Wellington/Welcome Traveller, Union Buildings

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While a waste disposal skip may seem an odd choice to illustrate a point, this skip, and the fenced-off area next to it, mark the approximate site of the Wellington (formerly the Welcome Traveller) on Union Buildings. On the other side of the wall is the Bolton-Blackburn railway line. Right behind us is the now-closed Anchor. To the right is Bradshawgate and in the distance are the flats in the former Bolton County Grammar School on Great Moor Street.

We dealt with one of the pubs on Union Buildings, a small street some 40-50 yards in length that still exists just off Bradshawgate, when we looked at the Anchor, a building that still stands and which only ceased to be a pub a few years ago. Now let’s look at the other pub.

It’s hard to believe but there were initially two pubs along that short stretch. The  first pub to be opened on Union Buildings was the Welcome Traveller situated just across the street from the Anchor at number 11.

Nicholas Heyes was listed on the 1849 list of the Great Bolton beerhouses as the landlord of the Welcome Traveller. The pub isn’t listed in the 1843 Bolton Directory although Mr Heyes (or Heys as his surname was spelt) is listed on the 1841 Census as residing in Union Buildings, most likely at the same address. At that time he was 27 years old, employed as a cotton spinner and lived at the address with his wife, Margaret, his two children and 20-year-old John Heys, presumably another relative.

Mr Heyes obviously decided in the mid-1840s to take advantage of the 1830 Beer House Act which enabled common householders to open a room in their house for the sale and consumption of beer – a public house – so he opened the Welcome Traveller at number 11 Union Buildings.

The Welcome Traveller was re-named the Wellington later in the 1850s, according to Gordon Readyhough [1]. A clue as to why it chose that name can be found at the National Archives in Kew, which holds records for the Wellington Benefit Building Society, which was listed as being at the Welcome Traveller on  Union Buildings. It is entirely possible that it became a branch of a building society after it ceased to be a pub, but it is also likely that the Welcome Traveller housed a branch of a building society and changed its name to that of the financial institution.  Certainly, there were branches of the Wellington Benefit Building Society in Manchester and Liverpool, as well as in Bolton, although it had been struck off the Register of Friendly Societies by1 January 1913. [2]

The pub remained in the Heyes family for some years. Nicholas Heyes died in 1873 and his wife, Margaret, took over. In 1883, another of Nicholas Heyes’ children, also named Nicholas, married Mary Ann Garrity at Holy Trinity Church. The 23-year-old Nicholas was described as a ‘beerseller’ residing at 11 Union Buildings – the Wellington. His father, the late Nicholas Heyes, was described as a ‘common brewer’ which suggests the pub brewed its own beer at one time as well as for other pubs . Deposits were taken from small savers and mortgages arranged. Heyes was known to own a number of properties in the town centre.  

After Mary’s death, the younger Nicholas Heyes managed a number of pubs, including the Bridge Inn on Bridge Street and the Falcon on Kay Street. By 1911, he was living on Huntroyde Avenue and working as a brewer.

The Wellington closed in 1906 by which time it was owned by John Hamer’s brewery based at the Volunteer Inn at Bromley Cross. The building no longer exists and it seems the Wellington closed because of the needs of the railway. Additional sidings were constructed next to the Bolton to Blackburn line and that necessitated the demolition of a number of the buildings at the top of Union Buildings. An 1891 map of the town centre shows the buildings at the top end of the street clearly visible along with  Heyes Court directly behind the Wellington. In the 1910 map the area has been swept away.

[1] Pubs Of Bolton 1800-2000, by Gordon Readyhough. Published by Neil Richardson (2000).

[2] National Archives. Accessed 29 May 2014. 

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Clifton Arms/Gateway, Newport Street

A rather forlorn-looking Gateway (formerly the Clifton Arms) pictured in April 2012 (copyright Google Street View). By then the pub had already been closed for two years.

It’s always a shame to see a pub closed and boarded up. Sometimes the pubs that have gone are ones that only ever sold keg or smooth beer and while one feels they aren’t much of a loss even that is never the case. Some of these pubs have stood for a hundred years or more and served thousands of customers. But in the case of the Gateway – or the Clifton as most people will remember it – the fact that it closed is nothing more than a crying shame.

