen here  and here

The theatre was demolished in 1963. Churchgate House was subsequently built on the site with Lennon’s supermarket (later Gateway) in the space formerly occupied by the Victoria Buffet. That was later converted into licensed premises known as the Brasshouse and Number 15 but had closed by 2010.


[1] Bolton Pubs 1800-2000, Gordon Readyhough, published by Neil Richardson (2000).
[2] Annals Of Bolton, James Clegg, (1888).


Portland



The Portland Hotel viewed from Wynne Street in May 2012. The building is now a private residence. Copyright Google Street View.


The Portland was situated on Portland Street, near its junction with Wynne Street and Burke Street, just off Halliwell Road and was opened in 1880 to satisfy the needs of the newly-built rows of terraces between the main road and Eskrick Street.

The Portland gained its licence through the transfer of the drinks licence of the Antelope’s Head, a small pub situated between the Golden Lion and the Boar’s Head on the already heavily-pubbed Churchgate.

Owned at one time by Sharman’s, whose Mere Hall Brewery was less than a mile from the Portland,  it was one of 58 Sharman pubs that passed into the hands of  George Shaw’s brewery of Leigh when they took over Sharman’s in 1927. The photograph below shows the Portland as a Shaw’s pub and was probably taken in the late-twenties. Shaw’s sold out to Walker’s in 1931 and Walker’s merged with Tetley’s in 1960.

Portland Hotel Portland Street Bolton


As can be seen in the photographs on this page the pub was a fine stone building and when its days as licensed premises came to an end it was sold to be converted as residential property. When that happened is open to some discussion. In his book on Bolton’s pubs Gordon Readyhough claims the Portland closed in the 1980s [1]. However, in early 1990 it was one of four local pubs sold by Tetley to the Sunderland brewery Vaux. [2] However, Vaux’s tenure doesn’t seem to have lasted long and the Portland closed later on the same decade.  It was certainly closed by the time Mr Readyhough’s book was published in 2000.

The Facebook group 70s Bolton contains a number pictures of the interior of the Portland taken by Stanley Covell around 1966/67. Mr Covell recalls drinking in the pub with his family in the sixties and remembers it as a small but friendly pub. [3]

[1] Bolton Pubs 1800-2000, Gordon Readyhough, published by Neil Richardson (2000).
[2] What’s Doing, the Greater Manchester beer drinker’s monthly magazine. June 1990 issue.

[3] Facebook. 70s Bolton (closed group).  Information retrieved 27 March 2014.

Wednesday 26 March 2014

New Zealand Chief

New Zealand Chief Bolton

The side wall of the New Zealand Chief can be seen on the left-hand side of this photo taken in the late-fifties/early-sixties. Note the small petrol station in the foreground. Photo by Peter Haslam from the Clarke Chronicler's website.


Dating back to the 1830s the New Zealand Chief stood for 150 years on Great Moor Street just a little further up from St Patrick’s church.

The pub was listed in an 1849 list of Bolton pubs as the Indian Chief and there is no indication as to when it changed its name.

New Zealand Chief Great Moor Street Bolton
New Zealand Chief pictured before its closure in 1984.

The New Zealand Chief reputedly had the smallest bar in England – at least until alterations took place in 1959.  The bar measured just 6ft by 2ft 2ins and can be seen in this picture taken by the Bolton Evening News on 24 March 1959.

A story was told that a man weighing more than 20 stones failed to win a bet that he could pull himself a pint from the bar's single set of handpumps. He became wedged while attempting to do so. [1]

The New Zealand Chief closed in December 1984 [2] and was put up for sale by its then owners, Greenall Whitley, who inherited the pub after taking over the Bolton brewery of Magee, Marshall & Co in 1958. It was sold to be redeveloped as offices and demolition began in February 1986. [3]

The new building housed a firm of solicitors until it was demolished at the beginning of 2014 to make way for Bolton’s new bus/rail interchange.

[1] Bolton Pubs 1800-2000, Gordon Readyhough, published by Neil Richardson (2000).
[2] What’s Doing, the Greater Manchester beer drinkers monthly magazine. February 1985 issue.
[3] What’s Doing, April 1986.

Howcroft Inn

Howcroft Pool Street Bolton

The Howcroft Inn, photographed shortly before its closure in May 2012. Copyright Lost Pubs Of Bolton. More photographs are at the foot of this article.




Updated 11 June 2019 with details of the pub's early history.

The Howcroft on Pool Street, just off Vernon Street, closed its doors for the final time on 20 May 2012 after almost 160 years as licensed premises. The pub was one of the few remaining in Bolton to have its own bowling green but it would be more accurate to say that the bowling green was the initial reason for the pub’s existence. indeed it pre-dates the pub perhaps by over 60 years. Certainly, the green is marked as the ‘Howcroft Bowling Green’ on an 1849 map of the area and it is also visible on the 1793 map of Little Bolton. At that time it was situated in an area called Green Hill just off Back Lane, which was the only approach road to the pub. Prior to the construction of St George’s Road around the end of the 18th century, Back Lane was a principal route out of Bolton, running from Blackburn Road down to Chorley Street even though it was only about as wide then as it is now – similar to a back street.

Just as it does now the bowling season ran from April or May to October each year and in his book Leisure In Bolton, written in 1982, Robert Poole claims that the Howcroft bowling green regularly had 60-odd attendees at their end of season dinner. [See reports at the end of this article].

