Halliwell Lodge

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The Halliwell Lodge existed as a pub for over 90 years.

It was built around 1830 for the Ormrod family and at the time of its construction it was set back from Chorley Old Road and in its own land. The entry to the property is on Lincoln Road, off Mornington Road.

The Ormrods were a prominent firm of local cotton spinners whose firm Ormrod and Hardcastle was founded by James Ormrod and Thomas Hardcastle in 1788. The business began with the purchase of the Flash Street Mills, off Great Moor Street in the centre of Bolton and also owned a number of houses in that area of the town. Ormrod Street, which still runs past the Grosvenor Casino to Moor Lane, was named after the family. 

James Ormrod was one of five Bolton businessmen who founded the town’s first bank in July 1818.

The last member of the family to live at Halliwell Lodge, James Ormrod, died at the house in 1888. His successors were by then living on their own estate on the Fylde (see the entry for the Duke  for more details). They decided to sell the property and it was bought by local brewers Magee, Marshall & Co.

However, between James Ormrod's death and the Halliwell Lodge's purchase by Magee's the land that formed part of the property had been sold off and much of it had been built upon. Some 580 houses had been constructed on what was known as the Halliwell Lodge estate and by the end of the 19^th century a further 800 were planned. The occupants of these houses – on streets like Mornington Road, Queensgate and Beverley Road – were the town's middle classes who had left the crowded town centre for a quieter life a mile away.

On 26 January 1899, James Paisley (1858-1910), the landlord of the Rope and Anchor on the corner of Deansgate and Bridge Street applied to transfer his pub's licence to the Halliwell Lodge. The Rope and Anchor was fully licensed meaning that it sold wine and spirits as well as beer. Such licences rarely came up for grabs and were difficult to transfer even when they did.

However, the local council body, Bolton Corporation, were in something of a quandary. Like the Halliwell Lodge, the Rope and Anchor was owned by Magee's. But the corporation wanted to buy the Rope and Anchor in order to widen Bridge Street. Trams were having difficulty getting round the corner from Deansgate and purchasing the Rope and Anchor, which occupied the corner of the junction, would enable them to demolish the property and widen the top of Bridge Street from 29 feet 8 inches to 47 feet. The problem for the corporation was that there were no powers with regards to the compulsory purchase of the pub nor would there be without an Act of Parliament. They had to a deal with Magee's.

The brewery played a tactically astute game. They wanted the full licence for the Halliwell Lodge, but equally they knew the corporation wanted to widen Bridge Street. 

On 26 January 1899 James Paisley's application to transfer the licence was granted under section 14 of the 1828 Alehouses Act which held the provision that a licence could be transferred on the grounds of public improvement – which this was.

Almost immediately, opposition rose to the transfer. The Bolton Evening News of 28 January 1899 printed a letter from a Mr J Horrocks of Queens Gate, not far from the Halliwell Lodge. “There is not the slightest necessity for such a place,” he wrote. “I say, Sir, the Corporation ought to have nothing to do with a trade which is the cause of half the poverty and crime of the town.”

Four days later the BEN itself joined in the criticism. An editorial in the paper took the local magistrates to task over the transfer to premises over a mile away from the original licence. The Liberal-leaning paper had often been a thorn in the side of the Conservative establishment after it began publication in 1867, but now, in its thirties, it was beginning to sound like a curmudgeonly uncle.

“If one thing is certain in this unpleasant and mysterious matter, it is that the obvious intentions of the licencing law have been evaded,” the paper thundered.”We are inclined to go further and say they have been properly evaded and evaded by means which have, to impartial and disinterested spectators, all the appearance of a conspiracy.”

The BEN's argument was that this wasn't the simple transfer of a licence. The distance involved meant it was in effect a new licence. But the paper hadn't been as keen to criticise the transfer of the licence of the Shakespeare on Bradshawgate in 1882 - six years after it had closed - to the Rock House Hotel three-quarters of a mile away in Duke Street. Nor was there any indignation in 1906, seven years after the Halliwell Lodge affair, when the licence of the Ship Inn on Bradshawgate was transferred to the Sunnyside Hotel over a mile away at the bottom of Adelaide Street. However, the inhabitants of Duke Street and Adelaide Street were of a much lower demographic group than the burgeoning middle classes of the Halliwell Lodge estate. The middle classes felt that a public house in their area was beneath them and the paper took up their cause.

Also interested was the Citizens Committee, a self-appointed group of the great and the good. The committee was made up mainly of businessmen, gentlemen and the clergy. William Hesketh Lever – later Lord Leverhulme – was a member as was former MP Joseph Crook. The committee also took up the cause of the local residents and it concentrated its case on a technicality. Any licence application should be advertised locally, either in the local newspaper or within the local community. While notice had been served at St Luke's church on Chorley Old there had been no other publicity about the transfer. In the eyes of the committee one notice in the local church a few days before the hearing was not enough.

The Citizens Committee took the case to the High Court in London in May 1899. But while the judges agreed that there had been insufficient publicity over the proposed transfer that in itself was not enough to nullify the transfer.

The Bolton Evening News congratulated the committee claiming that despite the defeat the case had highlighted a deficiency in the law that may be remedied. “It ought to be rendered impossible, as was pointed out in the earlier stages of the movement, for any applicant, brewer or publican, to foist a licenced house, with the aid of the magistrates, without even the publicity demanded by law, on any neighbourhood whether it desires it or not,” the paper said in another editorial on 10 May 1899.

An appeal later that year also failed.

Of course had the denizens of the Halliwell Lodge estate desired the pub to fail they would simply have failed to use it. But it remained a pub until 1996 suggesting that in its early days the local middle classes were at least willing to give it a try.

The Halliwell Lodge became a Greenall Whitley pub after they bought out Magee’s in 1958.

The building was listed as a Grade II building in April 1974 and retains its listing to this day. A full architectural description can be seen here under its current name of The Mansion . 

Greenall's long-term plan was to get out of brewing and to divest itself of under-performing pubs and the Halliwell Lodge was a victim of that strategy. The Greater Manchester beer-drinkers magazine What's Doing reported in its June 1990 issue that the pub was up for sale for £650,000. It was bought by Hargreaves Homes and closed as a pub in 1996. Hargreaves converted the property into flats while the approach to the property is now a private road known as The Mews.

The flats don’t come cheap – around £250,000 each. But the grounds surrounding the property are well-maintained and this building, which is now over 180 years old, still looks in good condition.

In 2008 local pub chronicler Roy Caswell declared the Halliwell Lodge as his favourite having visited every pub in Bolton. "It was a good local that served the local housing estates well," he told the Bolton News. 

The building is rumoured to be haunted. According to the Paranormal Database a female ghost wearing only a nightdress would materialise in the early hours of the morning. It was also said that she had a deep husky voice and could be heard making suggestive remarks to any men still awake. However, in their 2012 book Haunted Bolton, Stuart Hilton and Michelle Cardno suggested that this apparition appears instead at a nearby fishing lodge.