Cattle Market, 38 Foundry Street

A shot of the Orlando Village student accommodation taken from Thynne Street in September 2014 (copyright Google Street View). The building beyond the fence stands on a site that was once  occupied by the Cattle Market on Foundry Street.

Drinkers of a not-too-distant vintage will remember the Cattle Market on Orlando Street which was demolished in 2014, but for a number of years there was another pub by that name less than a hundred yards away in Foundry Street.

This Cattle Market dated back to the 1870s. We know that its counterpart on Orlando Street was known as the Craven Heifer in 1870 after being known as the Cattle Market certainly by 1861. It could be that this pub on Foundry Street took on the name the Cattle Market after it was initially discarded by its neighbour.  

The name from the nearby cattle sales that took place in the area, first of all on Lever Street and then to the rear of the Orlando Street pub on land now occupied by a motor dealership.

There were a number of pubs on Foundry Street. The Cattle Market was at number 38 close to the junction with Providence Street. That street still exists; it runs off Thynne Street down by the side of the office block near to the roundabout, but in the nineteenth century it crossed Thynne Street to meet Foundry Street.

There was also a pub at number 40 Foundry Street in the 1871 directory which could possibly have been the Cattle Market.

The pub was owned by John Leach who built up a small tied estate from his brewery at the Albert on Derby Street. 

Richard Longworth and his wife Emma were the licensees according to the 1891 Census. By the time of the 1895 Bolton Directory, John Chorlton was in charge. He was still there by the time of the 1901 census but had left the pub by 1905 when it was being run by the Norfolk-born Fred Bayfield.

The Cattle Market’s licence was refused in 1909 and Fred Bayfield went off to run the Villiers Hotel (much later the nightclub known as Maxwell’s Plum, amongst others). The pub became a residential property and along with the rest of Foundry Street it was demolished in the early-fifties. The land was bought by Edbro who had moved into the engineering works a little further down Foundry Street in the 1930s. The Orlando Village student complex was built on the site in 1996.