Rocket Hotel, New Lane, Bolton

 

The Rocket pictured in May 2012

In March 1960 Bolton Council granted planning permission to local brewery Magee, Marshall and Co for a new pub at New Lane on the Top O'the Brow estate. The following month a licence was granted and construction work began.

The Rocket Hotel opened on 29 November 1961, the first pint being pulled by Mr C. H. Barber, a hotel inspector who had worked for Magees for 61 years. The foaming pint of Magees Mild was handed to the company's chairman, Mr W. B. Shields. According to Mr Shields the pub's name came about because the brewery wanted to get away from traditional pub names. It had been thought that name was a nod to an early locomotive, the Rocket, built by George Stephenson in 1829, or even to the space race that was taking place in the early-sixties. There was also a bus service called the Rocket that began to run from the autumn of 1925 in a five-seat car owned by Henry Martin. The service, from the Royal Oak to Affetside, was so quick that Mr Martin's children nicknamed it The Rocket and the name was subsequently given to the fleet of buses that Mr Martin bought. When Bolton Corporation Transport took over The Rocket in July 1934 they amended the route to run from the Royal Oak to the Starkie Arms at Tonge Moor via Longsight, Harwood Church and Thicketford Road passing close to what was later to become The Rocket pub.

By the end of 1961 the Rocket was advertising for a pianist and in early 1963 live acts were being featured on Friday and Saturday nights. Johnny Dee and the Detours, Frank Barlow, Colin Carey, Hal Williamson, Mike Hale, Mike Wroe And The Pops and Tony Dennett (“Lancashire's Own Joe Brown”) were among the acts seen at the Rocket during 1963 and 1964.

Entertainment ad from March 1963

In January 1970 a fire broke out in the pub lounge. Landlord Clifford Mann had closed up for the night and was watching TV in the living quarters upstairs. His son Norman, aged 17, could smell smoke when he went on to the landing. Mr Mann, his wife Mary and their two sons went downstairs and tackled the fire themselves before the fire brigade arrived. “When we got downstairs we could see from the flashings and cracklings that it was an electrical fire,” he told the Bolton Evening News. However, he insisted that despite serious damage done to the lounge the Rocket would open as normal. “We haven't got any lights back in the pub yet, but we'll be open tonight even if it means by candlelight” he said. “We must remain open.”

It was perhaps with this incident in mind that a number of the pub's regulars came to the aid of a local church after fire damaged part of its premises in March 1972. Fire had wrecked part of the ground-floor rooms at the Independent Methodist Church on Thicketford Road and a number of Rocket regulars helped with the clean-up operation. There was also a whip-round at the pub that raised £10 (the equivalent of over £120 in 2026). What made the gesture somewhat out of the ordinary was that the church was anti-drink, but a number of the Rocket's regulars had past links with the church through its Sunday school and youth club.

“The most obvious thing about it is that these people have got some feelings about the place,” said the church's minister William Owen. Rocket landlord Clifford Mann said it was just a case of people helping each other in a time of crisis. “This is the usual thing among neighbours - if anyone has a fire they help.”

In March 1974, the pub's owners, Greenall Whitley, won an appeal after planning permission was turned down to install betting shops in the car parks of both the Rocket and the Willows Hotel on Willows Lane on the other side of town. Bolton Council objected to the plan on the grounds that the shops would be detrimental to the area and would cause congestion, claims Greenalls claimed were overblown and “in the realms of Alice In Wonderland.” The appeal was heard by a local government inspector who sided with Greenalls. Two betting firms applied to site shops at the Rocket, Arthur Roye in 1975 and D. B. & I. Collins in 1976, but nothing ever came of the plan.

By 1982 the Rocket had been opened for 21 years and for most of that time it had been run by Clifford Mann. But Cliff was now in his sixties and was ready to retire. Originally a Daubhill man he had spent 44 years in the licensed trade and had run a number of pubs in Farnworth before moving to the Rocket. He and his wife Mary were presented with a wall clock to mark his retirement.

Running the Rocket wasn't an easy gig for anyone as it could be one of Bolton's livelier pubs. In July 1967, two youths were charged after fighting outside the pub over the affections of a girl. There was a scandal the following year when the pub's Savings Club was defrauded – by its own treasurer. In 1984 a man was fined after head-butting one of the pub's windows after discovering that his jacket had been stolen from the pub. However, most people's memories of the Rocket are of a good community pub even though the local Camra branch's description was of it “having an enviable reputation that no other pub wanted”.

In 1993 the Rocket became a Burtonwood pub. Ownership changed again in 2005 when it became a Marstons house after they took over the Burtonwood tied estate.

But being a good community pub doesn't necessarily make it pay. In September 2015 plans were lodged by retail group Spar to demolish the Rocket and replace it with a convenience store. Marstons were willing to sell the pub. The plans made reference to anti-social behaviour including one incident where a man was attacked in the pub toilets.

The Rocket closed on 10 January 2016 a little more than 54 years after it opened as a pub. The building was subsequently demolished and the Spar opened on the site in March 2017.