Three Tuns (Old Three Tuns Hotel), Moor Lane

The Old Three Tuns can be seen boarded up in the distance on this 1973 photograph from the Bolton Library and Museums Service collection (copyright Bolton Council).

There were three pubs in Bolton by the name of the Three Tuns. One was on Bridge Street, one on Chapel Street, off Folds Road, and this one on Moor Lane opposite what is now the fire station.

Having multiple pubs with the same name wasn’t uncommon. Bolton had two Nags Heads – the Higher Nags and the Lower Nags– two Millstones, two pubs named the Hen and Chickens, two Dog and Partridges and there was a whole host of pubs named the  Bowling Green.  

The full name of this pub was the Old Three Tuns Hotel. Having ‘Old’ as a prefix usually denoted it was the original. Not so in this case. The Three Tuns on Chapel Street was in existence by 1800, the Old Three Tuns on Moor Lane followed a few years later in 1804.

The pub was a meeting place for the St John’s Lodge of the Freemasons. The lodge was formed in 1815 in Chowbent (or Atherton as it is now known). Unusually, it had its headquarters in a number of towns moving from Chowbent to Tyldesley and then to Halshaw Moor (now Farnworth) before basing itself at the Three Tuns in 1836. The lodge’s itchy feet were in evidence yet again when it upped sticks just two years later and it met at three more Bolton pubs before returning to the Three Tuns in 1842. It remained at the pub for the next 31 years. One of the oldest lodges in the country, St John’s Lodge number 348 still exists and meets these days at the Masonic Hall on Silverwell Street. [1]

The part of Moor Lane around the bottom end of Deane Road gave us two of  Bolton’s oldest sporting institutions. Bolton Wanderers were formed at Christ Church school and were headquartered at the nearby Britannia Inn before moving to Burnden Park in 1895. Meanwhile, in 1908, Bolton United Harriers were formed at the Three Tuns.

One of the pub's landlords who went on to greater things was Frank Whittle. He ran the pub in the early-sixties before the licensed trade took him off to a further seven pubs in various parts of the country. Frank ended up in Stowmarket, Suffolk, where he served as a local councillor and was the town’s mayor in 2007-08. [2]

The Three Tuns was a Magees pub for much of the twentieth century. It was then bought by Greenall Whitley as part of their takeover of Magees in 1958 and the pub lasted until 1973. Council plans for the southern limb of the inner relief road meant it was bought under a compulsory purchase order and demolished soon after it closed.  

[1] Lane's Masonic Records. Retrieved 25 October 2014.
[2] Leigh Journal. 14 May 2008. Retrieved 25 October 2014.

Jolly Waggoner, Deane Road

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The Jolly Waggoner, pictured around 1975. Image from the Bolton Library and Museum Services collection. Copyright Bolton Council.

The Jolly Waggoner was originally a shop at the gable end of Balshaw Street, which ran down the side of the pub.

In the early-1840s a local character named Joseph Atherton owned a donkey and cart and had a business selling cockles and mussels on the streets of Gate Pike, as the area at the bottom of Deane Brow was known. ‘Cockle Joe,’ as he was known, eventually moved to the top of Balshaw Street where he opened a shop and traded as a greengrocer and fishmonger. He was still known as ‘Cockle Joe’ even after expanding his product range and he was later joined in the business by his son Amos, nicknamed ‘Yam Cockle’.

An un-named beerhouse had previously been run by Richard Marsh in the 1840s from his small house in Balshaw Lane, but that had closed by 1853. The Farmers Arms closed in 1869 while the Split Crow beerhouse had also closed. In the early-1870s Cockle Joe sold his shop and on the addition of an extension the premises were converted into two separate businesses. These fronted the main road, then known as Pikes Lane but later re-named Deane Road. One of the businesses was a butcher’s shop while the rest of the premises, on the Balshaw Street side, became a beerhouse.

The licensed premises were originally known as the Red Herring Inn, perhaps as a nod to Cockle Joe, who by now had moved to the top of Gilnow Lane. 

In 1875, John Bennett became licensee. Bennett was a popular local figure, a jovial character who drove his lorry and three horses around Gate Pike and it was from Bennett that the pub took its new name – the Jolly Waggoner.

The pub was an early Magees outlet. Hazel Morgan was born at the pub in 1934 – her parents were managers there for 38 years. Her recollections of the pub are contained here on the Bolton Revisited site. 

One of Hazel’s anecdotes worth repeating concerned her bridesmaid, Midge, a chimpanzee belonging to Edgar and Phyllis Charlton who owned the pet shop at 148 Derby Street. Hazel’s husband, David Harrison, worked for the Charltons. One night, as Hazel and David slept at the Jolly Waggoner there was a screech of brakes from the street outside. Midge had escaped from the shop on Derby Street and had run down to Deane Road where she narrowly escaped being run over by a lorry. More recollections of Midge can be seen here and here. 

The Jolly Waggoner was among the first of a huge raft of Bolton beer houses to obtain full public house licenses at the start of the sixties. A large number of pubs successfully applied in 1961, but the year before, in 1960, the Jolly Waggoner was one of a small number that tested the water with an application.

By then it was a Greenall Whitley pub. The image at the top of the page was taken around 1975, according to the Bolton archive records. That would have been five years after Greenall’s had closed Magee’s brewery on Derby Street though it is possible that the photo was taken earlier than 1975.  An earlier image can be seen here in the Bolton News archives.The pub had long since expanded into the adjoining retail premises.

Greenall’s eventually got out of brewing and the licensed trade. Its tied estate was split up and by the time the Jolly Waggoner closed in 2006 it was owned by Hyperhold Ltd, a small operator of pubs and bars that has since gone out of business. 

The Jolly Waggoner was sold de-licensed. It initially became a cybercafé and business centre but is now in use as a restaurant.

The Jolly Waggoners pictured in 2012

Split Crow, Pikes Lane

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Fern Street runs off to the right on this April 2012 image (copyright Google Street View), Deane Road runs to the left. The boarded-up Jolly Waggoner can be seen in the distance, the Lilian Hamer home is in the foreground. The Split Crow was close to the corner with Fern  Street, roughly where the patch of grass is.

