Mount Pleasant Inn, 44 - 46 Mill Street

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The Mount Pleasant Inn was situated on Mill Street. The pub, Mill Street and Mill Hill all took their name from the Mount Pleasant mill which was erected by the industrialist John Lum at the top of a hill leading out of Little Bolton in the early nineteenth century.

Lum was a strict Sabbatarian and moralist who required his employees to join in hymn-singing while at work. [1] However, after his death in 1836 his wife erected six almshouses in his honour on Goodwin Meadow. The row was later renamed Lum Street and while the almshouses have long gone Lum Street remains.

The Mount Pleasant Inn was right outside the mill. The pub was a corner shop that branched out into the sale of beer and the 1871 Census shows that it was occupied by the 46-year-old William Ridings and his 43-year-old wife, Ann. Mr Ridings is described as a ‘provision dealer and beer seller.’

The pub was situated on a row of three buildings close to the junction of Mill Street and Green Street and were right outside Mount Pleasant mill itself. So it must have been a blow the Ridings when the mill burnt down in 1870 causing £20,000 worth of damage.

The mill was rebuilt and by 1884 it was occupied by Bamber and Co Ltd. By then the Rdings had left the Mount Pleasant beerhouse. The couple had worked in the cotton industry prior to their move to the pub and by 1881, they were crofters at  Eagley Bank.  William Riding died in 1891, aged 67. Ann Ridings died in 1897, aged 71.

The Mount Pleasant Inn became a Sharman’s pub. Indeed, it would have been one of the earliest Sharman’s houses given that until he moved to the Mere Hall Brewery in 1872, Joseph Sharman was brewing at the Crompton’s Monument pub just across the road from the Mount Pleasant.

In 1913, the Mount Pleasant saw its license refused though that in itself may have been no huge blow to its customers who still had another four beerhouses to choose from on Mill Street itself.

By 1924, Albert R Parry was a grocer at the former Mount Pleasant with part of the premises given over to his motor repair business.

The whole of the Mill Hill area was redeveloped in the sixties and seventies. The site of the Mount Pleasant pub and Mount Pleasant Mill and is now a motor dealership. (See image below, copyright Google Street View).

[1] Classic Soil: Community, Aspiration, and Debate in the Bolton Region of Lancashire, 1819-1845, by Malcolm Hardman.

[2] Bolton Pubs, 1800 – 2000, by Gordon Readyhough. Published by Neil Richardson (2000).