Egerton Arms, 284 Lever Street

The Egerton Arms on Lever Street isn’t a pub that has lasted long in the memory of older drinkers. Plenty of people reminisce in on-line forums about more recent closures such as the Tanners Arms or UncleTom’s Cabin or even the Recreation Tavern  next to Bobby Heywood’s Park, but more than 50 years after the Egerton finally closed its doors there is barely a memory of the place.

The pub was situated on the corner of Reservoir Street, and like the Recreation it was close to Heywood Park, across from Lever Street meets Rupert Street and some six doors up from Uncle Tom’s Cabin. 

The pub dated back to the 1860s. The opening of Heywood Park led to a development of the area and the 1871 directory gives Jeremiah Aspin as the landlord. But by the time Mr Aspin’s daughter Elizabeth married John Foster later that year he had moved to take charge of the Cotton Tree opposite the Tanners Arms at the other end of Lever Street at its junction with Nelson Street. 

It is likely that the Egerton was taken over at the time by Henry Heyes of the Fox and Goose pub on Deansgate and was supplied directly by that pub’s brewery. Jeremiah Aspin’s occupation was put as a brewer on his daughter’s marriage certificate and it seems that the Egerton’s own brewery had closed as a result of the pub’s sale.

The Fox and Goose and its brewery closed in 1897 after the pub’s licence was refused. The Egerton was sold to a Rossendale company, Grant’s Tower Brewery of Ewood Bridge. In 1913, Grant’s sold out to John Kenyon of Barrowford, near Nelson, but despite Kenyon’s falling into the hands of Massey’s Brewery of Burnley in 1928, the Egerton ended up in the hands of a more local concern, Cornbrook’s of Manchester, who already had a number of pubs in the Bolton area.

In 1962, Cornbrook’s closed the Egerton. It was a double blow for Lever Street as the Cotton Tree also closed in the same year.

The area was redeveloped in the seventies and new housing replaced the old terraces. The photo below from September 2014 (copyright  Google Street View) shows Lever Street with a walkway heading off the street. That was once Reservoir Street and the Egerton stood to the right of the passage fronting Lever Street.

Houghton Street Tavern (Bricklayers Arms), Houghton Street

The Houghton Street Tavern was one of those ‘back street’ pubs that somehow managed to keep going until the early 1970s. It was situated on the corner of Houghton Street and Shaw Street, close to the bottom of Derby Street.

The pub was in business for over 100 years and was originally known as the Bricklayer’s Arms. In 1871, the landlord was George Timson, but he had only been at the pub for a couple of years. In June 1869, he married the landlady of the Bricklayers, a lady named Susannah Bishopp. Neither were from Bolton: he was from Lincolnshire, while she was from Buckinghamshire. George was 25 and a cab driver who lived in Coe Street, not a million miles from Houghton Street – it was around 400 yards away on the other side of Bridgeman Street. Susannah was 32, a widow who had taken over the Bricklayers on the death of her husband.

The Timsons were gone by the end of the 1870 and their union didn't last. The 1881 Census shows her alone in west Yorkshire running a small shop. 

The Bricklayers Arms became the Houghton Street Tavern and the pub eventually came under the control of the Leach family whose brewery was based at the Albert Inn on Derby Street. The Leaches built up a small tied estate including the Houghton, the Albert, the Clifton Arms on Newport Street and the Albion, which still stands on Moor Lane.

But the Leaches went out of business in 1936 and they sold their remaining pubs – namely, the above with the exception of the Clifton - to the Leeds brewery, Joshua Tetley. The Leach purchase, along with the separate purchase of the Sweet Green Tavern, gave Tetley’s a small foothold in Bolton. They added considerably to this with the merger of Walker’s of Warrington in 1961, which had also ended up with a sizeable tied estate in Bolton after a series of takeovers. From then until the vertically-integrated model in the brewing and pub industries began to unravel in the 1990s Tetley Walker was the largest pub owner in Bolton.

The Houghton was a beerhouse until 1961 when it was granted a full licence enabling it to sell wine and spirits. It carried on until the early-seventies but by then a redevelopment programme at the bottom end of Derby Street had seen huge swathes of properties demolished. Houses on Rothwell Street, Pilkington and Derby Street were cleared away and streets such as Apple Street, Hammond Street, Peel Street and Glass Street were no more. When the council offered to buy the Houghton Street Tavern from Tetley’s they snatched their hands off. All the pub's customers had moved on.