The Split Crow is one of those long-lost pubs that even failed to make it into any of Gordon Readyhough’s books, so brief was its existence. We have the early-twentieth century Methodist historian Hannah Cottrell to remind us that it ever existed.

In the early-twenties Mrs Cottrell set out to write a history of the Methodist church on Fern Street, off Deane Road. As an illustration  she sets out a vision of the area of Deane known as Gate Pike in the early-1840s immediately prior to the arrival of Methodism.

Gate Pike was a hamlet situated roughly halfway between the outskirts of Bolton and Deane church, at the foot of Deane Brow. It consisted of just three streets: Balshaw Street, Markland Street (later Gate Street) and Moss Street (later Fern Street). The area still exists around by the former Jolly Waggoners pub and the Lilian Hamer old people’s home.

Mrs Cottrell describes some of the characters who lived in the area at the time and the nicknames they were given. There was ‘Owd Woof’ who ran the corner shop at the top of Balshaw Street; Joseph Atherton – ‘Cockle Joe’ – who sold cockles and mussels from a wheelbarrow. ‘Cockle Joe’ was succeeded in the business by his son Amos, nicknamed ‘Yam Cockle’. A clogger named Aspinall was known as ‘Old Sootum’, the Heaton family were known as the ‘Yettons,’ ‘Saut Bob’ was the rag-and-bone man and ‘Owd Hardneck’ the army pensioner.

But as a Methodist it was the plethora of drinking establishments that Mrs Cottrell took aim at. Owd Woof sold beer at his shop; a man named Dick Marsh sold beer at his cottage at the top of Balshaw Street; there was the Farmer’s Arms, the Gibraltar Rock, the Cross Guns and the Split Crow, all within a short walk from each other.

For a small community of perhaps a few hundred people that is a lot of places to sell beer. The Methodists’ promotion of the abstinence from alcohol meant that as they expanded from their chapel at Ridgway Gates in the centre of Bolton, a small self-contained community such as Gate Pike where beer was widely available meant it was a target for the establishment of a Methodist presence. Indeed, the place was known to them as ‘Hell’s Mouth’.

“Swearing, drinking and gambling were excessively indulged in by many of the men whose wives and families were miserably neglected. Their running dogs, fighting cocks and pigeons received far more attention and consideration than did their little children.” [1]

The Split Crow was situated on land now occupied by the Lilian Hamer home. It was in the middle of a row of three houses on Pikes Lane, which later became Deane Road. Next door, on the corner of Moss Street (was William Worthington’s butchers shop where calves and sheep were slaughtered in the cellar.

The Methodists arrived in the area in the spring of 1843 when they rented a cottage, 34 Balshaw Street. The Split Crow was already in operation by then having sprung up in the aftermath of the 1830 Beerhouses Act.

The pub closed some time in the 1850s. By then the Methodists had moved from Balshaw Street to Moss Street (renamed Fern Street around 1869) where they built a small chapel in 1843. In a twist of irony they bought the Split Crow. It reverted back to a private residence and became the chapel-keeper’s house of the Wesleyan chapel.

In 1927 the Methodists moved to a new church a few yards away on Deane Road on land now occupied by Bolton Blinds. The old Fern Street Wesleyan church was converted into a cinema, the Plaza, and number 336 became part of the cinema complex. The Plaza became the Windsor in January 1937 and closed in 1962. [2]

The Lilian Hamer old people’s home was built on the site in 1973. That closed in 2009 and remains vacant. An attempt to sell the home for £325,000 failed in 2010.

[1] Gate Pike: The Story Of 80 Years’ Methodism, 1843-1923, by Hannah Cottrell (Mrs Albert Openshaw). Originally published by Tillotsons (Bolton) Ltd (1924). The book is a comprehensive history of the Wesleyan church up to that time and includes a history of the bottom part of Deane from Deane Brow and Gate Pike down to Chamber Hall closer to town.

[2] Cinema Treasures website. Retrieved 23 October 2014.

African Chief, Moss Street

Here’s an interesting photo. It’s from the Bolton Libraries and Museum collection. (Copyright Bolton Council) but not much is known about the image.

‘The African’ – African what? It looks as though it may have been a pub sign, in which case it could have been the African Chief on Moss Street. The vehicle in the picture and the dress of the man walking up the street and the men further up all suggest it is later than the turn of the century so it would have been taken some years after the pub closed, which was in 1908.

The African Chief dated back to the 1860s when it was owned by Charles Seddon of the St George’s Hotel, St George’s Road. [1] By 1871 it was one of two beerhouses in Moss Street: one at number 4 owned by George Davison and one at number 5 owned by David Orrell. This latter establishment is more likely to have been the African Chief.

A number of Irish families lived in Moss Street in the 1880s and 1890s. In 1881, the Irish-born William Thompson and his wife Mary kept the pub. Another Irishman, Francis Lenaughan, would soon succeed him. Other Irish-born residents in the street included the Queenans and the Linehans. [2]

The African Chief became an Atkinson’s pub and in 1898 it came into the hands of the Manchester brewery Cornbrook’s after they took over Boardman’s brewery who had bought out Atkinson’s in 1895. Cornbrook’s obviously decided to sell the African Chief as it was owned by Hamer’s when its licence was refused in 1908.

So is the photo of the African Chief? It’s possible but by no means certain. A look at a map of the area in 1893 shows Moss Street coming to an end by Victoria Mills but all we really have to go off is an incomplete sign.

Moss Street was partly redeveloped in the twenties and Moss Street Baths were built in 1924 on the site of the former Richmond Terrace and Richmond Place. The baths remained open until 1987.

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

[2] About Laurence Queenan. Retrieved 20 October 2014.

Red Lion, Crook Street

The Red Lion was situated at the Derby Street end of Crook Street, just four doors along from the Flying Horse.

The pub dated back to the 1840s, probably the latter end of that decade. It first appears in the 1849 licensing records when the licensee was James Nuttall.