However, the story of the Howcroft's birth as a pub suggests it came to be licenced as a result of a court case over a clampdown on 'hush shops' in Bolton. From 1830 onwards anyone could open a beerhouse – licensed to sell beer but not wine and spirits – on payment of 2 guineas (£2.10). It was the Beerhouse Act of that year that led to an explosion of pubs over the next 40 years often by people simply opening up a room in their home. However, two guineas was still a lot of money for some people when effectively all you were doing was to allow people into your house to drink beer. Many decided to bypass the licensing arrangements and save themselves 2 guineas by simply opening up their houses and letting word of mouth get round – 'hush shops' as they were known. It was a risky business but it was widespread. One local brewer of the time claimed he had turned down 14 barrels' worth of beer sales one weekend because he knew they were destined for 'hush shops'.

The authorities had regular crackdowns and in 1853 they were supported by a newly-established Licensed Victuallers and Beersellers association in Bolton which gathered evidence on hush shops and informed the police. In October of that year, five cases came to court including one for the then unlicensed Howcroft Bowling Green. Police had engaged the services of a painter from Manchester named Thomas Fletcher as an informant. On seven consecutive Saturdays he came to Bolton to check out potential hush shops for the police. On Saturday 29 October 1853 he went to play bowls at the Howcroft Bowling Green. He said he played for booze rather than money and stated that he saw beer being poured from a 'quarter-barrel' – a nine-gallon wooden container. The following morning he and Christopher Brownlow, the son of the landlord of the Founders Arms on St George's Street, went to the Howcroft where Brownlow claimed they could get a pint of beer. They were met at a hut next to the bowling green by John Shepherd, who was employed as a greenkeeper by the bowling club, and they were given beer poured from a small barrel. Fletcher claimed Brownlow paid sixpence for the beer. In his evidence, Brownlow claimed the sixpence was paid to Shepherd because he owed that from the previous day's bowling. It was claimed in Shepherd's defence that any beer at the bowling green had been brought privately by members and that he simply wanted to get rid of the beer before it went off. Such a tale stretched credibility as it suggested that a quarter-barrel, the equivalent of 72 pints of beer, had been brought in by a bowler. At stake was not so much that Fletcher and Brownlow had been drinking beer but whether or not they had been sold the beer by Shepherd. There was doubt in the magistrates' minds over the sixpence paid over – was it for the beer or was it a gambling debt from the previous day? However, the case wasn't watertight and as the magistrates were split down the middle the charge against Shepherd was dismissed.

It's almost certain that beer been sold at the Howcroft Bowling Green, but the effect of the case was to bring drinking at the green on to a firm legal footing. Around 1855 the club paid two guineas and applied for a licence to operate as a beerhouse. The 1849 map of the area shows a small building next to the bowling green which is likely to have been part of the current building. An 1893 map shows the pub in its present form which means that an extension comprising the gents’ toilets and the longer back room was built some time in the late-19th century. In that case the original pub would have consisted of the bar area, the small lounge and the pool room behind the bar. The building was used as housing accommodation prior to being licenced. In 1840, a court heard of the death of a three-year-old child, Richard Greenhalgh, who lived at the Howcroft along with his mother, a widow named Nancy Greenhalgh. Richard drowned in a tank next to one of the outbuildings. [Bolton Chronicle, 25 January 1840]

The first licensee was a man named Gorse, but by 1859 Richard Bradshaw was in charge. To celebrate his arrival he put on an opening dinner on Tuesday 9 June 1859 “on the table at Four o'clock in the afternoon”.

By 1869 the pub had a bagatelle table but in January of that year a Glaswegian named John Smith was in court over the theft of three bagatelle balls worth £1 and 3 shillings from the Howcroft. The landlord's sister-in-law claimed Smith had spent two hours in the pub's bagatelle room one day. He stole the balls and offered them to the landlord of the Star Inn in the centre of town.  Bizarrely, he was also charged with stealing a monkey from the Star and was found with both the animal and the bagatelle balls in the Town Hall Hotel.  He claimed he hadn't stolen the monkey but merely taken it to give it some beer as it had been unwell!

In 1870 the pub was listed as the Duke Of Wellington, Back Lane rather than the Howcroft. A potted history of the pub that was on display in the premises until it closed claimed it was known as the Prince Of Wales towards the end of the 19th century until changing its name to the Howcroft. That isn't quite true. Licensee J Atkinson advertised in 1874 that the green was known as the Prince Of Wales Bowling Green and that it was for the exclusive use of the Howcroft Bowling Club on Tuesdays and Thursdays. But any change of name was of a temporary nature and certainly by 1878 the pub was known as the Howcroft once again.

The Howcroft gained a number of additional licences. An application for a billiards licence was successful in 1870 and licensee Daniel Booth obtained a music licence in 1881. But his attempt to sell foreign wines at the pub later that year was unsuccessful. However, a further application in 1900 saw the licence granted. The then landlord, James Shippobottom, had been at the pub for the previous seven-and-a-half years and in his application he stated that it was mainly used by bowlers who utilised the green. There was a also a billiards room and a semi-billiards room. It was apparently the only pub with a green of that size that sold beer only.

