Waggon and Horses, 84 Moor Lane

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Moor Lane runs across the centre of this October 2009 photo {Copyright Google Street View). The Waggon and Horses was actually situated on the far-left side of the railway bridge. The fire station (built 1971) is on the left. Prior to its construction the entrance to the fire station was formerly the entrance to Partridge Street.

This isn’t a pub that any readers will remember, as it closed in 1903.

The Waggon and Horses stood at 84 Moor Lane on a site now occupied by an expansion of the railway line. It was a beerhouse and was in existence during the second half of the nineteenth century. At that time Moor Lane had a number of pubs: the 1853 Bolton Directory lists six beerhouses – along with two longer established public houses, the Three Tuns and the Dog & Partridge (not the one on Manor Street). [1]

Wingfield’s Silverwell Brewery owned the Waggon and Horses for a time towards the end of the nineteenth century, but Wingfield’s was taken over by the Manchester Brewery Company in 1899. [2]

In the end, the Waggon and Horses closed not through lack of trade but for the needs of the railway. The Bolton to Preston line was built in 1841 but by the turn of the twentieth-century the Lancashire Yorkshire Railway decided to double the tracks on the approach to Bolton station running under Moor Lane and to build sidings at Bullfield. That necessitated the demolition of a number of streets just off Moor Lane as well as properties on the lane itself.

Hulton School, which was on Moor Lane but had been built on the bridge running over the top of the railway was demolished. Back Partridge Street went and as the Waggon and Horses was on the corner of Back Partridge Street it, too, bit the dust.

A few yards away the Dog and Partridge was reprieved and lasted another 66 years until it was demolished prior to the construction of the new fire station. Only the Albion survives on Moor Lane and its viability could be threatened when the bus station moves to Great Moor Street.

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

[2] Bolton Pubs, 1800-2000. Published by Neil Richardson (2000).