The Red Lion was owned by William T Settle whose brewery was based near the Rose and Crown pub, off Turton Street. However, in the early days of its ownership the brewery was known as Booth’s. William T Settle was born out of wedlock to Robert Booth and Rachel Settle. The couple later married and had two more sons, Albert and Daniel. Meanwhile, William T Settle went to work in the Rose and Crown’s brewery as a 14-year-old and later took over the business. He expanded the tied estate and installed his brothers at two of its pubs, Daniel at the Rope and Anchor on Kay Street and Albert at the Red Lion.

One day, during a visit to the pub, William and Albert got into an argument during the course of which Albert remarked that the name of the brewery – Booth’s – didn’t correspond with William’s surname of Settle. William picked up a stool, smashed the window with the Booth’s brewery name on it and said “It will have Settle’s Ales on it tomorrow”. All the pubs were subsequently changed to Settle’s.

Settle’s remained in control of the Red Lion until 1951. The brewery and its pubs were then sold to Dutton’s of Blackburn.

The Red Lion last for just two more years before being closed in 1953. It remained standing for some years afterwards but it was demolished in the mid seventies.

This image of the slip road to Aldi looking towards the bottom of Derby Street was taken in May 2012 and is copyright Google Street View. The site of the Red Lion was on the left of the image roughly where the slip road starts. 

Grapes Hotel, Victoria Square

The Grapes is on the right of this photograph taken from the clock tower of the Town Hall around 1900. Nearby shops included Hyde Brothers, T Hindle, the  British and Colonial Meat Company and Charles Bowker. Photograph from the Bolton Library and Museums Service collection. Copyright Bolton Council.

The Grapes was situated on Victoria Square, though when it opened in 1840 the square was actually the New Market Place

During the early part of the nineteenth century, like in so many of the old-established pubs in Bolton, this pub played host to numerous political discussion groups [1]. The politics discussed depended on how well-furbished the pub was. The Ship on Bradshawgate was quite plush and was frequented by the town’s businessmen, as was the Swan Hotel. The customers in those pubs were more likely to lean towards the Tory Party. The George and Dragon on Oxford Street played host to a Liberal debating society, while in the poorer part of Bolton, the Dog Inn – also known as the Talbot – on Brown Street was a meeting place for more left-wing radical politics. [2]

In the Grapes’ early days it was adjoined by a portable theatre which had been placed there before the pub opened. Parish’s fit-up travelling theatre performed Margaret’s Ghost there in February 1836. The California market was subsequently situated next to the pub. [3]

Gordon Readyhough describes the Grapes as “a typical town centre pub”. Entrances were in Victoria Square and in Exchange Street which still runs down by the side of the former site of the pub. [4]

The Grapes closed in 1960 and was demolished in the same year. Shops were built on the site. A Wimpy bar was on part of the site for many years. That was succeeded by Kingburger and now a café named Tiffany's In The Square.  

[1] Leisure In Bolton, 1750-1900, Robert Poole, 1982

[2] Malcolm Hardman’s book Classic Soil: Community, Aspiration, and Debate in the Bolton Region of Lancashire, 1819-1845 goes much deeper into the local politics of that time.

[3] Arthur Lloyd’s theatre history site.  Accessed 14 October 2014.

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

Oscar's, The Wellsprings, Le Mans Crescent

An Oscar's gig guide from the spring of 1994. Members of Lost Boys are now in Glam 45.

Oscar’s opened in 1989 in the cellar of The Wellsprings, an office block built on the site of which a large stone building that once housed Bolton Central Library.

The old library building opened in 1893 but closed in 1932 when the library service moved to the newly-built Civic Centre across the road. It remains there to this day. Its former premises was the Victoria (Civic) Restaurant from 1948 to 1951 before housing National Insurance and local government offices until they moved to Elizabeth House when that was completed in 1971. It was subsequently used as the Bibliographic Services unit of the library until it was demolished in the mid-eighties. The Wellsprings was built in its place. [1]

Part of the entrance to Oscar’s was on the site of the Town Hall Hotel, a former pub that closed in 1933.

Oscar’s was initially a café bar but it soon gained a reputation as a live music venue and it had live acts on most nights of the week as the above leaflet shows. It’s hard to imagine a pub having so much live music on these days with only the Alma Inn or the Dog and Partridge coming close.

The pub was run by the same management team that ran Hawthorn's on Spa Road. 

Oscar's closed around 2004, supposedly when the lease ran out. Far from the premises being taken up by another pub lessee the premises were given over to a ladies-only gym.

A night-time view of The Wellsprings from March 1996 can be seen here.  

Another gig poster from the 1990s can be found here. 

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

Bush Hotel - Star Inn - Star Concert Room, Churchgate

The Bush Hotel – formerly the Star and before that the Cock Inn - on Churchgate pictured in 1938. The Bush is in front of Theatre Royal’s canopy as we look. The Venue currently stands on the site.

The music hall was the most popular form of mass entertainment for the working-class public of Britain in the nineteenth century. In his book Popular Leisure And The Music Hall in 19th century Bolton written in 1982, Robert Poole claims the first music hall in Britain was at the Millstone on Crown Street in Bolton where landlord Thomas Sharples opened a singing and supper room around 1830. That claim has been challenged by some who believe the music hall began in London at least two years earlier or that its origins were in the coffee taverns of the late-18^th century. Even so, music hall didn't become a cultural phenomenon until around 1850 by which time Thomas Sharples had been in business in Bolton for 20 years. It has been claimed that Sharples was once a ventriloquist travelling from pub to pub with his dummy before he took over the Millstone (Moran family reminiscences, Bolton Evening News, 25 April 1882).

The Millstone still exists today and given the size of the pub – twice the size now as it was before it was extended in 2000 - such a supper room can only have been held upstairs.

No doubt the size of the Millstone hindered Thomas Sharples and his ambitions. Bolton's centre was Churchgate and we know that by 1838 Sharples had also taken on the Cock, a pub that had existed since at least the 1770s and allegedly got its name from the cock fights held there. It was a little more genteel by now and it was popular with churchgoers who would dine there on a Sunday lunchtime after attending service at the nearby Parish Church.