The Howcroft was a Sharman’s pub at that time and it remained so until it was transferred to the Warrington firm of Peter Walker and then to Tetley’s following their takeover of Walker’s in 1960.

As the nineteenth century went on, the Green Hill area, which surrounded the Howcroft, had taken on a different look. When the bowling green opened it was on the edge of Bolton with countryside to the north. Indeed, the Bolton Chronicle of 15 February 1845 carried an advertisement for the letting of six acres of meadow land “near the Howcroft”. By the end of the nineteenth century the pub and its bowling green were surrounded by housing with the construction of Clarence Street, Davenport Street, Kent Street and Church Street. By then the pub's address was Pool Street which ran from the pub down the hill and across St George’s Road to the River Croal. The Howcroft remained part of Pool Street until the construction of Topp Way began in 1980 and cut off the top of the street from the portion on the other side of the road. Even so, the pub retained Pool Street as its address.

In 1954 the landlady was a Mrs A Doran but she relinquished the tenancy that year in favour of Frank Hardcastle, an employee of the pub who worked as a glass collector – described as ‘Mrs Doran’s pot boy’ in the pub’s history. He took the pub along with his wife Olwyn and Frank successfully applied for a full licence in 1957 allowing him to sell spirits alongside beer and foreign wines.

Frank was a legendary figure whose photograph was displayed in the Howcroft until the pub closed. Its halcyon days were probably from mid-seventies until Frank's retirement in 1983. The pub had a reputation not only for the high standard of its real ales but also for the cider it sold. Coates’s Triple Vintage wasn’t available on draught. Instead it was poured straight from litre bottles into a pint pot and Frank limited consumption to people he didn't know or weren't regulars. The pub was busy – heaving on a Friday and Saturday night but also with good trade during the week. But the regulars weren't necessarily people who lived locally. The Howcroft’s reputation was such that it drew its custom from all over Bolton.

In 1974, one of the pub's regulars, Pete Methy, instituted what became known as Methy's Tour, an annual trip to two or three towns in the north of England. Even after the pub closed the trips continued and run to this day.

Olwyn Hardcastle died in 1980 and Frank carried on alone before retiring to Blackpool in 1983. He died there in March 1995.

During his final couple of years in charge Frank Hardcastle had to oversee a major re-siting of the pub’s bowling green due to the construction of Topp Way. The new by-pass hacked off the pub from the rest of Pool Street, and with the construction of the by-pass it was now only accessible from St George’s Road taking a circuitous route via Vernon Street. The old bowling green stood parallel to the pub and was bounded by Back Lane, Church Street and Pool Street. It was moved a few yards and turned diagonally – see Google Maps or Google Earth for an overhead view - effectively cutting off Back Lane. Much of the housing constructed in the surrounding streets in the late-nineteenth century was demolished at the same time with new housing was built in its place. The work on the bowling green was completed by July 1982 although it was not ready for matches until the following summer. [What’s Doing, the Greater Manchester beer drinkers’ monthly magazine, July 1982 issue].

Later that same year the pub was branded a Walker’s outlet after Tetley’s revived the name of the brewery they took over in the early sixties. They also introduced a portfolio of Walker’s beers, some of which had been based on the original recipes.

When Frank left in September 1983 there was the potentially thorny problem of who was to succeed him. The choice of the pub’s regulars were Tony and Carole Bretherton, two popular members of the bar staff who had worked at the Howcroft since the early seventies. [What’s Doing, October 1983 issue.] A petition was set up at the pub to allow the Brethertons to take over the tenancy but it was not to be. Denis Lund and his wife Marion arrived but the Brethertons moved to another Walker’s pub, the Ainsworth Arms at the top of Halliwell Road where they spent over 25 highly successful years.

With Frank Hardcastle gone Walker’s decided to give the Howcroft a long-overdue refurbishment. The result was tasteful enough to win the Campaign For Real Ale’s Joe Goodwin Award for the Best Urban Refurbishment of 1985. It is unthinkable today for a brewery or pub company to enlist the licensee to advise on a pub’s refurbishment – they are treated as hired hands at best - and to be honest it was just as unusual in the eighties. But having successfully run another Walker's pub, the Raven in Wigan, before moving to the Howcroft, Denis and Marion Lund played a part in the plans for the Howcroft’s refurbishment. In the pub'scitation the judges hailed the Lunds' involvement in the refurbishment as being “as crucial as that of Peter Walker’s architects in ensuring the traditional nature of the pub was retained when the improvements were complete.” [What's Doing, February 1985]

Denis left in late 1992 and was replaced by Clive Nightingale, a former soldier who will be remembered for introducing a beer festival at the pub following the demise of Great North Western Beer Festival which had taken place at Bolton Sports Centre in Silverwell Street from 1987 to 1993. Over the course of four days each October Clive would place boards and a huge marquee over the bowling green for the event which was run in aid of Bolton Lads and Girls Club. The beer festival lasted at the Howcroft until 2007 before moving to Bolton Rugby Club. By then Clive had left to run a boarding house in Austria. The festival still takes place but at the University Of Bolton Stadium,

It is often said that stability of management is the key to a successful football team. The same could be said for pubs. By the time Clive Nightingale left the Howcroft the pub had had just three licensees in over 50 years. But after he left landlords came and went although the pub was dealt a blow in 2010. Having been taken over in 2009 by Jane McDonald and Frank Smith the Howcroft appeared to be on the up. Sadly, Mr Smith died in September 2010 and in 2011 the owners decided to put the pub up for sale.

