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| 1970s |
The Flying Flute –
formerly Maxim's and the Gaiety Bar – was originally known as the
Fleece Hotel. The pub dated back to the 18th century and
is named on the Bolton licensing list for 1778 when Francis Wryley
was the landlord. However, an article in the Bolton Evening News at
the time of a refurbishment in 1972 claimed there was a pub named the
Star once on the site before the Fleece.
The current building is
at least the second and may well have been the third. The present
building is listed and its entry can be seen here.
For over 40 years in
the nineteenth century Thomas Telford was the landlord. Telford began
his working life as a coachman but turned to the somewhat saner
career of running a pub in the early 1830s.
Under Telford's
stewardship the Fleece became a regular meeting point for lodges of
the Independent Order of Foresters. He was treasurer of the Bolton
district for over 25 years as well as of the Bolton branch of the
Amalgamated Engineers Society.
However, Telford was
also a controversial character. In September 1841 he was accused of
the manslaughter of Charles Wilcock of Bridge Street at the Millstone
on Crown Street. The Millstone had an upstairs concert room with
singers and variety acts playing on a nightly basis. In 1841 it was
run by Telford's nephew Samuel Horrocks. On the night in question
Wilcock was sitting at a table near the concert room's piano but he
began to make noises to the annoyance of some of the other patrons.
After twice being warned he was told by Telford that he would be
taken out. “You'll have to eat more porridge then,” a witness
claimed Wilcock said. Telford grabbed Wilcock and took him down five
steps to a landing that led to a dozen further steps that led to the
ground floor. Some witnesses claimed Telford pushed Wilcock down the
steps. However, at least two people claimed Wilcock lost his footing
and that caused him to fall to the bottom. He died the following day
of his injuries and Telford was immediately arrested. The verdict
certainly wasn't unanimous. A jury of 17 men found him not guilty of
manslaughter and instead returned a verdict of accidental death. One
of the dissenters was a local vicar, the Reverend William Jones who
proclaimed to the other jurors: “Before I would have returned such
a verdict I would have eaten my breeches.” [Bolton Chronicle, 4
September 1841].
In 1850, Telford was
back in court following a burglary at the pub. However, the burglar
was none other than his 15-year-old son, also named Thomas Telford.
Thomas senior testified that the youth had been so troublesome he was
no longer allowed to live at the house. Telford junior got into the
pub and stole a saw, a plane and some copper nails and sold them to a
pawnbroker named Charles Nuttall. The youth chose to be sentenced by
magistrates rather than committed for trial. He was sentenced to
spend a month at the New Bailey prison in Manchester and was
whipped.[Bolton Chronicle, 20 November 1850].
Thomas Telford ran the
Fleece until 1863. He retired to Bridgeman Street where he lived
until he committed suicide in May 1870. He had been in some pain
after suffering from bronchitis and edema for upwards of four months.
In the early hours of Sunday 15 May one of his daughters told him the
rest of the family were going to bed. Five minutes later when she
went back in to his bedroom she discovered he had slit his throat.
Telford was succeeded
at the Fleece by John Ward who moved from the Royal Hotel, Derby
Street. Prior to that he was a quilt and skirt manufacturer. Ward
fancied himself as something of a poet and his ads for the Fleece in
the Bolton Evening News often took the form of a rhyme with topical
news items inter-weaved with a promotion for the pub. Here was his
New Year ad that appeared in the Bolton Evening News of 30 December
1868.
Welcome to 1869
War seems to be
threatened by Turkey and Greece
The progress of peace
to retard,
Yet all is “serene”
at the Bradshawgate “Fleece,”
The hostel of Mr JOHN
WARD
The season's arrived
when a good Christmas cheer,
Is alike strongly
courted by all;
Then from those who
would seek choicest Spirits or Beer,
JOHN WARD would solicit
a call
His house is improved
at enormous expense,
His patrons' favours to
gain,
And he promises that,
in return for their pence,
They shall not spend
their money in vain.
The “Fleece” Inn,
Bradshawgate.
Like his predecessor,
Ward had problems with one of his offspring. He placed an ad in the
Bolton Chronicle of 15 September 1866 warning readers that he would
no longer be responsible for debts incurred by his 16-year-old son
James.
Ward was one of a
number of pub landlords to dabble in politics and was defeated as
Conservative candidate for the Bradford ward seat on Bolton council
on one occasion.
He died suddenly in
December 1874 and was succeeded by his widow. She retired in 1876.
In 1877, the Fleece
was sold for £5050. At the same auction the Golden Lion
on Churchgate went for £3000. The purchaser of both pubs was Joseph
Sharman, a local brewer who had moved from the Crompton's Monument pub on Mill Hill Street to a purpose-built brewery close to Mere
Hall. Sharman had begun to build up a local tied estate and the
purchase of the Fleece and the Golden Lion, two prominent
long-established pubs in the centre of town, was a feather in his
cap.
Three years later,
Sharman converted his business to a limited company, Joseph Sharman
and Co Ltd. The brewery, beer stores in Green Street in the town
centre and 10 pubs were to be transferred from his own name to the
limited company. Sharman received £25,000 in cash plus 200 shares
worth £35 each. Apart from the Fleece and the Golden Lion, the other
pubs were:
Mount Pleasant, Mill
Street
Queens Arms, Deansgate
Nelson, Chorley Old
Road
Mount Street Arms,
Mount Street
Elephant and Castle,
Kay Street
Lawsons Arms, Sharples
Rising Sun, Churchbank
British Oak, Union
Street.
Of those ten pubs, the
Nelson – built 1861 - and the much older Golden Lion (now the
Churchgate) are still open. The Lawsons Arms is now the Three Pigeons
but has been closed since 2011 pending a refurbishment.