The Bolton Chronicle of 4 August 1838 reported that the Albion Lodge No. 46 of the United Odd Fellows held their annual dinner at the pub - “an excellent dinner provided by the worthy host and hostess, Mr and Mrs Sharples.”

However, not all functions held at the Cock were as civilised as the Odd Fellows. The Bolton Chronicle of 6 July 1839 reported that Robert Ogden was charged with being disorderly and indecently assaulting a number of females at the pub. The incident happened during a christening when Ogden introduced himself into the assembled company and, as the paper put it “took indecent liberties,” with some of the females. “To preserve their chastity he was given into custody.” He was fined 20 shillings (£1) plus costs.

By June 1840, the Cock had become the Star and Thomas Sharples laid the corner stone for the new music room. Ever the showman he put on a ceremony in order to extract the maximum publicity with singers performing the national anthem prior to coins from the reigns of George II, George III, George IV, William IV and Queen Victoria all being deposited beneath the stone.

The Bolton Chronicle was impressed. In its edition of 13 June 1840, the paper said:

“This room, we understand, when completed, is intended as a lounge, music room and museum, and in addition to a great number of interesting and valuable curiosities, will be the repository of Mr Sharples's valuable selection of paintings. For size, we believe it will exceed any other room in the town.”

The Chronicle kept its readers abreast of progress and on 9 September 1840 it gushed at the show Sharples put on for the opening night of the Star's music room. “It was enrapturing beyond conception,” said the paper.

Even the transfer two months later of two Oddfellow lodges, “Welcome Traveller” and “Orthodox”, from the Millstone, was accompanied by a show. Members of the two lodges walked in procession the short distance from the Millstone to the Star and as they approached the pub Thomas Sharples set off fireworks to welcome them. Mrs Sharples then put on a meal for no fewer than 300 people.

Like many music halls and concert room there were a variety of acts, some of which involved wild animals. On 11 February 1844, Matthew Ferguson, the keeper of the menagerie, was killed by Barney, one of the Star’s leopards. One version claims that Barney didn’t take too kindly to Ferguson’s liberal use of the whip and attacked the keeper. Some 28 years later, on 4 January 1872, the Bolton Evening News made reference to the incident but put a different spin on the circumstances. It claimed Ferguson had had a drink and decided to play with Barney at which point the animal turned on him and mauled him to death. There was no-one else present at the time. Ferguson was discovered some time later with Barney standing over him and moaning. Thomas Sharples had Barney destroyed and the animal was stuffed before being put on display in the pub's museum.

Sharples was refused a licence to put on theatrical performances so the entertainment was of the kind that would typify music hall for the next 70 years or so. A programme from 1845 detailed F A Canfield, the American Samson and wonder of the world, the Southern Minstrels, and gymnastic pantomimists Nunn, Walker, Honey and Steward.

Such was the fame of the Star that Thomas Sharples put on a special train from Manchester in September 1845. Patrons could enjoy a trip to Bolton where they could take in the curiosities of the Star's museum followed by a concert in the saloon “and all for the small charge of a shilling,” he told the Bolton Chronicle.

In July 1852 three people were killed following the collapse of one of the walls in the Star’s concert room. A fire six days earlier had made the wall unsafe and it was in the process of being demolished when it collapsed on to some cottages in nearby Wigan Lane. The inhabitants of Wigan Lane were, as the Bolton Chronicle of 24 July 1852 put it: “Irish people of the lowest orders” and the buildings were inhabited almost to the point of overcrowding. Michael Larkin, whose age was given as between 40 and 50, Mary Curley aged 38, and a ten-year-old child, Nabby Kilgallen, all died having been buried by the collapsed wall, Michael Larkin had been eating his breakfast, Mary Curley had been outside in Wigan Lane and Nabby Kilgallen was in bed. The collapse happened at ten o'clock in the morning, a time when the vast majority of the inhabitants of Wigan Lane were out at work thereby avoiding a greater death toll. A verdict of accidental death was passed by the jury at an inquest the same evening. Most of the cottages in Wigan Lane were destroyed and the other inhabitants were rehoused by the authorities.

At that stage the Star had the reputation of being one of the most popular and attractive concert rooms in the country. It also contained a museum the wonders of which were famed far and wide – 262 items including paintings, wax figures and a piece of pressed iron from Hick’s foundry on Bridgeman Street. Most were destroyed along with the stuffed effigy of Barney the tiger.

William Sharples had by now taken over the business from his father. Thomas Sharples retired to a house on Chorley New Road where he died in 1853, aged 50.

A month after the collapse of the wall, in August 1852, William Sharples tried to sell the Star, but those efforts were affected by the decision of local magistrates to suspend the licences of both the Star and the Millstone. Without a licence the Star was much less of an attraction to would-be purchasers. When it came up for auction it failed to realise its reserve price of £1100 and was withdrawn from sale. The month after the auction, in October 1852, both the Star and the Millstone regained their licences.

The Star's vaults were still open but the site of the former music room was empty. William Sharples offered to build a room on site to be used by the council as a library, but the offer was rejected.

In 1861, William Sharples bought the axe that was reputedly  used in the beheading of the Earl of Derby outside the Man and Scythe in 1651. He died in July the following year aged 38. His widow Ruth Rigg Sharples died four months later aged just 30. More on the axe here.

William Sharples remained at the Star until his death. His estate of £6000 would be worth around £700,000 today so the pub game had been good to him. For the next seven years it was run by a relative, John Smith, but by 1870 it was in the hands of a man who did much to bring back the glory days of the Star: J. P. Weston.

James Pitney was born in Somerton, Somerset, in 1831. He got into the entertainment industry while still a teenager. Indeed, the 1851 Census has him living with his family at Shoreditch, Middlesex – occupation: “clown”. By 1857 he was using the name James Pitney Weston. That Christmas he played the clown in a comic pantomime at the Theatre Royal, Norwich, and was credited with arranging the comic scenes. Reviews of the time described him as "the Clown of all Nations".