The Howcroft was sold in 2012 and was converted into student accommodation. However, the bowling green remains. In 2014 it was reported that the green could be built on after civil engineers George Cox reported that an offer for it to be rented for a minimal fee hadn't been taken up. The flats were subsequently pub for sale but the bowling green remains in place overgrown as Mark Hampson's 2016 photograph for the I Belong To Bolton Facebook group shows.





Howcroft Green – This popular green was opened for the season on Thursday when near fifty of the subscribers and their friends partook of an excellent dinner in the greenhouse, which was served up in Mrs Greenwood's usual style of excellence. A challenge, for Bolton to play all England, on two greens, for any sum, according to annual custom; but as usual no one appeared to dispute the claim of the Boltonians to superior skill in this delightful game. - Bolton Chronicle, 9 April 1836.

Howcroft Bowling Green – This nonpareil of green closed for the season on Thursday, when a sumptuous dinner was served up by Mrs Greenwood, of the Hand and Banner, in excellent style, to about sixty subscribers and friends. The day was favourable, and a pleasant afternoon was spent on the turf. The whist tables in the greenhouse were well attended, and a most harmonious evening was spent. - Bolton Chronicle, 7 October 1837.

R Halliwell of Daubhill and R Parr of Bolton contested a match of 51 up, on level terms, for a £20 cup, on the Howcroft Hotel green, Pool-street, yesterday afternoon. Result: Halliwell 51, Parr 33. - Bolton Evening News, 22 July 1908.




The Howcroft pictured c.1974.

The Howcroft pictured c. 1978. The houses on Pool Street are boarded up and about to be demolished.

Tuesday 25 March 2014

Sally Up Steps/Stanley Arms


The former Sally Up Steps, now the Nam Ploy Thai restaurant, pictured in May 2012. By the early 1980s the pub consisted of the building at the top of the steps, though the original pub - the  Stanley Arms - was just one half of that building - the part to the right of the door. A 1987 refurbishment saw the pub expanded into the rest of the row to the left of the pub. Image Copyright: Google Street View.


The Sally Up Steps was situated on Chorley Old Road, close to the junction with Kirkhall Lane.

The pub was one of three in Bolton known as the Stanley Arms but acquired its nickname after one of its landladies and because the main entrance was up a flight of stairs at the front of the pub. In his book Peace! Beer In The 1920s and 1930s, Ronald Pattinson maintains that it was already nicknamed Sally Up Steps by the time Mass Observation surveyed the town around 1936.

The Deane brewery, William Tong’s, owned the pub until 1923 when they were taken over by Walkers of Warrington. Walkers merged with the Leeds brewery of Joshua Tetley in 1960 to form Tetley Walkers, but during the 1980s the brewery decided to re-brand a number of pubs as Walker’s outlets and began to brew a new range of beers for those pubs some of which were based on old Walker’s recipes.

In February 2011, Terry Byatt told the Lost Pubs Project this story about the Stanley Arms over a hundred years ago:

My grandfather's elder sister ran the "Sally Up Steps" pub in Bolton before the First World War.  I remember as a child him telling me that she had a parrot that could whistle like the tram conductors and stop the tram outside the pub!  Apparently the parrot also used to drink beer, get drunk and then fall off its perch, when its noted phrase was "Polly Poorly". [2]

By the mid-eighties the Sally Up Steps was a small pub that had already been knocked into an adjoining property a number of years earlier. Then – as now – five stone steps led from the street level to the pub. To the left of the main entrance there was a small vault, access to which was down three more steps. A small lounge was situated at the front of the pub with a pool room and toilets towards the rear.

In 1987 it was time for the pub to receive its refurbishment and a conversion to a Walkers outlet. Its small size meant that with around 30 people in it the pub was packed so in order to try and drum up some more custom to help pay for the refurbishment Tetley Walker decided to buy up three adjoining properties and expand the pub to some four times its former size.

The Stanley Arms was officially renamed Sally Up Steps in the autumn of 1987 when it reopened after an extensive re-fit. There was now a car park to the rear of the pub as the brewery tried to attract food trade. In March 1989 it was reported that the pub had been wallpapered not much more than a year after it had reopened. [3]

In 2009 Sally Up Steps was named as one of the best pub names in the country (Bob’s Smithy was also on the list) but by then the Sally Up Steps had closed. It is now the Nam Ploy, a Thai restaurant.

Stanley Arms Sally Up Steps Chorley Old Road Bolton
Sally Up Steps pictured in the late-1920s.

[1] Peace! Beer In The 1920s and 1930s, by Ronald Pattinson.
[2] Lost Pubs project. Retrieved 25 March 2014.

[3] What’s Doing, the Greater Manchester beer drinkers monthly magazine. March 1989 issue.

Tanners Arms


The former Tanners Arms, pictured in April 2012 when it was being used by a distributor of digital instrumentation. Image copyright Google Street View.

The Tanners Arms was situated at the bottom of Lever Street at its junction with Nelson Street. According to Gordon Readyhough, the pub dates back to the pub dates back to the nineteenth century and was originally a brew-pub named the Farmers Arms. [1]

The establishment of Walkers Tannery saw the pub change its name to something more suited to the trade of much of its clientele.

