Three Tuns, Bridge Street

Bridge Street looking towards Deansgate in April 2012 (Copyright Google Street View). The Three Tuns was situated were the roller shutter entrance to Wilkinsons is now. Older readers may remember a ginnel running down the gated entrance to the Jobwise property next to Wilkinsons. In the 19^th century the ginnel ran to Wood’s Court, one of the many courtyards in the centre of Bolton and which were often home to the town’s poorest inhabitants.

The name Three Tuns is one of Britain’s most common pub names. The sign of the Three Tuns represents the brewers’ trade being the symbol of the City Of London guilds for brewers and vintners.

There were three pubs by that name in Bolton. One was on Moor Lane. The Three Tuns on Chapel Street off Folds Road was the first to hold that name in around in 1800 and it was followed in 1808 by another Three Tuns just a few hundred yards away on Bridge Street. [1]

This Three Tuns was once used as a coroner’s court. It was not uncommon for pubs to be used for judicial sessions. Both the Queen Anneon Chancery Lane and the Boars Head  on Churchgate were used as courtrooms. The White Lion on Deansgate was the usual meeting place for the coroner’s court but one session in 1832 was held at the Three Tuns following the rape and manslaughter of a young woman not far away from the White Lion. It was felt that with the depth of local feeling at that end of Deansgate it was best to hold the hearing at the Three Tuns. [2]

In July 1916 a resident at the Three Tuns, George Brockbank, was killed while on duty in France. [3] George was 35 and had joined the 8^th Batallion of the Loyal North Lancashire Regiment. Although he was resident at the pub he appears to have been a lodger there. Both his parents were dead. His mother, Eliza, had died when George was just 10, while his father William, a Borough Surveyor, died when George was 19.

The Three Tuns lasted until November 1956. By then it was owned by Magee, Marshall & Co, who were looking to licence a new pub, the Willows on Willows Lane. Fortunately for them, Woolworth’s were looking to extend their Deansgate store into the properties at the top of Bridge Street. They bought all the properties down as far as the Three Tuns and the pub was demolished in 1957. The pub's full licence was transferred to the Willows.

The new Woolworth’s opened in March 1959 and closed almost 50 years later at the beginning of January 2009. A Wilkinson’s store opened on the site in 2011.

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

[2] Murderous Bolton, by Steve Fielding Published by  Amberley Publishing (2009). 

[3] DBBC. Accessed 12 August 2014.

Also the  Commonwealth War Graves Commission. Accessed 12 August 2014.

Rothwell Street Tavern, 32 Rothwell Street

Rothwell Street looking towards Derby Street in April 2012 (copyright Google Street View). The Rothwell Street Tavern was on the right-hand side on the corner with Parrot Street, which runs across the centre of the image. The site of the pub is now part of a widened Rothwell Street. Moor Mill and its entrance is on the left of the image. Vehicular access to the mill by large vehicles meant the street needed to be widened although this took place some years after the pub was demolished.

The Rothwell Street Tavern was situated on the corner of Rothwell Street and Parrot Street, just off Derby Street. This area of Bolton had a number of back-street pubs and even as late as the sixties the Houghton Street Tavern and Rothwell Street Tavern were still open.

The Rothwell Street Tavern dated back to around the 1860s. It wasn’t listed in the 1853 Bolton Directory, but the 1871 Directory lists a beerhouse at number 32 Rothwell Street owned by James Ridings, who was also described as a gasfitter.

We are indebted to reader JohnM for pointing out in the comments below that the Rothwell Street Tavern was occupied by the Mather family for over 40 years. John Mather was licensee according to the 1881 Census and the pub was taken over by his eldest son Samuel after John died in 1892. Samuel Mather was the licensee until his death in February 1913 and he was succeeded by his son John.