Twenty years ago there was a good little crawl from the Clifton to the York to the Sweet Green – or the other way round before carrying on to town.

Under the stewardship of landlord Pete Morris the Clifton began selling guest beers a full three or four years before the 1990 Beer orders chipped away at the brewery tie. Jennings Bitter was a regular on his bar alongside cask Tetley Mild and Bitter long before independent brewers from outside the area got space in a tied house.

By the time Pete retired in the early 2000s he regularly had about five real ales on the bar.

But it was never the same after he left. Many regulars left. The hand pumps soon fell into disuse and although the pub began to do food at lunchtime it simply wasn’t the same any more.

Licensees came and went and nobody seemed to be able to make a go of this once-thriving pub and it closed in early 2010.

The Clifton dated back to the 19^th century and in the 1870s it was a beerhouse known as the Newport Arms. In those days that part of Bolton now bounded by Newport Street, Great Moor Street, Trinity Street and Blackhorse Street was known as Newtown and was inhabited mainly by Irish immigrants who moved to Bolton after the famine.

Despite that, the Clifton claimed to be celebrating its centenary in April 1987 although presumably it was the centenary of being renamed the Clifton. Anyone buying a pint with an old penny would get it at 1887 prices (1d, or 1/2p in new money). [1]

In the early part of the twentieth-century it was one of the few tied houses belonging to Leach’s Brewery based at the Albert Arms on Derby Street, a concern that went out of business in 1936 [see the entry for the Albert for more about Leach’s]. A member of the family, Wilbraham Leach, was the landlord of the Clifton in the 1890s and married another member of a pub-owning family, Emily Hilton, whose family owned the Uncle Tom’s Cabin pub and brewery on Lever Street. 

The Clifton was sold to the Empress Brewery of Manchester before becoming a Walkers pub in 1929. Walkers merged with Tetley of Leeds in 1961. [2]

The pub underwent a refurbishment in 1980 [3]. It was one of a number of Tetley pubs that were re-branded as Walker’s outlets and were given a new range of Walkers beers as well as a refurbishment in a more traditional style.  The bar was moved to the right-hand side of the pub and the premises were re-decorated throughout. Another refurbishment took place in 1986. [4]

The Clifton was renamed the Gateway around 2004 and after its closure it was up for sale for a few years before being converted into retail premises in 2013. The Post Office based across the road from the Clifton moved into the premises after being displaced due to the demolition of properties on that side of Newport Street for the construction of Bolton’s Bus/Rail Interchange.

The pub can be seen here in 2002  and  in the background in this picture from 2010.  But this is a great pic from 1989 Note the etched windows.

The Clifton Arms pictured around 1930.

[1] Bolton Beer Break, published by the Bolton Branch of the Campaign for Real Ale, Summer 1987 edition.

[2] Bolton Pubs 1800-2000 by Gordon Readyhough, published by Neil Richardson (2000).

[3] What’s Doing, the Greater Manchester Beer Drinkers monthly magazine, January 1981 edition

[4] What’s Doing, September 1986

New Globe/Rock House Hotel, corner of Kent Street and Duke Street

The New Globe pictured in May 2014. The pub had been shuttered earlier in the year but it appears that the new owners had taken up residency by the time the photo was taken. Kent Street runs to the right of the pub,  Duke Street to the left.

The New Globe closed at the end of 2013 and its days as a pub appear to have come to an end.

The pub was in existence as a beerhouse certainly as early as 1871 when Christopher Briggs was the licensee. It was known for all but the last few years of its life as the Rock House Hotel, perhaps due to its stone structure.

Although it was built a residential hotel, at first it had only a beer licence, but the Shakespeare on Bradshawgate had closed around 1875 and its full licence had simply been surrendered to the council. James Drinnan saw an opportunity and applied to have the Shakespeare’s licence transferred to the Rock. [1] He was successful and in 1883 the Rock House Hotel became a fully licensed inn.

The Drinnans had moved around the corner to a shop at 103 School Hill by the early part of the twentieth century and the Rock House was bought by Chadwick’s Walmersley Brewery in Bury. Chadwick’s remained in control until 1927 when they sold their brewery and 43 pubs to Walker & Homfray Ltd of Salford. Walker & Homfray merged with Wilson’s of Newton Heath, Manchester in 1949.