The land occupied by the Houghton has never been built on. A car park for the Centredart fireplace showroom now occupies the site as can be seen below in the Google Streetview image from September 2014.

School Hill Hotel (T'Skennin' Door), 6 School Hill

The School Hill Hotel was known locally as T’Skennin’ Door due to its having two doors set on slightly different angles.  

School Hill itself took its name from its proximity to St George’s School at the top of Bath Street. When  St George’s church was consecrated in 1796 Green Hill was immediately to the west of the church, with Lark Hill further on towards the road to Chorley. School Hill was to the north of the church.

The pub occupied the junction of School Hill and Haworth Street and it dated back to the 1860s.

In his book, Bolton Pubs 1800 – 2000, Gordon Readyhough tells us that Ellen Crompton was the licensee in the 1880s when the pub also had its own brewery. Indeed, Mrs Crompton was already at the pub in 1871, according to Worrall’s Directory for that year, and there is every chance that she and her husband John were the pub’s first licensees. Mr Crompton had previously run a beerhouse on Higher Bridge Street.

Later, the School Hill became a Settle’s pub. Settle’s were a local firm based on Cross Street, just off Turton Street [more details on Settle's brewery can be found here]. Settle’s sold out to Dutton’s of Blackburn in 1951. Dutton’s and its 800-odd pubs were bought by Whitbread in 1964. The presence  in the above photo of a Whitbread tankard on the front of the pub suggests the image was taken post-1964.

The School Hill closed in 1972 and was demolished soon afterwards. The whole area was redeveloped and Topp Way opened roughly on part of the site of the pub in 1980.

The image below (copyright Google Street View) shows Topp Way with the former St George’s school (later Ben Topps and McGinlay’s) on the right. The School Hill was roughly where the green sward of grass can be seen next to the pedestrian crossing. 

Waterloo Tavern, 197-199 Folds Road

The Waterloo Tavern pictured in the 1920s shortly after it had been taken over by Shaw’s of Leigh. Note the Shaw’s sign – bare on the 1976 photo (link here).

Not to be confused with the older and - it has to be said, grander - Waterloo Hotel at the other end of Waterloo Street, the Waterloo Tavern was a beer house on Folds Road at its junction with Waterloo Street.

It dated back to around the 1860s and Alexander Martin is shown as the landlord in the 1871 Bolton Directory. In the 1880s it was taken over by George Walker of the Park View Brewery on Spa Road and as the brewery changed ownership on a number of occasions over the years so did the pub and the rest of the brewery’s small tied estate. It became the Spa Wells Brewery in 1900 then James Jackson & Sons Ltd in 1904.

Jackson’s sold out to George Shaw & Co Ltd of Leigh in 1927; Shaw’s were bought by Walker Cain Ltd in 1931 and Walker’s merged with Tetley’s in 1961.

Like many pubs, the Waterloo was originally two dwelling houses that were knocked together and was numbered 197-199 Folds Road.

The end for the pub came in 1976. Many properties on Folds Road were knocked down in the sixties and seventies and the row containing the Waterloo, between Waterloo Street and Turton Street were among the last to be demolished.  

The pub can be seen here in a photograph from the Bolton Evening News of 15 September 1976  It’s the last property still occupied in a row of boarded up houses.

Below is a modern-day view from September 2014 (copyright Google Street View). The site once occupied by the Waterloo Tavern is now landscaped with the bottom of Waterloo Street closed off and traffic diverted to the bottom of Turton Street via Slater Lane. The pub was next to the footpath leading up Waterloo Street.

Prince Arthur Hotel, 82 St John Street

The Prince Arthur Hotel pictured in the 1920s shortly after Tong’s had been taken over by Walker Cain Ltd of Liverpool. It was a sizeable building and may have been two or three properties knocked into one. The pub was on the corner St John Street and Pen Street and the latter street can be seen to the side of the pub. Like a number of pubs it also had a counter for the sale of beer to be consumed off the premises.

 Updated on 10 October 2016 to include more on Robert Wood and the pub’s brewery.

The Prince Arthur was a beerhouse situated on St John Street, which was just off Higher Bridge Street. Egyptian Street, which still exists, was the next street along and the two streets converged as Bridge Street. St John Street ran off the main road at an angle as far as Pen Street. At the junction with Pen Street stood the Prince Arthur.

