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).


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