In August 1920 the decision was taken to sell the Rothwell Street Tavern. This followed the death at the pub of John Mather's brother Robert in February of that year. In 1996, Anne Miller, who was the great-granddaughter of Samuel Mather, wrote in the Bolton Evening News claimed Robert had drowned in a vat of beer in what sounds like a horrific accident.

The pub was bought by Thomas Howcroft of the Seven Stars in Little Lever and who had earlier run the Park Hotel on Egerton Street in Farnworth. His financial situation was strong enough for him to be able to keep on the Seven Stars. He installed a relative, William Gleave, to run the Rothwell Street Tavern.

An indication of Thomas Howcroft's success came in 1923 when he became one of the first people to travel to the FA Cup Final by air. Bolton Wanderers had reached their third final and played West Ham United in one of the most infamous matches of all time. A crowd estimated at over 250,000 descended on what was the first game to be played at Wembley Stadium. The Wanderers won the FA Cup for the first time with a 2-0 victory over their second division opponents. Thomas Howcroft, along with William Isherwood of the Prince William Hotel on Bradshawgate and five other people, were transported in a seven-seat Daimler aeroplane to London. Their journey began in Bolton at nine o'clock in the morning with a journey by train to Salford. From there they were conveyed by motor to the Alexandra Aerodrome in Chorlton and were anticipating a departure for Croydon Aerodrome at 9.35am. The return journey was expected to depart from Croydon at 6pm. Even over a century later some of those journey times look optimistic. The fare was £4 and 10 shillings (£4.50 in decimal money). That's the equivalent of £245 return in 2026. There is no word of whether or not Thomas Howcroft and the rest of his party actually made the game given the chaos at Wembley that day. Many people who arrived after 1pm weren't able to gain access to the stadium such was the chaos at Wembley.

The Rothwell Street Tavern had its own brewery situated behind the pub. Thomas Howcroft was a brewer of some repute and was supplying a number of local pubs and clubs as well as his two tied outlets. In 1937 the opportunity arose to purchase the Model Brewery on Spa Road. Built in 1874, the brewery had been known for the first 30 years of its life as the Park View Brewery as it was directly opposite Queens Park. But during the 63 years before it was bought by Thomas Howcroft it had changed hands on a number of occasions. It was initially Walker’s Bolton Brewery Company Ltd before becoming the Spa Wells Brewery Company Ltd and, in 1904, it was taken over by James Jackson & Sons Ltd. Jackson’s were bought out by George Shaw & Co Ltd of Leigh in 1927 and the brewery was sold again the following year to the Bolton Free Brewery Company Ltd. That company changed its name to Bolton and District Clubs Brewery Company Ltd in 1929 and brewed primarily for the town’s working men’s and political clubs. It went out of business in 1935 and the Model Brewery was up for sale for two years before being bought by Howcroft's in 1937.

The Rothwell Street Tavern was offered on a lease after Thomas Howcroft moved production to the Model Brewery. The pub was put up for sale in February 1939 and became the second Bolton pub to be bought by the Leeds firm of Joshua Tetley (the Sweet Green Tavern had been purchased in 1938). It received a full drinks licence in 1961.

As early as 1953 there were plans for the redevelopment of the Derby Street area. The Rothwell Street Tavern was even named in a newspaper report (Bolton Evening News, 14 January 1953) as being at risk. That was over a decade-and-a-half before the demolition men eventually moved in.

In March 1969 Bolton Council published a list of properties to be cleared in the Bradford Ward area. Much of the south side of the bottom part of Derby Street along with properties on streets such as Parrot Street, Shaw Street and Rothwell Street were all condemned. A number of pubs were also on the list including the Rothwell Street Tavern. The pub's owner, Tetley Walker, hired a solicitor to plea at the public enquiry for a reprieve for the Rothwell Street Tavern and another condemned pub, the Albert on Derby Street. The brewery accepted that some pubs would be lost even though new houses would be built on some of the cleared land, However, only the Albert was spared. The Rothwell Street Tavern closed in early 1970. To add insult to injury on 27 February of that year fire fighters were called out after the derelict building caught fire. Housing was later built on the site.