The pub was sold to the Alfred Crowther & Co Ltd of the Star Brewery in Bury in the early part of the twentieth century. Crowther’s were formed in 1897 but sold out to Wilson’s in 1925. However, the Tanners had long since been sold to the Bolton brewery of J Halliwell & Son, whose  Alexandra brewery on Mount Street ceased trading in 1910. Halliwell's pubs were bought by another Bolton concern, Magee, Marshall & Co, situated just off Derby Street about a mile away from the Tanners.

When the nearby tannery began to wind down its business in the early-eighties the pub's trade fell off and by June 1985 it was being reported that the Tanners had been closed and boarded up, as had the Peel on Higher Bridge Street [2]. The Tanners was de-licensed and put up for sale and by the middle of the following year it had been sold for use as a joinery [3]. The premises are now owned by a company manufacturing digital portable tachometers and associated devices. [4]

[1] Bolton Pubs 1800-2000, Gordon Readyhough, published by Neil Richardson (2000).
[2] What’s Doing, the Greater Manchester beer drinker’s monthly magazine. June 1985 issue.
[3] What’s Doing, July 1986 issue.
[4] Compact Instruments.   Retrieved 25 March 2014.

Bentley's/Chester Moonshine's/Revolution


The former Bentley's premises pictured in April 2012 after it had closed down as  Buffet King. Copyright Google Street View.


John Willies furniture store stood on the corner of Bradshawgate and Great Moor Street for many years until it was sold for conversion into bar premises. It opened as Bentleys in May 1988 [1] but underwent numerous name changes over the next 20 years or so. At various times it was known as Chester Moonshines, then in 1999 it became the Revolution Bar, part of a chain of vodka bars best known for offering multiple different flavours of vodka. 

There was one further change of name when it became an all-you-can-eat Chinese restaurant named Buffet King. By 2011 that had closed and at the time of writing the premises were still empty.


[1] Bolton Beer Break, published by the Bolton branch of the Campaign for Real Ale, Summer 1988 edition.

Falcon, Kay Street

Falcon Hotel Kay Street Bolton

The Falcon in the late-1920s when it was owned by William Tong & Sons Ltd of Blackshaw Lane, Deane. Tong's was taken over in 1923 by the Warrington brewery of  Walker Cain Ltd who commissioned photographs of their recently-acquired pubs.

The Falcon was situated on the corner of Kay Street and Turton Street but was a casualty of road improvements when Topp Way and St Peter’s Way were extended in the eighties.

The pub dated back to 1803 [1] and was one of 21 pubs owned by William Tong & Sons Ltd, whose Diamond Brewery stood on the corner of Blackshaw Lane and Deane Road.

It was a rounded corner pub although the room on the left next to the entrance to the pub had less of a curve than the vault to the right of the entrance where the bar was also rounded in parallel with the curvature of the outer wall of the building.

There were also two back rooms one of which was regularly as a meeting room by a number of local societies.

It was a good local’s pub in a working-class area and in its final years it served cask Tetley Mild and Bitter that was kept well enough to merit inclusion in a number of editions of the Good Beer Guides during the eighties.

The pub closed in early 1987 when, along with the Peel on Higher Bridge Street, it was demolished to make way for the extension to Topp Way. There was some scepticism about the scheme – a correspondent to the Greater Manchester beer drinker’s magazine, What’s Doing, pointed out that similar plans over the previous 15 years “had come to nought” [2]. However, within a few months of the plans being made public a closing date was set. [3] Licensees Keith and Helene Partington, who had been in charge of the nearby Spread Eagle, when it closed its doors for final time some six years earlier, moved to the  Bowling Green on Blackburn Road.

Nothing remains of the site of the Falcon. It was demolished soon after closure along with neighbouring properties. The top end of Turton Street was subsequently widened so anyone driving along Topp Way and then down Turton Street towards Tonge Moor probably drives through the space once occupied by the Falcon. The area to the rear of what was the pub is now occupied by the Bolton Gate retail park.


[1] Bolton Pubs 1800-2000, Gordon Readyhough, published by Neil Richardson.
[2] What’s Doing, the Greater Manchester beer drinker’s monthly magazine. July 1986 issue.
[3] Bolton Beer Break, published by the Bolton branch of Camra, the Campaign for Real Ale. November 1986 issue.



The site of the Falcon Inn. The pub was situated on the corner of Kay Street and Turton Street roughly where the traffic lights are in the centre-left of the photograph. Copyright Google Street View. Image dated April 2012.

Monday 24 March 2014

Dome, Knowsley Street


The British Heart Foundation occupied the premises which once house The Dome for a short while in the early nineties. Image taken April 2012. Copyright Google Street View.


A pub so short-lived it failed to make Gordon Readyhough’s reference book on the subject, the Dome was situated on Knowsley Street in the former Gregory & Porritt’s building.  The pub’s name came from its distinctive dome-shaped roof in the centre of the premises.

The Dome opened towards the end of 1989 when a local beer drinkers’ magazine proclaimed it was offering the seldom seen (in Bolton, anyway) Bass Special Bitter on handpump. [1] However, the same magazine stated just months later that the pub was already up for sale. [2]

An estimated £600,000 was spent converting the retail premises into a pub, but it had a capacity of 250 standing and 150 seated and the pub failed as it was claimed it just didn’t have the right atmosphere.