By 1860, Weston was the manager of the Theatre Royal, Bolton, just a few doors along from the Star. That year he wrote a pantomime especially for his theatre entitled The Storm King's Dream, Or, Harlequin Rainbow and the Fairyof the Sunlit City of the Sea.  Initially he lodged at 19 Bath Street with his wife Mary Ann and sister-in-law Rose Blake, but by 1871 he was living on Churchgate.

From 1870 Weston was initially the lessee of the Star, but in 1872 he bought the pub, its concert hall, the nearby Angel Inn and the Theatre Royal for £4900.

Bolton's theatreland evokes images of something akin to London's West End but it was nothing of the sort. In 1871, a barman at the Star abducted Christine Masper, a girl under the age of 16. He was sentenced to three months imprisonment although as the Bolton Evening News pointed out in its issue of 14 March 1871, had she been the heiress to any money or property, he would have received between three and 14 years' penal servitude.

The attached Angel Inn was part of a betting scandal in 1873 which found the Star's manager Robert Blake in court. There was also an attempt to remove the licences of both the Star and the Angel in 1873 as part of a Victorian crackdown on anything that might be considered immoral. That included bawdy music hall songs. Fortunately, the police were on Weston's side and he escaped without censure.

Weston only ran the Star for seven years, from 1870 to 1877. However, he over-stretched himself financially not so much in Bolton but elsewhere. He also owned a number of other theatres in the north-west including the Liverpool Palace Of Varieties which he renamed the New Albert Theatre and where he appeared himself as Hamlet in 1874. He also bought the rights to London dramas and adapted them for his own theatres. (See An Illustrated History of British Theatre and Performance: Volume Two - From the Industrial Revolution to the Digital Age by Robert Leach, published by Routledge, 2018).

In 1877 Weston decided to sell his Bolton properties. He moved to Dawes Street where he oversaw the conversion of the former Temple Mill to the Temple Opera House. He was forced to deny claims he was going to America but in May 1878 James Pitney Weston was declared bankrupt. The order was later annulled but it was the end of his time as an impressario. Weston moved to the Rochdale area and he was lodging with the Swindells family by 1881. His wife Mary Ann died in 1884 but Weston remarried in 1890. He married 23-year-old Rose Emily Pannett in Salford declaring his own age to be 55. In reality he was at least four years older. He described himself at that time as a caterer.

The Bolton Evening News of 29 October 1902 announced the death of James Pitney Weston in Leeds the previous night. The paper admitted he'd had “a chequered career” since he left Bolton. Weston would have been 71 years old at the time of his death and he was employed by Messrs Dotteridge and Longton, theatrical proprietors, in Leeds.

The Star remained as lively as ever. In October 1882, William Smethurst was sentenced to three months' hard labour after attempting to bite off the ear of Thomas Almond following an argument in the music room.

One Saturday night in August 1891 the pub's landlady called the police to remove from the lobby a group of men who were refusing to leave. Police forcibly removed 22-year-old William Henry Lyons of Waterloo Street but he began a disturbance on the corner of Bradshawgate and the police went to take him into custody. A crowd gathered and were called upon by Lyons to help free him. This they tried to do and blows rained down on the police officers. They got Lyons as far as Mealhouse Lane where the crowd began throwing bottles and other missiles. Thomas Chisnall of Lorne Street, Moses Gate, called for the crowd to “kick the officers' heads off” [Bolton Evening News, 3 August 1891]. Police eventually got Lyons to the town hall and they also arrested Chisnall and another man, James Walkden. In defence, Lyons' solicitor “pleaded for mitigation on account of having had some drink, and also having lost his hat.” Lyons was fined a total of 40 shillings. The two other men were also fined.

In 1895, the Star lost its music licence. Magistrates heard from police that the pub was the scene of frequent disorder. Detective Bootham stated that on 14 April 1894 he visited the Star. There were two music rooms in the pub. Downstairs there were 70-80 people, mostly elderly and listening to a singer. There was good order. Upstairs there were about 200 people aged between 22 and 55 one-third of whom were female. About four or five young men were creating a disturbance, several rows were in progress, there was a good deal of cursing and shouting and nobody was listening to the music. It was also stiflingly hot. The ceiling of the Star was only eight feet five inches high “where professional evidence would ought to tell them it should be 12ft high.” [Bolton Evening News, 31 January 1895]. Council regulations for the minimum height of rooms in houses constructed at that time recommended rooms should be 9ft high. The pub's owners, local brewer John Atkinson and Co, stated they would take off the pub's roof and raise the height of the ceiling. However, the magistrates declined the licence and music at the Star came to an end. The following year, landlord John Parkinson was up in court for flouting the ban. Police had visited the Star 23 times and found a piano being played by what turned out to be Mr Parkinson's son. There was also singing and police claimed on one occasion a couple were seen dancing. Parkinson claimed the room wasn't a music room but one where refreshments were consumed and magistrates dismissed the case. The Star applied for a music licence in 1897 and twice in 1902, but the applications failed on both occasions.

The Star was renamed the Bush Hotel in 1903. A successful application was made for a billiards licence. By now the pub was owned by Cornbrook's, a Manchester brewery. Atkinson's had sold out to Boardman's United Breweries in 1895 and three years later Boardman's were taken over by Cornbrook's.

The Bush Hotel ended its days as a Bass Charrington pub. Bass bought Cornbrook’s in 1961 and perhaps it is telling that just two years after they took over the Bush, the nearby Derby Hotel and the Theatre Royal all three were closed and demolished to make way for the redevelopment of Churchgate.

The site of the Bush and the Theatre Royal was converted into a supermarket, first known as Lennon’s, then Kwik Save and finally Foodsave, but in 1996 the premises were converted into a pub, The Brasshouse. This in turn became Number 15, a live music venue, and then Club Kiss before closing again in 2008. In September 2014 it reopened as The Venue, described as an over-25s cabaret bar. 