The pub began in the 1860s when Robert Wood, who was previously the licensee of the Cross Keys on Cross Street and who had also run the Rising Sun  on Churchbank near the parish church, moved into the premises along with his wife Catherine. Wood was a weaver by trade, but Catherine’s family were publicans. Her father, John Holgate, was the landlord of the Farmers Arms on Bridgeman Street when the couple married in 1856.

Many pubs brewed their own beer and sold only their own draught ales on the premises. But there was an increasing demand for what was known at the time as a ‘common brewer’. That was a brewery that sold beer to pubs who didn’t have their own brewery.

The Prince Arthur was in heavily-pubbed part of Bolton as beerhouses sprang up all over the rows of terraced houses that were being built between Higher Bridge Street and Halliwell Road. Robert Wood began to build up the brewing side of the business and was soon supplying other pubs in the area. It was a competitive market. Joseph Sharman had just built his Mere Hall Brewery while John Halliwell had the same idea as Robert Wood and was supplying pubs from the Alexandra Hotel just a hundred yards or so away from the Prince Arthur on Stewart Street.

Even so, there is evidence that Robert Wood was very successful as a brewer. The 1871 Census shows him and his family living on the premises. The Bolton Directory of 1876 shows Robert living nearby at 83 Hampden Street – so the business was profitable enough for him not to have to live on the premises. But by 1881 Robert Wood was going up in the world. Aged 50 he was living in Victoria House on Markland Hill not far from the Victoria Hotel (“Fanny’s”) which still stands. Ten years later and Robert had obviously retired. He was living on Raikes Parade in Blackpool where he died on 29 March 1895.

A measure of Robert’s success can be seen in his will. He left a fortune valued at £18,000 – the equivalent of over £2million in today’s money – from a 30-year career in brewing.

Robert Wood was succeeded in the business by Catherine and their sons, Thomas and John. Charles Holgate, who was born to Catherine out of wedlock in 1852, was also a partner in the business.

At the end of 1909, Charles Holgate retired from the business   but the Woods continued as a partnership. He died in 1920 and was living at 71 Hampden Street at the time.

Catherine Wood died at the end of 1914 at the age of 84 and the following year the Woods converted their business partnership into a limited company.

By this time the Prince Arthur brewery was not only supplying its own pub but also a small tied estate. This included the Little John, which still stands on Lever Street, as well as the Mortfield Tavern on Gaskell Street  , the Caledonian on Lyon Street , the Kings Arms on Chorley Old Road, the Noble Street Tavern on Noble Street, the Prince Hotel on Thwaites Street, the Standard Hotel on Gray Street and the Fountain Inn on Nelson Street.  Most were reasonably close to the brewery with the Prince Hotel being just a few yards away.

But the first world war was under way and trade was tough. Small brewers such as Wood’s found it difficult to continue in business as even the basic raw materials for brewing became more and more difficult to get hold of.

The Woods packed in brewing at the Prince Arthur in 1917. The pub was sold to a larger local concern, William Tong’s, who were in turn taken over by Walker Cain Ltd of Liverpool in 1923. Walker’s merged with Joshua Tetley Ltd of Leeds in 1960 to form Tetley Walker Ltd and it was a Tetley pub that the Prince Arthur ended its days in the early seventies.

Nothing remains today of St John Street and only very little remains of Egyptian Street.  The site of the Prince Arthur is covered by part of the playing fields surrounding St Matthews primary school.

Britannia Hotel, 2-4 Derby Street

Two views of the same area of Bolton. In the top image the Britannia Hotel can be seen on the left of the picture. The cars in front of the pub are coming from the bottom end of Derby Street. The start of Deane Road is in the distance while Crook Street - which met both Derby Street and Deane Road - can be seen  running to the bottom of the picture. It was a tricky junction to negotiate right up until the road layout was changed in 1979 with the closure of that part of Derby Street and Crook Street when the Trinity Street by-pass was built.

The image above comes from the University of Bolton. The same area is pictured in the bottom image, taken by Google Street View in September 2014. Apart from the fire station (centre right) which  was built in 1971 all the buildings in this image were built in 2009-10. On the left is Bolton One, which now occupies the space where the Britannia once stood. On Deane Road is Bolton Sixth Form College in the foreground with Bolton College a little further along the road.

The Britannia Hotel was situated at the junction of four streets: Derby Street, on which the pub stood, Deane Road, Moor Lane and Crook Street.

The pub dated back to the late-eighteenth century. It was certainly in existence by 1800, but it didn’t appear on the licensing records for 1778.