As for the Howcrofts their brewery on Spa Road lasted until 1969 when it was closed after a merger with the Warrington firm of B. Cunningham and Co. But Thomas Howcroft's sons, Atherton and Jack, made a name for themselves in the world of nightclubs. In June 1961 they opened the Casino Club on Crompton Way (later Copperfields and the Bees Knees). Casino clubs were also opened at Blackpool, Burnley and Westhoughton, as well as one in Wigan which became popular with Northern Soul enthusiasts in the seventies after the Howcrofts were off the scene. By all accounts, Atherton Howcroft was a formidable figure. “Think of Lord Alan Sugar but worse,” contributor Ken Hampson once wrote on the now-defunct lankybeat.com.

A descendent of the Howcrofts now runs Henighan’s pub in the Little Lever.

Some of Howcroft’s bottle labels can be seen here. 

Roebuck, Kay Street

The bottom of Manor Street with Bow Street going off to the left, Folds Road to the right and, in the distance and beyond the traffic lights, what’s left of Kay Street. The Roebuck stood at the bottom of Kay Street with its junction with Bow Street, where the trees are in the middle of the photo. Here’s the same shot some 60 or 70 years earlier in an undated picture from the Bolton News archives. Then, as now, the Dog & Partridge is on the right of the shot with the Co-op Bakery premises, which later became the head office and warehouse of Edwin P Lees on the other side of Kay Street from the Roebuck.

The Roebuck Hotel was situated at number 1 Kay Street, on the corner of Bow Street. The now empty site of the pub can still be seen diagonally opposite the Dog & Partridge at the bottom of Manor Street.

The Roebuck dates back to the first decade of the nineteenth century. Kay Street ran from the junction with Bow Street, Manor Street and Folds Road up to the junction with Higher Bridge Street some three-quarters of a mile away. 

A number of maps still show Kay Street as the continuation of the dual carriageway at the end of St Peters Way up to its end at Higher Bridge Street. Confusingly, the branch of B&Q gives its address as Roundhill Way, while the Britannia Garage insists its address is still Kay Street. The truncated old street runs for little more than 100 yards from Bow Street up to St George’s Street.

One of the Roebuck’s former landlords was a motor pioneer in the town. 

There is a curious connection between pub landlords in Bolton and the early days of the motor industry. In the early-twentieth century John Bromilow was the landlord of the Boar’s Head on Churchgate. He went on to become part of the Bromilow & Edwards partnership that exists today as Edbro. Ross Isherwood ran one of the town’s early motor repair garages as well as running the Prince William on Bradshawgate. Meanwhile,  Stanley Parker, the landlord of the  Roebuck in the early years of the twentieth century, also went into the motor trade. In 1911 he was listed as the proprietor of the Stanley Garage on Westbrook Street, off Lower Bridgeman Street. He later moved to 71 Bradshawgate, next to Silverwell Yard and by 1922 he was at 157-159 Bradshawgate trading as as Parkers. The firm was later known as Parkers of Bolton and was a motor dealership for many years until the early-nineties. Stanley Parker died in 1948. [1]

The Roebuck was taken over by Tong’s and it became a Walker’s house when Tong’s were bought out in 1923. In 1960, Walker’s built a new estate pub, the Prince Rupert on the Orlit Estate just off Lever Edge Lane. With a number of pubs already in the town centre they saw that a licence transfer was more desirable than attempting to secure a new licence. Plus the Roebuck was licensed to sell wines and spirits rather than beer. [2]

Walkers successfully applied to transfer the Roebuck’s licence to the Prince Rupert on  Holmeswood Road, off Lever Edge Lane. The Roebuck closed in March 1960 and the building was demolished in February 1961.

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

[2] Bolton Pubs, 1800-2000, by Gordon Readyhough.