Cattle Market, Orlando Street

The Cattle Market Hotel was one of the 12 Bolton pub closures of 2013. It closed early in the summer of that year after around 150 years as a pub.

The Cattle Market dated back to around the 1860s and was originally known as the Spotted Cow. [1] However, the 1871 Bolton Directory shows at  as being named the Craven  Heifer. It changed its name to the Cattle Market some time later to reflect the presence of regular cattle sales in the area leading over towards Lever Street. [2] [3]

The pub was one of the Earl Of Bradford’s Bolton properties until being taken over by Threlfalls of Salford. Whitbread took over Threlfall’s in 1967 and the Cattle Market was a Whitbread pub until at least the late-nineties. [4]

The Cattle Market’s address was number 6 Orlando Street and the numbering suggests that it was initially the third of four properties.  However, as long ago as 1891 it was being shown on maps as one property occupying the same space as it does today, so if there was any extension into neighbouring properties it took place in its early years as a pub.

An early landlord was Jonas Grisdale. In the 1841 census Mr Grisdale is shown as being a beer seller at a beerhouse on the corner of Moor Lane and Middle Street, opposite where the market now is. In the 1853 directory he was the landlord of the Black Horse on Blackhorse Street and he later moved to the Cattle Market. His son Timothy Grisdale became a prominent Chairman of the local board for Westhoughton from 1878 to 1879.

Jonas Grisdale died at the beginning of 1872 and a chain of events ensued that might have given the impression that the pub was cursed.

Grisdale's wife Martha continued to run the pub. A little more than a year after Jonas's death she re-married, this time to Daniel Brayshay, a Wiganer. However, at the end of 1875 Martha also died. Daniel Brayshaw remained in Bolton but married a widow from his home town, Elizabeth Atkinson, at 42 some 17 years younger than  Daniel. They married in January 1877 but Daniel died that same summer. 

The pub was run by a number of years by the Higson family and was a popular and friendly pre-match watering hole for Bolton Wanderers matches at Burnden Park. However, the Wanderers’ move to the Reebok Stadium in 1997 was the cue for the Higsons to call it a day. The new licensees looked to another source of potential customers. The former Edbro factory on Foundry Street had just been replaced by the Orlando Village. The Cattle Market dropped its prices to entice thirsty students, a ploy that had some success. 

If that policy continued to this day maybe we wouldn’t be writing about the Cattle Market as a lost pub. The students drifted away and anecdotal evidence suggests that word of mouth among new arrivals at Orlando Village made it clear that students weren’t exactly made to feel welcome.

The Cattle Market closed in early 2013 and was sold during that same summer. Bolton council’s empty property list in April 2014 showed the new owners as a local firm named Aishmany LLP.  That same month a planning application was received from Aishmany LLP for the demolition of the Cattle Market and the erection of a six-storey building (including mezzanine floor), comprising offices, a restaurant/cafe, and ground floor offices and shop. The application was granted, with conditions, in August 2014. [5] 

Demolition was scheduled for September 2014, but the pub was set alight in the early hours of 3 September, probably in a deliberate act of arson. [6]

The Cattle Market in April 2014. Image copyright Lost Pubs Of Bolton 2014

Images of the pub from 2009 can be seen here and here. An image from 2008 can be seen here.

The rear of the Cattle Market during demolition, 30 September 2014. 


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

[2] See St Mark’s website for reports on the Easter shows of the 1870s. Retrieved 1 May 2014.

[3] An abattoir existed on Lever Street until at least the 1980s. This writer remembers a barmaid in the Little John telling him of how her early-morning walk to work down Lever Street was frequently punctuated by the screams of dying cows coming from the abattoir.

[4] Products from breweries once owned by Whitbread were still amongst those available at the Cattle Market on Roy Caswell’s last visit in 2009. This included Whitbread Trophy Bitter, a beer that was still being brewed as late as 2014.    Retrieved 1 May 2014.
[5] Bolton Council planning portal. Retrieved 3 September 2014.
[6] Bolton News, 3 September 2014. Retrieved 3 September 2014.