Jolly Angler, Hulme Street

The site of the former Hulme Street. Nowadays it is confusingly called Cross Street on this stretch although Cross Street still goes along the top of the street. Hulme Street used to go all the way down to Folds Road and at one time it contained five pubs or beerhouses of which the Jolly Angler was one (the others were the Premier, the Standard, the Hulme Street Tavern and the Spread Eagle). The Jolly Angler was at 74-76 Hulme Street at the Cross Street end, roughly where the houses are on the left-hand side of this image.

When we looked at the General Havelock on Sidney Street we came across the formidable Mrs Mahalah Harcastle. Now we encounter Mrs Hardcastle once again as the owner of the Jolly Angler on Hulme Street in the nineteenth century.

The Jolly Angler was constructed in the early part of that century as the whole ‘hinterland’ beyond Folds Road up towards Turton Street was built up.  However, number 74-76 Hulme Street appears not to have become a beer house until the second half of the century.  It was taken over by Mahalah Hardcastle although it isn’t known whether or not ownership ran concurrently with her ownership of two other pubs: the York and the General Havelock.

Mrs Hardcastle was perhaps best-known in the latter part of that century as the landlady and owner of the York Hotel on Newport Street which she ran from the 1860s until her death in 1881 and the age of 72. However, along with her husband John she also ran the George Hotel in the 1830s. After John Hardcastle’s death she was described on the 1851 census as a laundress and a brickmaker at number 13 Deansgate. The brickmaking business did well enough to employ eight men. However, the Bolton Directory of 1853 describes Mrs Hardcastle as the landlady of a pub at 13, Deansgate, the Old Woolpack, before moving to the York a few years later. [1]

The Jolly Angler remained outside the tied house system of pub ownership that developed in the late-nineteenth and early-twentieth century. However, it closed in 1919 having remained in private hands for the whole of the 50 or 60 years it was in existence. By the following year it was back as a private residence.

[1] Four Bolton Directories: 1821/2, 1836, 1843, 1853. Published by Neil Richardson (1982).