Tuesday 12 January 2016

Concert Tavern, 28 Churchgate, Bolton



The Concert Tavern was located on Churchgate on the site of what is now Churchgate House.

The pub dated back to the 1850s and by the end of that decade it was being run by Thomas Worsley. Thomas was born in 1812. He married Charlotte Howarth at Deane church in 1833 and by 1841 the couple were living in Bark Street where Thomas was employed as a cotton spinner. The family were in Halliwell by 1851. The 1861 census shows that Thomas was working as a cotton spinner as well as being a beer seller at the Concert Tavern, though it may well have been that Charlotte was running the pub.

Charlotte Worsley died in 1868, but in October of that year Thomas married again, this time to Nancy Dowling, a widow from Blackburn Street who was 11 years his junior.

By 1871, the Worsleys were still at the Concert Tavern. However, they are listed as lodgers with Thomas working as a chimney sweep. The house was owned by another resident, the 23-year-old Louise Waring. Thomas died the following year and the running of the pub was taken on by John Helm.

The Concert Tavern was owned by the Bolton brewery of Atkinson’s in the 1890s. It was later bought by Bolton Theatre and Entertainment Company Ltd who leased it to Tong’s who supplied the pub. But Bolton Theatre and Entertainment owned the nearby Grand Theatre which they opened in 1894. 

In 1908, they closed the Concert Tavern and incorporated the pub into an extension to the Grand. The final landlord was Ethelred Black who had been at the Town Hall Tavern in 1901.


The theatre was demolished in 1963 and Churchgate House was built on the site. See the August 2015 image below (copyright Google Street View).




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