Wilson’s were in control of the Rock House for almost 40 years. In 1988 it was one of 210 pubs sold by the brewery to a property company named Heron International, but within weeks it had been sold again, one of 60 pubs bought by the Wolverhampton brewery, Banks’s. [2]

The layout of the Rock was similar to many nineteenth-century suburban pubs until a refurbishment in the nineties brought in an open-plan scheme.  There were two entrances: a main door on Kent Street and a side entrance on Duke Street. Before the refurb there was a ‘vault’ to the left of the Kent Street entrance with a lounge bar to the right that included a dart board at the far end. The Duke Street entrance led to a small side room which was used as a pool room and was still in situ after the refurb.

The area around the Rock changed over the final 30 years or so of its life. In the late-seventies and early-eighties the old terraces on Davenport Street, Duke Street, Clarence Street and School Hill were all swept away and were replaced by new housing. While there were pubs in the past on School Hill they had gone by the early-eighties, while the United Veterans Club on Duke Street went out of business in the nineties. If anything, the Vets was much busier than the Rock, especially at weekends when the club would put on cabaret singers.

Around 2002 the Globe on Higher Bridge Street closed its doors for the final time. The locals decamped almost en masse to the Rock and the pub was renamed the New Globe.

The pub carried on until 2012 when it closed for a while and in January 2013 planning application was put in for the New Globe’s conversion into a house. At the time it was stated that the pub had been closed for over a year – news to its regulars. In March 2013 planning application was granted but the pub remained open until just before Christmas 2013.

Although it was boarded up around the time of closure the sheet metal boarding was taken down by the time the above picture was taken in May 2014. Inscriptions on the windows were still visible publicising karaoke, singers and cheap booze offers and the words “The New Globe is here to stay.” It gave the impression of a pub doing its best to justify its existence, but licensed premises to a pubco are just pieces of property to squeeze income out of. The New Globe was obviously more valuable as piece of real estate than as licensed premises and the pub was closed and sold.

The Rock House in 1952.  Note the door on the corner leading to the vault. This was long gone even by the time this writer would visit the pub in the late seventies. 

The Rock House pictured in 1982 when it was a Wilson's pub.

[1] Pubs Of Bolton, 1800-2000. Published by Neil Richardson (2000).

[2] Bolton Beer Break, the magazine of the Bolton branch of the Campaign for Real Ale. Summer 1988 issue.

Ram's Head, 275 Derby Street

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The site of the Ram's Head at the Derby Street junction with  High Street. 

The Ram’s Head was situated at 275 Derby Street on the corner of High Street and operated as a pub for around 150 years. It was initially a beer house, meaning it opened after the 1830 Beer House Act was passed, and as such it was able to sell beer but not wines and spirits.

It seems we have a man named Peter Hodson to thank for the Ram’s Head. The 1836 Bolton Directory lists Mr Hodson as a beer retailer on Derby Street but by the time the 1843 Bolton Directory was published he was a licensed victualler, meaning he had a full licence to sell the harder stuff as well as beer. However, the 1841 census lists Mr Hodson as a ‘publican’ – in other words he had a public house licence by then. He ran the pub for some years as he is listed as the landlord in the 1853 Bolton Directory. [1]

The pub was later taken over by the local firm of Magee, Marshall and Co, whose brewery was situated just a couple of hundred yards away from the Ram’s Head on Cricket Street. It later became a Greenall’s pub as a result of their takeover of Magee’s in 1958.

The Ram’s Head had a classic pub layout: a lounge to the right of the front entrance and a ‘vault’ or pool room to the left with the bar laid out in the middle.It continued as licensed premises until the early part of the millennium, but the end for the Ram’s Head as a pub came in 1987. [2] 

The Crown Hotel, a little further down Derby Street, had been bought from Greenall's in 1980 by the Royal Antediluvian Order of the Buffaloes. At one time the Crown was Magees brewery tap, but despite the brewery being closed by Greenall’s in 1970 the company still owned the brewery site for its Cambrian soft drinks subsidiary.

Someone had the bright idea of knocking down the Crown Hotel to free up the land for a few more parking spaces – but what about the Buffaloes?  Greenall’s offered them the Ram’s Head instead. The premises closed as a pub and continued for around the next 15 years as the RAOB Club. When it finally closed its doors it was converted into an Asian grocery store.