Joseph Sharman was also
the licensee of the Fleece for a short time and he introduced
American billiards to the pub in 1880.
The Fleece was rebuilt
in 1907. Whether this was the first or second time isn't known.
However, the Manchester Courier ran a classified ad on 8 November
1879 offering the pub 'to let'. It claimed the pub had recently been
rebuilt but it gives a good description of how the Fleece looked at
that time:
“...contains modern
vaults, bar parlours, clubrooms, billiard-room (with two tables),
excellent dormitories and every convenience for carrying on the
commercial and general trade.”
The 1907 rebuild came
as the result of a long-standing plan by Bolton Council to widen
Bradshawgate as it approached the junction with Deansgate. This
involved the demolition of a number of properties - including the
Fleece - and rebuilding them further back.
The pub was demolished
in 1907. On 3 September that year the Bolton Evening News ran an
advert for an auction being held by local auctioneers Thomas Crompton
and Son whose Fold Street rooms were situated close to the Fleece.
Over two days Crompton's auctioned off not only the fixtures and
fittings of the pub but also the brickwork, the window frames, the
plate glass windows and the doors.
While the new Fleece
was being rebuilt, trade continued in a small wooden hut. This was
offered for sale at Christmas 1910 by which time the new building was
complete.
The Fleece remained a
Sharman's pub until 1927 when it was acquired by the Leigh brewery of
George Shaw & Co. It changed hands again when Shaw's were taken
over by Walker Cain of Liverpool in 1930 and became a Tetley Walker
pub when that company was formed in 1961.
Derek Sheffield claims
on the I Belong To Bolton Facebook group that the pub was nicknamed
'The American Embassy' in the forties.
However, it was also
famed as being frequented by prostitutes. The 'ladies of the Fleece'
were notorious even as late as the 1950s.
In
1972, the Fleece had its biggest refurbishment in decades. By now it
was owned by Tetley Walker and they decided it needed a new name -
the Gaiety Bar.
BOLTON'S
newest night-spot, with the old-world atmosphere, the Gaiety Bar,
Bradshawgate, opens tonight. Tetley's brewery have scrubbed the
exterior and re-built the interior of the former Fleece Hotel to
create a pub with an authentic Victorian atmosphere. There has been a
pub on the site for well over 100 years, and this is the third name
which has been used on the premises. Before the Fleece, the pub on
the Ship Gates corner of Bradshawgate, was called The Star. - Bolton
Evening News, 20 July 1972.
Towards
the end of the seventies the upstairs bar began to put on gigs,
particularly on a Thursday when it hosted many local bands. Issues 2
and 3 of local music magazine Town Hall Steps shows that Kaches, JG
Spoils, The Reporters, Watt 4, Really Big Men, Warrior, Cliche,
Apencil, The Autoze and Night Train were among the acts down to play
in the summer of 1981. The gigs continued right up to April 1983 when
the Gaiety closed for refurbishment.
Tetley's
decided to sell the Gaiety Bar and in May 1980 it became the first
pub in Bolton to be owned by the Sunderland-based Vaux Brewery.
[What's Doing, the Greater Manchester beer drinkers' monthly
magazine, June 1980 issue). The regional brewer was a major force on
Wearside; however, it had few pubs in the north-west of England. Vaux
saw the Gaiety as their flagship pub in the region and before long
they revealed plans for a major refurbishment. A three-week
renovation took place in the summer of 1983 and it reopened as
Maxim's in June of that year having been knocked into two shops on
the same row, one of which was Howard's tobacconist. The name evoked
images of Maxim's restaurant in Paris, regarded as the best
restaurant in the world for much of the twentieth century. However,
the name is more likely to have come from one of Vaux's products, the
bottled beer Double Maxim. What's Doing of August 1983 pointed out
that the Vaux Samson Ale cost 70 pence a pint when the pub re-opened.
That made Maxim's one of the most expensive pubs in the town although
70p in 1983 equates to just £2.30 in 2019.
Maxim's
was one of the first pubs in Bolton to gain a permanent licence
extension in 1986 when it was granted permission to remain open until
1am. [Bolton Beer Break, Spring 1986 edition].
Five
years later, Maxim's underwent another refurbishment involving a
four-week closure. [Bolton Beer Break, Spring 1988 issue]. Later that
it year it became a Ward's pub although that simply meant a transfer
to another part of the Vaux empire, Ward's Brewery being the
company's Sheffield subsidiary.
In
the summer of 1989 Maxim's hours extension was under threat after
licensing officers claimed that food was not for sale. Having hot
food on sale was a condition for late opening for pubs and clubs.
Often it extended to nothing more than a hatch selling hot dogs and
burgers, but the July 1989 edition of What's Doing claimed Maxim's,
Maxwell's Plum and the Trotters were all at risk of losing their
extensions. All three pubs successfully kept their licensing hours.
Vaux
were taken over by financiers in 1999 following a bitter battle that
resulted in the brewery being closed. Maxim's became a seventies bar
for a short while, Tiger Feet, before changing its name to the Flying
Flute.
From
2007 until 2012 the upstairs room operated as Kico playing indie and
alternative music until its closure.
The
Flying Flute was initially put up for sale in 2014. However, there
were no takers and the owners quietly closed it down in November
2017. The building was sold to a company called Raisfuel Ltd whose
accounts for the year to 30 April 2018 showed that it paid £336,638
for the property.
In
October 2018, it was reported that Raisfuel sought planning permission
to convert the premises into seven maisonettes and one bedsit
upstairs with three commercial units on the ground floor. Permission
was granted in March 2019 and by the end of that year the three units
were being offered to let.
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| The Flying Flute pictured in April 2017, just over six months before it closed. Copyright Google. |
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