Isaac Clowes, an odd looking fellow, complained of a waiter at the Star Inn taking his hat on Tuesday night. He took his seat in the front of the gallery at the Star Concert Room, when several persons called out “turn that felly eaut wi' th' grey hat on.” When requested by the waiter to take off his hat he refused upon which she took it off and carried it to the bar and detained it. Mr Taylor: “It was a shocking bad hat, I believe; people laughed so hard at your beaver that they could not go on with the performance.” Complainant - “It was ta'en off my head; it was a hat I thought a deal about; the waiter took my hat off forcibly; I didn't ask for it on my way out.” Mr Taylor exhibited the beaver placing it on his head in court amidst universal laughter. Complainant: “I think it looks a very tidy hat. They had no right taking my hat off.”....Mr E. Ashworth: The complainant says there are no rules up in the room that persons are not to go there with white hats on. Mr Taylor: “It's charged as a wilful trespass and there is no damage done to the hat.” The case was dismissed. – Bolton Chronicle, 25 January 1845.

Stealing Wearing Apparel – A woman named Mary Taylor, who for a long time past has been representing herself as “Miss Gleaves” sister to Mrs Sharples of the Star Inn, and thereby succeeded getting board and lodgings for which she has never paid, was charged with stealing wearing apparel from two places at which she had been lodging. A short time back she stole several articles from the house of Mrs Bleakley, from whom she had been lodging in Bark-street; and she succeeded in practising a similar trick soon afterwards from the house of Mrs Heywood, Churchbank. She was committed to the New Bailey for two months. – Bolton Chronicle, 29 December 1855.

Royal Oak, Churchgate

Churchgate House pictured in April 2012 (copyright Google Street View). The Royal Oak once stood on this site. A pub with the same name was later situated on Paley Street, which can be seen running by the side of Churchgate House.

The Royal Oak stood on Churchgate from at least the 1770s until it was destroyed by fire on 30 June 1848 killing George Radcliffe, a Breightmet man sleeping there for the night. [1]

Gordon Readyhough [2] claims that the location of the pub is unknown but that it was not to be confused with a pub on nearby Paley Street that took the Royal Oak name some time after the original pub burned down. However, in a report for the town’s mayor on Bolton’s sanitation in 1848 - the year the Royal Oak was destroyed  - John Entwisle puts the pub in the vicinity of Molyneux’s Yard, the Flaggs and Oliver Lane, all of which stood roughly in front of the site of the current Churchgate House, opposite what is now Hogarth’s, the former Capitol and Boars’s Head pub. [3] 

Bolton’s population stood at around 17,000 in 1801. By 1841 it had grown to almost 50,000 as people moved to the centre of town during the Industrial Revolution to look for work. [4] Entwisle goes on to describe the sanitary conditions at that time in the dirtiest part of what he had already ascertained was a filthy town.

“In immediate contiguity [to Molyneux’s Yard]…is the Flaggs and Oliver Lane; here fever had infested the whole neighbourhood. In the houses behind the Royal Oak there were several cases; in one the husband had an attack six weeks in duration. In the next house a family of seven, four of whom had fever, and one died. Immediately opposite the houses is a necessary in a broken condition, the privy full, and heaps of ashes and night soil occupied a considerable portion of the yard. Beyond this heap of refuse is the cesspool of Molyneux’s Yard, only separated by a wall which is part falling down.”

To give another aspect of life in Bolton in the 1840s Entwisle analysed all the deaths in the town in the five years to 1847 and calculated the average age of death. But in an interesting twist he also calculated the average age of death by social class.

According to Entwisle, 116 “gentlemen and persons engaged in professions, and their families” died at an average age of 51 years. In addition, 614 people he described as “tradesmen and their families” died at an average age of 27 years and 2 months. But “Operatives and their families” died at an average of just 19 years and 6 months.

The outstanding point about this last social grouping – the lowest of the three social classes – was their sheer number: 8142 of them. In other words, over 90percent of the people in the town died before their 20^th birthday between the beginning of 1843 and the end of 1847. Of course a lot of them were children – over 50percent of the children of the lower orders died by the age of five – but with an average at death of 19, pubs like the Royal Oak were probably losing almost all of their custom every two years simply due to them dying off.

Fortunately, that part of town was cleaned up and Entwisle’s report perhaps had an impact. It’s available to borrow at Bolton Central Library and makes for grim reading. Running water was laid on in that part of Churchgate. Molyneux’s Yard was swept away although Flaggs and Oliver Lane remained into the 20^th-century.

Entwisle couched his arguments in language the mayor and rest of the businessmen that ran Bolton could understand: it was counter-productive maintaining a situation where 90 percent of your workforce failed to reach the age of 20. But this was 1848, a year when revolution was taking hold in Europe and the monied classes in Bolton couldn’t help but look over their shoulder at the potential for social unrest.

Churchgate later became the theatre centre of Bolton with the Grand and the Theatre Royal built on the site of the slum dwellings in the area where the Royal Oak once stood. The theatres made way for offices in the sixties and Churchgate House was built in their place.

[1] Annals Of Bolton, James Clegg, 1888.

[2] Bolton Pubs 1800 to 2000, Gordon Readyhough, 2000.

[3] A Report On The Sanatory Condition Of The Borough Of Bolton, John Entwisle, 1848.

[4] Wikipedia entry on Bolton, retrieved 12 October 2014. Figures combined for Great Bolton and Little Bolton. 

Beaumont Club, Deane Church Lane

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The Beaumont Club in 1929.

Not a lost pub but an interesting one, nonetheless. This is a picture of the Beaumont Club, a private-members’ bowling club that existed just off Deane Church Lane until some time in the 1960s.  The image is from the Bolton Library and Museum Services collection and is copyright Bolton Council.

The occasion is the visit of the recently-victorious Bolton Wanderers side which had carried off the FA Cup for the third time in seven seasons with a 2-0 victory over Portsmouth in April 1929. That looks like team captain Joe Smith behind the cup. The man sat next to him wearing a splendid pair of breeches could be goalkeeper Dick Pym who played in all three Wembley finals.