The Ram's Head can be seen on the right of this view down Derby Street from the 1950s.

[1] Four Bolton Directories: 1821/2, 1836, 1843, 1853. Reprinted by Neil Richardson (1982).

[2] Bolton Beer Break, the magazine of the Bolton Branch of the Campaign for Real Ale. Spring 1988 issue.

Gypsy's Tent/Gipsy's Tent/Winston's, 178 Deansgate

The site of the Gypsy's Tent in April 2012 (copyright Google Street View). The pub has been closed for some years and work began in 2017 on converting the building into flats. 


The Gypsy’s Tent (or Gipsy’s Tent as it was spelt up until the nineties) was built in the 19^th century. Although the pub’s address  is on Deansgate it was severed from the rest of the street when Marsden Road bridge was built in 1877.

During the latter half of that century a band of travelling dentists would extract teeth at the rear of the building. As seems to have been common in Victorian dentistry a brass band was often present and would play tunes in order to drown out the patient’s screams. [1]

The pub came into the hands of local brewers William Tong in the early part of the 20^th century before being taken over by Walkers of Warrington in 1923. Walkers merged with Tetley’s in 1961 to form Tetley Walker but in August 1981 it was decided to put the Gipsy’s Tent (as it was then) up for sale. [2]

When the De Havilland company opened its first factory on Bolton on Garside Street, off Spa Road, in 1937 there were only 50 employees on site. However, a sports and social club was soon formed and lunchtime darts and domino sessions were held at the Gypsy's Tent.

A local firm, Bandmatic, took over the pub in 1983. They operated pool tables in a number of local pubs and had also bought the Rose Hill on Manchester Road, which they named Churchill’s.  The Gypsy’s Tent was renamed Winston’s when it reopened in September 1984 and a refurbishment saw the former three-roomed pub turned into an open-plan arrangement. Previously, there had been a vault to the left of the front entrance with a lounge on the other side of an 'island' bar.

By 1989 Regal Knight Hotels were the new owners [3] and the pub was sold again in 1996 with the upstairs room transformed into Romany’s function room.

The Gypsy’s Tent was closed in 2007 and although it was put up for sale it appears not to have been sold.  According to Bolton Council’s empty property list the owner ws a company named PJM Trading Ltd although a company by that name based in Widnes was dissolved in 2011. Attempts to sell the pub appear were unsuccessful until 2016 when it was sold by auction to a company hoping to turn it into flats. Work began in 2017.

The pub is situated on a slight incline leading down to the River Croal and there have been rumours that the foundations are now unsafe.

Here’s a photograph of the pub from 1990.

This eerie yet intriguing photoset by urban explorer website 28 Days Later shows the inside of the Gypsy's Tent in 2015 by which time the pub had been closed for eight years. Note the empty bottles on the bar, seemingly abandoned.

[1] Bolton Town Centre, A Modern History. Part One: Deansgate, Victoria Square, Churchgate and Surrounding Areas, 1900-1998. Published by Neil Richardson.

[2] What’s Doing, the Greater Manchester beer drinkers’ monthly magazine, August 1981.

[3] What’s Doing, March 1989.

Albion Hotel, Bridgeman Street

The bottom end of Bridgeman Street pictured in May 2012 (copyright Google Street View). The boarded-up Church Hotel is on the left. Station Street is on the left-hand side of the street running across the picture, Moncrieffe Street runs to the right. The Albion Hotel was actually situated on the other side of the role on the corner of a very brief continuation of Bridgeman Street, with the railway line running behind it.

This isn’t the Albion Hotel on Moor Lane. That’s very much alive and well, thankfully – this is another Albion, a long-lost pub once situated at the very bottom of Bridgeman Street, and although both pubs date back to around the middle of the nineteenth century by the dawn of the twentieth-century only the Moor Lane Albion remained.

Bridgeman Street was once said to be the longest street in Bolton. Initially it ran from Bradford Street all the way up to High Street and was later extended even further up to Adelaide Street.

In 1838 Bridgeman Street was affected by the opening of the Manchester to Bolton railway. This involved digging a huge ditch to accommodate the new rail tracks with Bridgeman Street carried over the line by means of a bridge.