Like Ben Topps just a few hundred yards away at the top of Bath Street, the Dome tried to capitalise on the pre-club crowd on their way to Ritzy at the top of Bridge Street. However, just a few people in a pub with a capacity of 400 people gave the pub a reputation of always being empty – even at the weekend - and within a few years it was back as retail premises.

[1] What’s Doing, the Greater Manchester beer drinkers’ magazine. February 1990 issue.

[2] What’s Doing, June 1990.

Gladstone Hotel, Deane Road



The site of the  Gladstone Inn is on the right of the image where the filter lane passes the University of Bolton sign on the grass verge. To the left is Deane Road heading towards the town centre and in the distance is the Grosvenor Casino (Sainsbury's premises from 1990 to 2004). In the 1870s this stretch of around 250 yards consisted of 10 pubs, including the Gladstone. 


The Gladstone Hotel began life as a beer house called the Returned Sailor around 1860 [1] and was situated on Deane Road on the block between Shuttle Street and Harris Street.

The short stretch of Deane Road where today we see Bolton College, Bolton Sixth Form College and Bolton One saw the birth of what we now know as Bolton Wanderers Football Club during the 1870s. On the left-hand side of the above photograph, on a site now occupied by Bolton College, once stood Christ Church school. The story goes that the club was founded in 1874 by teachers and scholars at the school as Christ Church FC. Three years later the vicar objected to the club meeting in the school hall without him being present so they upped sticks and moved, thus severing its links with the school.

Schools and churches had become increasingly involved in sports, especially football which had been introduced to Bolton two years before Christ Church FC was founded. The Victorian era saw the rise of ‘muscular Christianity’ – not so much an earlier attempt at bodybuilding but the promotion of physical strength and health as well as an active pursuit of Christian ideals. Plus it kept people from the pub.

It is believed the name ‘Bolton Wanderers’ came about after the vicar objected to the players ‘wandering off to the pub’ and that the club renamed itself to cock a snook, as it were, to the vicar. However, former Bolton Evening News editor Leslie Gent maintains that the name came about after the club moved headquarters not once, but twice, first to the Gladstone and soon afterwards to the Britannia Hotel some 200 yards away at the junction with Crook Street.

But the vicar had a point. Walk today from where Deane Road meets University Way down to the market and you will pass three educational institutions, the fire station, a casino and with the health centre recently added. In 1877, when the Wanderers broke away from Christ Church, there were ten pubs in that short stretch at the bottom of Deane Road.

Why the Gladstone was the club’s first HQ and not, say, the Weavers Arms right next door to the school is unknown? The club was presumably made up of local lads who might have had their own regular pub. But from the Gladstone downwards there was the Horse and Vulcan, the Union, the Milestone, the White Horse and then the Britannia with the Weavers, the Wheatsheaf, the Windmill and the Woodman’s Cottage on the other side of the road. Ten pubs in 250 yards and a few more beyond that – the vicar had a job on his hands.

Presumably at some stage before 1877 it was renamed the Gladstone in honour of the Liberal prime minister who by then had served the first of his four terms as premier.

The pub closed around 1964 and lay derelict for a while before being demolished around 1967, part of the clearance of an area which became the Bolton Institute Of Technology (now the University Of Bolton).

Gladstone Hotel Deane Road Bolton


This picture shows the pub on 13 May 1964 next to the much larger Regent cinema. On the other side of the cinema is Harris Street, which can still be seen at the bottom end of Deane Road. The site of the Gladstone is roughly at the traffic lights at the bottom of University Way.

[1] Pubs Of Bolton 1800-2000 by Gordon Readyhough, published by Neil Richardson (2000).


Rainforth Hotel, School Hill


Approximate site of the Rainforth Hotel, now covered by housing. Image taken May 2012. Copyright Google Street View.


Named after John Rainforth who built the School Hill chemical works (‘Chymical Works’ as it is named on some old maps) further down School Hill. The Rainforth Hotel stood on the right hand side as you go up the street in the direction of Prince Street.

The Rainforth was a Tong’s and later Walker’s House and was closed in 1959. It was demolished shortly afterwards and housing now stands on the site.

Rainforth is regarded as the father of the medical profession in Bolton having practised in the town for 57 years. He died at School Hill House aged 78 on 30 May 1857. The pub was later built on the site of the house.

One of Rainforth's apprentices was Abraham Paulton, the son of local brewer Walter Paulton and a future political journalist who campaigned in the 1840s for the repeal of the corn laws.

Concertina Row, a row of stepped houses on School Hill, was opposite the pub.

Busin


The Back Cheapside car park. The Busin was situated about half-way up the street on the left-hand side. Image taken May 2012. Copyright Google Streetview.

The Busin was situated on Back Cheapside, an unusually-named street. The existence of Back Cheapside suggests a street named Cheapside but it seems the name was simply a nineteenth-century nickname for Newport Street where the goods on offer by local traders were said to be of an inferior – and therefore cheaper – calibre than elsewhere in the town centre.

Initially, the Busin was the social club for drivers and conductors working for Bolton Corporation Transport (later Selnec and Greater Manchester Transport) from at least the 1950s onwards. Ernest Forth wrote on the Bolton Lancashire Bygone Days Facebook group that he played there with his skiffle group in 1957. but was sold in the seventies to local businessman – and later Labour councillor, Jim Sherrington.