The Beaumont Club was at the St Helens Road end of Deane Church Lane on land which has only recently been redeveloped as housing. The Bolton Wanderers manager of the time, Charles Foweraker, lived not far from the Beaumont Club in a terraced house on St Helens Road. It is entirely possible that he was either associated with the club in some capacity or that he was friendly with some of its members.

But it is the Beaumont Club itself that interests us as very little is known about this establishment. It came about following a growth in the popularity of bowls in the mid-to-late 19^th century. Several pubs had their own greens, principally the Gibraltar Rock on Deane Road. At the Howcroft on Pool Street the bowling green pre-dated the pub, while the King’s Head at Deane was advertising two bowling greens in 1873. [1]

In his book about leisure in Bolton in the nineteenth century Robert Poole informs us that a bowling green was set up at the Stag’s Head on St Helens Road in 1865. [1] He suggests that this was perhaps the Rumworth Bowling Green Company Ltd, which was set up in 1880, though that assertion appears to be incorrect.

An 1893 map of the area shows two bowling greens in the area: one at the Stag’s Head, situated on St Helens Road, and one just off Deane Church Lane. The Stag’s Head bowling green was actually situated behind the pub but on the other side of the tracks of the Bolton to Leigh Railway. Access was via Wilton Street or via Bertwine Street, which ran down the side of some early-nineteenth century cottages that stood raised up from St Helens Road until they were demolished around 1969.

The Stag’s Head green lasted until at least the fifties. Warburton’s Soreen bakery and, later, Park Cakes was built on the site of both the green and the cottages on St Helens Road. The Bakewell Tin and Metal works were right next to this green with the Daubhill Brick Works not far away.

But an event in 1906 suggests that the Rumworth Bowling Green Company wasn’t at the Stag’s Head. While it was established as a limited company in 1880, the London Gazette for 16 February 1906 suggests the company had collapsed. More crucially, it gave its address as Deane Church Lane, so it wasn’t at the Stag’s Head.

After the Rumworth Bowling Green Company failed the premises became the Beaumont Club. By September 1906 the liquidator, Mr S.H. Horrocks, was able to distribute proceeds from the sale of the old company’s assets to its creditors. So the green was obviously sold on and it seems to have become the Beaumont Club at that time.

The splendid clubhouse in the image above was a much more modest affair up to around the time of the First World War. By the time this photograph had been taken the Beaumont Club had added tennis courts at the side of the bowling green but these had disappeared by the time of the 1954 map of the area. Entrance to the club and its grounds were via Hudson Road, just off Deane Church Lane.

Unfortunately, old maps are really all we have to go off as there is very little evidence – either anecdotally or otherwise – that the club ever existed. The bowling green itself last appears on a 1967 map. The Beaumont Bowling Green Company's final appearance in a local phone directory was in 1952. It must have closed around that time and abandoned. Certainly the company was struck off in 1957 its officers having resigned and the firm - like the bowling green - abandoned.

It was used as industrial premises after that until a housing development began to be built on the site around 2007.

Any information on the Beaumont Club would be gratefully received in the comments below.

The outline of the Beaumont Club’s bowling green can be seen on the left of this January 2005 satellite image (copyright Google). The club’s tennis courts were situated in the five-sides enclosure to the right of the former green. Deane Church Lane runs from top to bottom of the picture. The large, light-coloured building on the right is Park Cakes. The row of houses that juts into the bakery is Jubilee Street and it is at this end of that street on land now occupied by Park Cakes that the original Stag’s Head bowling green was situated. The Daubhill branch of Asda, St Helens Road and the former Stag’s Head are in the bottom right of the picture.

Hudson Close (formerly Hudson Road). This housing development was built on the site of the former Beaumont Club and the shot is taken from roughly the same point as was the photograph of the victorious Bolton Wanderers side at the top of the page. Image taken in April 2012. Copyright Google Street View.

[1] Popular Leisure and the Music Hall in Nineteenth-Century Bolton, by Robert Poole. Published by the University Of Lancaster (1982).
[2] London Gazette, 16 February 1906. Retrieved 11 October 2014.
[3] London Gazette, 7 September 1906. Retrieved 11 October 2014. 

Globe, Bridgeman Street

We dealt recently with the Globe Inn on Higher Bridge Street, but there was another pub by that name over on Bridgeman Street.

Nobody will remember the Globe on Bridgeman Street as it closed in 1869 and the licensing records don’t even report where on the street it actually was.

The Globe was a beerhouse, one of many that sprang up in the town as a result of the 1830 Beer House Act. Anyone could convert part of their home into a beer house on payment of £2. That was still a decent wedge of money in the middle of the 19^th century, but it wasn’t enough to deter many people. By 1854 there were 208 beer houses in Bolton along with 118 fully-licensed pubs. In the following 15 years a further 121 beer houses opened up and it seems the Globe on Bridgeman Street was one of those. [1]

However, a change in the law in 1869 made it much easier for local magistrates to close down beer houses. They certainly went at it. A total of 69 beer houses were immediately closed and the Globe was one of the pubs that came to an end.

Magistrates used any pretext to refuse licenses and pubs such as the Unicorn on Deansgate, the Railway Bridge Inn on Dawes Street and the Pen Street Arms on Pen Street disappeared almost at a whim. On the other hand, the Music Hall Tavern on Gaskell’s Court – a short thoroughfare off Churchgate the entrance to which can still be seen next to the Brass Cat – saw its licence refused because four ‘loose girls’ lived there, according to the police.

But if the magistrates were looking for a reason to close the Globe on Bridgeman Street then they didn’t have to look far. The magistrates threw the book at the pub. The landlord allowed gambling on the premises, the clientele included prostitutes and there was a ‘low singing room and dancing class’ frequented by thieves and what are described as ‘loose characters’.  To add to all that there was what was described as a ‘minor public health objection’ in that the landlord kept pigs at the back of the pub.

The pub shut in 1869. 

[1] Shut Up About Barclay Perkins blog post dated 24 July 2011 and entitled Bolton In 1854. Retrieved 11 October 2014. 

