Haydock Arms, 28-30 Haydock Street

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The Haydock Arms was situated at 28-30 Haydock Street, just off  Higher Bridge Street.

The pub dated back to the 1860s when shopkeeper Peter Lyne took the familiar route of opening up his grocery store to the sale and consumption of beer.

Lyne was a former cotton spinner who moved his family from the town centre into the Little Bolton area on the other side of the River Croal. As Bolton expanded northwards in the middle of the eighteenth century streets such as Haydock Street, Bangor Street and Prince Street were developed to provide homes for workers in the numerous mills that had sprung up on that side of town.

Peter Lyne was at the Haydock Arms until 1871 when he went off to run a beerhouse in nearby Bangor Street, probably the Rainforth Hotel. He was succeeded by two fifty-year-old women, sisters-in-law Alice and Ellen Grundy who ran the premises for a few years before moving off to Halliwell Road.

By 1891 the Haydock had expanded into the property next door and was now 28 and 30 Haydock Street. It was taken over by John Halliwell and Son whose Alexandra Brewery was situated on Mount Street about half a mile away from Haydock Street. Halliwells had been around since the early 1870s and had completed their new brewery in 1885. A subsequent expansion by the company saw the purchase of a number of pubs, but Halliwell’s got into financial difficulty in 1910 and the brewery and its tied houses – including the Haydock Arms – were bought by Magee, Marshall and Co.

Magees shut the Haydock Arms in 1950. Having started in trading as a pub some years before its neighbour on Haydock Street, the Hearts Of Oak, it closed down earlier.

The property was demolished along with the rest of Haydock Street in the 1960s. Rainford House was built on the side of the street containing the Haydock Arms.

Haydock Street pictured in September 2014 (copyright Google Street View). Rainforth House – itself named after an eminent doctor and chemist John Rainforth who founded the chemical works in nearby School Hill in the nineteenth century – stands on the site of the Haydock Arms.