The club is perhaps best remembered for two things: its rough-and-ready clientele and its punk nights which began around 1978, once a week during the quieter midweek nights. As Steve Fielding points out in the comments below, live music at the Busin began in 1978 - not early-1979 as was originally stated -  but gigs at the venue inspired other local musical wannabes to form bands of their own.

Issue 11 of the local punk fanzine Trends described the venue as such in May 1980:  “The opening of the Busin was the advent of a host of new talent able to get gigs to an audience of punks who had not only gained a disco but also acquired a dossing place easily accessible from all surrounding areas. But foremost it was at your disposle [sic] to perform to a live audience for the first time.” The article goes on to list some of the bands that performed at the venue including Ltd. Edition, The Parelettix, Nervous Disorder, Gun Control, The Reducers, The Grout, The Droogs and Ex-Directory. However the article points out that “Due to trouble with the police the Busin looks doomed as a punk club but in recent weeks it has re-opened again but only as a disco.” [1]

Patrons of the punk nights reported that there was never any trouble.

The end for the Busin came in 1982 when it closed down and was taken over to be used as premises for a computer firm [2]. Jim  Sherrington concentrated on his other business interests and on Sundowners nightlcub (now Level) which he also owned.

In 1986, the Busin premises. became a footwear retailer named Shu-String. It was later demolished and its site is now a parking area on Back Cheapside.


Busin Back Cheapside Bolton


[1] Trends, Issue 11, May 1980.

[2] Bolton Town Centre, A Modern History. Part Two: Bradshawgate, Great Moor Street and Newport Street, 1900-1998

Churchill's/Rose Hill

Churchills Rose Hill Manchester Road Bolton


Churchill's on Manchester Road, pictured on 25 September 2014. Copyright Lost Pubs Of Bolton. There doesn't appear to have been any activity at the pub for some years and most of the side windows have been put through. A sad sight.

The Rose Hill opened as a beer house shortly after an 1830 Act of Parliament relaxed the licensing regulations for premises wishing to be opened as public houses serving beer but not spirits.

In the early part of the twentieth century it was unusual in being owned by the Lancashire & Yorkshire Railway Company before being sold to local brewery Magee Marshall. [1] It became a Greenall Whitley house after Magee’s sold out in 1958.

By the early part of 1984 the Rose Hill was bought by Bandmatic, a company that operated pool tables in fruit machines in a number of local pubs and was renamed Churchill’s. The same company bought the Gipsy’s Tent and renamed it Winston’s. [2]

The pub was re-decorated in 1986 [3] and at some stage, according to Zozzy on the Wanderers Wayswebsite, it was being used as the bus drivers’ social club after their original club was sold to Sainsbury’s along with the First Bus depot on Crook Street. [4]

It closed some time between 2009 and 2011.


[1] Pubs Of Bolton 1800-2000, by Gordon Readyhough, published by Neil Richardson (2000).

[2] What’s Doing, the Greater Manchester beer drinkers’ monthly magazine, April 1984 edition.

[3] What’s Doing, April 1986.


[4] Wanderers Ways, post dated 15 December 2008, retrieved 23 March 2014.

Bridge Inn, Bridge Street


The Market Place, approximate location of the Bridge Inn until its demolition around 1932.

Located on Bridge Street next to the site occupied by Bolton’s fish market until the late-twenties, Bridge Inn was originally called the Gartside Arms and was in existence by 1800. [1]

The pub hosted a Literary and Philosophical Society in 1813 though it subsequently moved to a room in the New Shambles. [2]

The Bridge Inn saw its licence refused in 1926 and it was demolished in the early-1930s for the widening of Bridge Street. Also demolished was the fish market, which was moved to the new market premises on Ashburner Street.

[1] Pubs Of Bolton 1800-2000, by Gordon Readyhough, published by Neil Richardson (2000).


[2] Leisure In Bolton, 1750-1900, Robert Poole, 1982.

Cross Axes, off Deansgate



Woods Court, off Deansgate. Roughly the site of the Cross Axes in the nineteenth century. Copyright, Google.


This former alehouse dated back at least to the 1770s and was known both as the Cross Axes and the Crown & Anchor. It closed in 1879 when the licence was transferred to the Globe, which was later known as the Market Tavern (T’Crate Egg) on Ashburner Street. [1]

The premises were demolished to make way for an extension to the Bank Of Bolton, now the branch of Natwest Bank on Deansgate, close to the Old Three Crowns.

In his book Bolton Town Centre, A Modern History. Part One: Deansgate, Victoria Square, Churchgate and Surrounding Areas, 1900-1998, Gordon Readyhough states that Cross Axes Entry then became known as Woods Court. The 1849 map of Bolton shows that Woods Court already had that name although it didn’t all the way to Deansgate as it does now and it is likely that Woods Court would  have been extended to include Cross Axes Entry.



[1] Bolton Town Centre, A Modern History. Part One: Deansgate, Victoria Square, Churchgate and Surrounding Areas, 1900-1998

Boar's Head



The Capitol, successor to the Boar's Head, photographed in 2011. The Capitol closed in June 2014. Hogarth's, a pub with its own brewery, opened later that year.