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

Swiss Hotel, Southern Street

The Swiss Hotel on Southern Street taken by Humphrey Spender around 1937. Center Street runs to the right of the pub, Back Center Street to its left. This image at the top of the page comes from the Bolton Worktown website  (copyright Bolton Council). 

David James Morris writes on the website that he lived at the pub from 1945 until 1961 as his grandfather, William Morris, was the landlord. David says that the front pillars and the outside cover were taken down during World War II as they were considered to be a blackout hazard.

The Swiss Hotel was one of a number of pubs situated within a few yards of each other in the Southern Street, Darley Street and Carlyle Street area. The others were the Queens and the Woodman.

The pub was part of an ambitious project to build a Swiss-type pleasure grounds in Brownlow Fold, still a rural area that was only just beginning to be developed in the 1860s.

In September 1865, a meeting was held at the St George's Tavern on St George's Road to discuss the feasibility of establishing such pleasure grounds. Around 30 local tradesmen attended the meeting which was chaired by Mr Gardner, a newsagent from Bradshawgate. Charles Seddon, the landlord of the St George's Tavern said that Bolton was notorious for not having a place of recreation sufficiently attractive to people to keep them more at home. The attendees at that meeting sought to form the Swiss Gardens And Hotel Company and Mr John Atkin (1832-1882), a beerseller of Brownlow Fold, identified a plot of land in that area which he felt would be suitable.

However, by the end of that year the plan had begun to unravel. A further meeting in December 1865 pointed to a lack of suitable approach roads for carriages as a major problem that might end up costing a considerable amount of money should the company undertake construction itself. But the council's decision in 1866 to open Heywood Park on High Street and Bolton Park – which became Queens Park in 1897 – must have had an affect on the company's thinking. The reason for its existence, which was to provide a recreation area in Bolton, had been largely superseded.

Instead of building Swiss gardens leisure grounds all that was left was John Atkin's pub – although one that now had a full licence that enabled it to sell wine and spirits as well as beer. Swansea-born John Atkin was in Brownlow Fold by 1864 and it seems that his establishment – or a rebuilt version of it – was all that remained of the ambitious garden project.

But if the development of Brownlow Fold as a Swiss-style recreation ground failed to happen, the area began to develop as a residential area. By October 1871 John Atkin – who had been elected to the Halliwell local board the previous year - was advertising the sale of eight new cottages in the area.

Atkin had left the area by 1877. By 1881 he was living at Walton-On-The-Hill in Liverpool – his wife was from that city – and was described as a retired innkeeper. He died two years later leaving a fortune worth over £6300 – the equivalent of almost £750,000 today. Most of that money appears to have come from the purchase of land in the Brownlow Fold area and the sale of properties built on that land.

In those days Halliwell was regarded as a township separate to Bolton although certain aspects – licensing being one of them – was carried out in Bolton. In 1877 a stormy meeting of ratepayers was held at the Swiss Hotel against the incorporation of Halliwell into the County Borough of Bolton. Most of the attendees were from the Brownlow Fold area and were set against incorporation, but the township was incorporated later that year largely on the wishes of the inhabitants of the Halliwell Road area.

By the 1880s and with much of Brownlow Fold now built upon the dream of a recreation ground and gardens were long gone. The area was much like any other district of Bolton – a mix of factories and housing. The Swiss Hotel was now a tied beerhouse having been bought by the local brewery of J. Atkinson and Co based at the Commission Street brewery off what is now Deane Road.

Atkinson's was taken over by Boardman’s United Breweries of Manchester in 1895. A full list of their pubs can be seen here.  Another Manchester brewery, Cornbrook’s, bought out Boardman’s in 1895 and they became part of the Bass Charrington empire in the 1960s. The Anchor, off Bradshawgate; the Griffin on Great Moor Street and the Dog and Partridge on Manor Street were also amongst Cornbrook’s tied estate.

Cornbrook's was the first brewery in the north-west to dispense tank beer. Large tanks were placed in pub cellars and beer was transported from the brewery in what looked like large petrol tankers. On arrival at the pub beer was then pumped from the vehicle to the tank. The system was manufactured by Porter Lancastrian, a company based for some time in Gaskell Street not far from the Swiss Hotel.

The Swiss became popular with sporting organisations. Like many pubs it had its own Angling Society as well as a bowling club. Bolton Cricket Club used to hold smoking concerts there and in December 1893 the local sports newspaper Cricket And Football Field (a Saturday sports paper in Bolton and the forerunner to The Buff) reported that the Blackburn Harriers were due to meet Bolton Harriers in a road race commencing from the Swiss Hotel.

The Swiss Hotel began its life as a beerhouse in the largely rural community of Johnson Fold. Its early years saw the area transformed from farmland to housing and industry. But by the 1960s a lot of those houses were coming up for a hundred years old. Plans were afoot to sweep away many of the streets from Brownlow Fold down as far as Higher Bridge Street – and with it the pubs.

The Swiss carried on until around 1970 when it was closed and demolished along with all the properties in the surrounding streets. New housing was built on the site and a number of the streets were re-named. Southern Street and Tyndall Street form what is now Kirkhope Drive, while Center Street became Centre Park Road.

The above image from 1964 above shows the final days of the old Brownlow Fold with the Swiss standing almost alone in the background while much of the surrounding housing has been demolished.

Kirkhope Drive (ex-Southern Street) on this image from May 2012 (copyright Google Street View). Centre Park Road runs off to the left.

Police and Public Notices – If the dog stolen from near the Swiss Hotel, Brownlow-fold last Thursday is not returned to 34 Derby Street immediately, legal proceedings will be taken – Bolton Evening News, 23 April 1872.

Derby Street, Brownlow Fold was renamed Darley Street when Halliwell was incorporated into the County Borough Of Bolton in 1877.

Salford Quarter Sessions – this day. John Walker of Little Bolton, for stealing a decanter from the Swiss Hotel, Brownlow Fold on 28 ult was sentenced to six months' imprisonment and two years' surveillance by the police. - Bolton Evening News, 9 July 1872.