Saturday 6 September 2014

Railway Inn, 273 Bridgeman Street





Bridgeman Street captured in April 2012 (copyright Google Street View). Heywood Park can be seen on the left-hand side in the distance. The site of the Railway Inn was where the apartments are situated next to the park. 


One of the many lost pubs of Bridgeman Street, and one of a number of Bolton pubs named the Railway, this Railway Inn stood at number 273 Bridgeman Street and was the last of a number of pubs in a short stretch as you walk out of town.

The pub dated back to around the 1860s but when it became the Railway Inn isn’t known. The entry in Worrall’s 1871 Bolton Directory shows a beer-house at 273 Bridgeman Street run by one Samuel Yates. Directories of the time only mentioned the names of public houses – i.e. pubs that could sell wine and spirits as well as beer – never the names of beer houses. Not all beer houses were named, either.

The Railway no doubt took its name from the nearby Bolton to Leigh Railway which opened in 1828. The original line rang alongside what is now Lumsden Street, around 100 yards from where the pub stood, but the line was decommissioned in the 1880s. A new line was built that avoided the Daubhill incline and in one respect it was a good deal closer to the club than the original line – it ran directly underneath it!

The Railway was a Magee's house standing right next to the entrance to Heywood Park.  There were no adjoining properties and Reservoir Street ran alongside the other side of the pub.

The pub was closed and was demolished in 1964. Bradford Ward Labour was built on the site. That closed in 2002 and was demolished soon afterwards. Apartments were built on the site.

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