The Boar’s Head stood on Churchgate on the site of what is now Hogarth's and was formerly the Capitol and before that the Varsity. The pub was the middle of three properties that were demolished to make way for the re-development, the others being the Sandwich Inn café bar on the right, and a fish-and-chip shop on the other side called the Chip Inn. The Boar’s Head itself was only quite small, probably less than a third the size of Hogarth's.

The pub was built in 1721 and at a time when the life of the town revolved around the Churchgate area it was one of the principal inns of the time doubling up as a post office and was even a courthouse as the local magistrates sat there for many years after the 1780s. [1] It became a Magee, Marshall pub and then Greenall’s when Magee’s sold out in 1958.

In the early-twentieth century the landlord was a John Bromilow. There must have been something about pub landlords and the fledgling motor industry as Mr Bromilow – as well as Ross Isherwood, then the landlord of the Prince William on Bradshawgate, and Stanley Parker of the Roebuck on Kay Street – was one of the pioneers of the motoring industry in Bolton [2]. In 1916 Mr Bromilow entered into a design partnership with a brilliant engineer named Maurice Edwards and although the Bromilow and Edwards partnership only lasted for some 13 years, the company they founded still lives on today as Edbro on Lever Street.

In his reminiscences of life in Churchgate [3], Fred Hill recalls that boxing matches used to take place upstairs. Given the small size of the pub – not much bigger than a reasonably-sized house - and the need for living quarters this beggars belief but we must take his word for it.

I well remember the Boar’s Head in the eighties when on a Friday and Saturday night it would be packed out with a variety of customers. The Camra Greater Manchester Good Beer Guide of 1980 [4] described it as being “popular with the young”, which was true, but there was always a great atmosphere and the Boar’s Head welcomed just about everybody at that time and without any trouble. A 1982 refurbishment saw it spruced up a bit and the then landlord made anyone wearing a leather jacket take it off on the way in. As the eighties wore on landlords come and went, with the pub moving from a managed house to a tenancy after Greenall’s accountants worked out it was losing them money. [5] Through all that the mainstay of the pub was the genial barman Gordon, who had worked at the pub since 1966 and who certainly made life easier for successive licensees.


The Boars Head pictured in 1980. Taken from the Greater Manchester Good Beer Guide published by the Greater Manchester branches of the Campaign for Real Ale. (Published 1980).

To be honest it was a cracking little pub that always served real ales – Greenall’s admittedly – from one of those now-outlawed electrically-operated diaphragm pumps where a handle was moved across to pump the beer into the glass. Handpumps were later installed and it was an early outlet for Greenall’s Original Bitter in the mid-eighties when the brewery tackled what was a pretty poor reputation for its cask beers. OB was a decent drop when well-kept and the Boar’s Head ended up in a few editions of the Good Beer Guide.

By the late eighties the pub’s future was in doubt and by 1988 structural problems meant that it was surrounded by scaffolding as Greenall’s worked out what to do with it (though in truth they were also working out what to do with their wider business and eventually got out of pubs and brewing altogether). At the time it was reported that they wanted to extend the pub while the council were warning it might have to be demolished. [6] By then the Boar’s Head was somehow putting on live music, despite its diminutive size. [7]. The whole of the pub was on the ground floor of the premises with the landlord’s living area upstairs and it covered an area no more than a quarter of the current Capitol pub.

The Boar’s Head closed in March 1992. Three years earlier Greenall’s had applied for planning permission to pull it down and replace it with a building consisting of a new pub at the base of a five-storey office building. Bill Brown of Bolton Civic Trust argued that it could only be demolished if the new building “enhances the existing character of the area,” but according to Greenalls, the adjoining café was unsafe while the pub and the chippy were in “poor condition.” [8]

After closure the three properties remained empty and boarded up for some years afterwards until eventually the site was bought by Wolverhampton & Dudley Breweries who knocked it down and rebuilt it – though without the offices - as Varsity in 1999. It was later renamed the Capitol after the cinema which stood on the site of the tax offices.

There were rumours at the time of demolition that some local potholers had been given access to the site to look for evidence of tunnels leading under Churchgate towards the Parish Church. Rumours of those tunnels have abounded for centuries – were any found?

These days the Capitol stands on the site though that closed in June 2014. As a replacement for the Boar’s Head it wasn't bad, selling a fair drop of real ale and while it was still “popular with the young” as the Camra guide stated over 30 years ago  it still attracted its share of a more mature clientele just as the old pub did.

The Capitol closed in June 2014 and the premises were bought by Amber Taverns. Rumours it was to become a sports bar proved to be unfounded. It re-opened in October 2014 as 'Hogarth's' - a micro-brewery/gin palace.

[1] Leisure In Bolton, 1750-1900, Robert Poole, 1982
[2]A History Of The Motor Trade In Bolton – Dennis O’Connor, 2009.
[3] Churchgate 50 Years Ago: A Biography Of Lifestyle In The Early Thirties, Fred Hill, 1981.
[4] Greater Manchester Good Beer Guide, published by the Campaign for Real Ale, 1980.
[5] What’s Doing, the Greater Manchester beer drinkers’ monthly magazine, August 1985.
[6] What’s Doing, November 1988.
[7] Bolton Beer Break, Summer 1988.
[8] What’s Doing, July 1989