By 1849 the Albion Hotel was in existence as a public house – not a beer house - at the corner of Bridgeman Street and Station Street, a street that still exists to this day. Station Street ran down the side of the old Trinity Station building for just a few yards until it met Moncrieffe Street outside the Church Hotel, but when the old station building was pulled down in 1987 Station Street was truncated just a few yards where it met the main carriageway.

The Albion’s existence became a little more precarious in 1884 when Bridgeman Street bridge was pulled down and the street split into two: the original Bridgeman Street, which ends where it meets Crook Street with the Church Hotel on the corner, and Lower Bridgeman Street which runs on the other side of the railway line.

The pub’s luck ran out in 1899. By then the Lancashire & Yorkshire Railway owned the premises and they decided to pull it down. An 1891 map of Bolton shows the Albion all alone, opposite the Church Hotel and with the railway line running behind it. It was very much in the way. Nathaniel Tyldesley had run the pub for over 20 years and, in his late sixties, he sold out to the railway company

Duke/Archduke Charles, Deane Road

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The Duke – or the Archduke Charles Hotel – to give it its full original name was situated at the bottom of Deane Road, close to its junction with Mayor Street and University Way (formerly College Way).

The pub was actually one of the earliest in the area and Gordon Readyhough states that it dated back to the late-eighteenth century. [1]

By the middle of the nineteenth century terraced streets had begun to spring up on the opposite side of Deane Road, which in those days was known as Blackburn Street from town up to Cannon Street and Pikes Lane from Cannon Street onwards. Punch Street, Duncan Street and Noble Street were all in existence by 1849 and soon the stretch beyond the Duke and down towards town would consist of more housing and more than a dozen beerhouses in the space of just a few hundred yards.

Not far from the Duke was Chamber Hall. This was the seat of a branch of the Ormrod family, wealthy industrialists who made their money from cotton and banking. James Ormrod was a partner in the Bolton Bank, which through various takeovers and mergers, now forms part of the Royal Bank Of Scotland.

Chamber Hall and its land ran from close to the Duke all the way up towards what is now the Pikes Lane Health Centre and down towards the Bolton to Preston railway line.

On James’s death in 1825, his son Peter inherited his stake in the bank as well as his cotton manufacturing business. From 1856 to 1858 Peter built Wyresdale Hall at Scorton, near Garstang, some 40 miles from Deane. Chamber Hall appears to have been abandoned as the Ormrods left for their country estate and the hall was later demolished.

Rows of streets sprang up on the former Chamber Hall site and by the end of the nineteenth century the Duke, which still had its own brewery at that time, had an abundance of potential custom on its doorstep. It also had competition in the shape of the Deane Conservative Club, which had opened up just a few doors away. Indeed, when the new streets close to the pub were laid out two of them – Beaconsfield Street and Salisbury Street - took the names of prominent Conservative politicians of the day.

The Duke’s brewhouse lasted until the early part of the twentieth century. The pub was then bought by a local firm, William Tong’s, whose Diamond Brewery was situated little more than half a mile from the Duke, further up Deane Road – as it had by then become known – at the junction with Balshaw Lane. Tong’s were bought out by George Shaw of Leigh in 1923 and Shaw’s were in turn swallowed up by Walker Cain Ltd of Warrington a few years later. Walker’s merged with Joshua Tetley of Leeds in 1961 to form Tetley Walker.

It was as a Walker’s pub that the photograph at the top of the page was taken in the late-twenties. By then all reference to Archduke Charles was gone and it was operating under its former nickname. Given that the original Archduke Charles was an Austrian general there is every chance that the name was changed during World War 1. 

Note the words ‘Parlour’ and ‘Vault’ etched into the windows. The pub had a central entrance with a classic two-roomed layout and that arrangement continued until it closed in the 1990s.

The Duke was sold off and a takeway now stands on its site. For a while a sign proclaimed that short row of buildings as ‘Duke’s Corner’ though that has now gone.

The Conservative Club moved some years ago to a site further up Wigan Road, though it closed in 2011.  The building was demolished and is now a parking site noted for the presence of a takeaway situated in a converted airliner.

[1] Bolton Pubs 1800-2000, by Gordon Readyhough. Published by Neil Richardson (2000).

The Duke pictured as it looked in April 2012 (Copyright Google Street View). The red double-decker bus in the distance is a mobile takeaway that often stands on the site of the original Deane Conservative Club.