The original Bridgeman Arms was open from around 1825 and closed down in about
1843. It was situated close to the junction of Bridgeman Street and Crook
Street. On its closure the name was used by a beerhouse that had just opened a
couple hundred yards away on Bridgeman Street and it is this pub we shall deal with in this article.
The
owner of the second Bridgeman Arms was James Leach who would later go on to open the Albert on
Derby Street and would found a brewery at that pub that was to last until the 1930s. In
1841, James owned a shop on the north side of Bridgeman Street, the other
side of the road to where the pub was situated. He worked as a carder with
his wife Ann running the shop, but they moved across the street and James decided
to expand the business through the sale of beer that could be consumed on the
premises.
James
Leach is listed on the 1851 census as being at the Bridgeman Arms. At the time
he was 38-years-old and lived there with Ann (34) and five children: James
(14), Alice (12), Selina (10), Levi (7) and Emma (1). The following year they
left for the Albert.
By
1853, the pub was being run by a firm named Shaw and Co but by the 1860s it was
in the hands of the Williams family. Thomas Williams was hauled before the
magistrates in August 1869 accused of selling beer “at improper” hours. That
meant a Sunday morning and local Police Constables Dearden and Greenhalgh were
often on the prowl looking for pubs selling beer to people who really ought to
have been in church. On this occasion PC Greenhalgh saw a woman inside the pub.
Thomas Williams was in the cellar where he was observed filling a jug and then
a quart bottle with beer. He turned to walk up the cellar steps and saw the
constable in front of him. Williams was fined 10 shillings. [1] The bad news
was that the conviction imperilled Thomas Williams’ licence as his conviction
took place just a matter of weeks before beerhouses had to re-apply for their
licences for the first time. Thomas Williams also had a beerhouse in nearby
Moncrieffe Street. His son Henry took over the Bridgeman Arms.
Under
Henry Williams the Bridgeman Arms was again featured in the Bolton Evening News
just a few weeks later, but this time it was for the success of the pub’s leek
show. The paper described it as:
“in
all respects one of the most successful not only in point of quality but
attendance of visitors.” [2]
Thirty-four leeks were on show and a “capital table of prizes” included a number of copper kettles and teapots.
Henry
Williams ran the Bridgeman with his wife Mary but by 1881 he had moved to
Birkdale just outside Southport where he became the proprietor of the Park
Hotel which still [2016] stands close to Birkdale station. He was running the
Park along with Sarah-Ann Pennington who is described as his cousin. There was
no sign of Mary.
Back
at the Bridgeman Arms, a Scot, Thomas Robertson, was landlord in 1881. He had moved
on to the Oxnoble further up Bridgeman Street by 1891, the Little John on Lever
Street by 1895 and in 1901 he was at the Cotton Tree, also on Lever Street. His daughter Edith married ‘into the trade’. She
married James Ferguson in 1904 and by 1911 they were at the Black Lion on
Turton Street.
In 1891 the then landlord
of the Bridgeman Arms, Henry Parkinson was fined after being found guilty on
one charge of betting and one charge of gaming. The police were on the prowl in
1891 and a series of raids on Bolton pubs resulted in 56 cases brought before
the courts. Parkinson was accused of taking bets and of allowing a game of
‘nap’ to take place in his pub. He was fined 40 shillings on both counts – a
total of £4 and the equivalent of £450 today. His license was endorsed and he
left the pub soon afterwards. [3]
Parkinson was succeeded
by William B Lodge. A native of Bradford, Lodge was only 21 when he took over
the pub in 1893. He was a plumber’s apprentice in 1891 living with his
grandparents in Chorley Street. He married Alice Howarth in 1892 and their son
William was born in October of that year. The family moved into the Bridgeman
in 1893, but Alice died in 1898 and William left the pub soon afterwards. He
died in Blackpool just a year later at the age of 27.
The Bridgeman was an
Atkinson’s pub who supplied it from their brewery on Commission Street, off
Deane Road. It was sold to Magee’s in the 1890s but was nominally a Greenall’s
house when it closed in 1959. The whole of the bottom end of Bridgeman Street was
remodelled. Hundreds of nineteenth-century properties were demolished and
replaced by an industrial estate.
David Robinson has posted
a number of photos and anecdotes from final days of the Bridgeman Arms on the excellent Facebook group I Belong To Bolton. David’s grandparents were the final licensees of the pub before its closure in 1959.
[1] Bolton Evening News,
26 August 1869
[2] Bolton Evening News,
18 October 1869
[3] Manchester Courier,
29 May 1891
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