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.
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