Anyone with an interest in the history of Bolton Wanderers will know that the Britannia was the club’s headquarters for many years in the nineteenth century.The club was formed at the Christ Church school just a few yards away on Deane Road on a site that was empty for many years before Bolton College was built in 2009-10. But the club’s founder, Reverend Thomas Ogden objected to meetings being held without him being present so the team broke away from the school to become Bolton Wanderers. Its first headquarters was the Gladstone Hotel but it soon moved to the Britannia where it remained until the building of Burnden Park in 1895.

For some years the Britannia was owned by Atkinson’s brewery situated not far away from the pub on Commission Street. The actual site of the brewery is roughly as you drive down Mayor Street from Deane Road. The streets in that area were remodelled in the sixties and Mayor Street was effectively moved from the side of the Duke on Deane Road to its current traverse.

Atkinson’s were taken over by Boardman’s United Breweries of Manchester in 1895, The Cornbrook brewery, also of Manchester, bought out Boardman’s in 1898 and although the Britannia carried Cornbrook’s livery and sold their beers until it was closed, for the final few years the pub was owned by Bass Charrington, who bought  Cornbrook in 1961.

The Britannia closed in 1965. The area bounded by Deane Road, Derby Street and John Street – now University Way – was needed for the construction of the Bolton Institute Of Technology. The BIT was founded at Bolton Technical College on Manchester Road in 1963 but it was immediately decided that it would need an extensive site of its own. The site at the bottom of Deane Road was identified and it was cleared in 1965. The BIT began to move into its new buildings in 1967-68.

For many years the site of the Britannia formed a green sward of grass in front of the BIT. The junction of Derby Street and Deane Road was closed off in 1979 when the southern limb of Bolton’s inner relief road was opened. The BIT became the Bolton Institute Of Higher Education when it merged with the Bolton College Of Education (Technical). In 2004 it became the University Of Bolton.

In 2009 construction began of the Bolton One complex which now occupies the site of the Britannia as well as the Derby Street Secondary School that once stood opposite.

   

Bank Of England, 36 Kay Street

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Kay Street stood right in the middle of a heavily built-up working class area. Worrall’s 1871 Bolton Directory shows no fewer than ten beerhouses on the street alone, along with two fully-licensed pubs the Falcon and the Roebuck. The former was the last pub on the road to close, in 1987 and what was onnce Kay Street is now just an extension of St Peters Way.

One of the ten beerhouses in the 1871 directory was the Bank Of England, which dated back to around 1860.  It was a sizeable pub standing opposite the Co-op Dairy at the junction with St George’s Street and Lark Street. The Kay Street Congregational Mission stood right next door to the pub.

An often-told saying about the pub was that you could stand with your back to it and say “I’ll never go broke – I’ve got the Bank Of England behind me.” [1] How often that was actually said before the locals grew tired of it – who can say.

Nevertheless, it wasn’t something you could say after 1956. That was when this Magee’s pub finally closed. The council had a plan to widen Kay Street from Turton Street down to the junction with St George’s Street. The row of properties fronting Kay Street and those to the rear forming one side of Union Street were all demolished in 1958 and Kay Street was widened.

Some years later, in 1971, Kay Street's junction with St George’s Street formed part of the entry on to St Peters’s Way, which opened that year. But Kay Street was later widened again. It took its current form in the late-eighties when St Peters Way was extended up to the junction with Higher Bridge Street and Blackburn Road. The junction with Kay Street was re-modelled so that Kay Street itself was effectively truncated to run from Manor Street as far as St George’s Street. The original commencement of St Peters Way became a small slip road enabling motorists to exit the by-pass into town. A subway was built under the motorway extension which was some 20 feet above Kay Street.

In 1989, Thomas Walmsley’s Atlas Forge on Bridgeman Street was demolished (the site is now the Mill View nursing home). A large statue of Atlas with the world on his shoulders was rescued from the old forge and was placed on Kay Street at its junction with St George’s Street on the corner formerly occupied by the Bank Of England.  

Kay Street - or what's left of it - in this Google Street View image from September 2014.

St George's Street runs off to the left. Offices occupy what was once the Co-Op Dairy. Opposite the offices, the statue of Atlas rescued from Walmsley's forge on Bridgeman Street had been in place on the site of the Bank Of England for 25 years by the time this photograph was taken.

The image is copyright Google Street View. The 1989 photo is copyright Bolton Council.