Black Cow, Fernhill Gate, Bolton

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The Fernhill Gate area of Wigan Road looking towards the former Rumworth Hotel. The Black Cow is believed to have been situated in one of the houses immediately before the Rumworth. 

Fernhill Gate is the area of Deane that slopes down Wigan Road towards the junction with Beaumont Road. The name hasn't completely fallen out of use but any reference to the area is usually indicated by the Sutton Estate which was constructed in the area in the late fifties and early sixties.

A number of pubs came and went in this area of Deane and one of those was the Black Cow. The pub was run for the whole of its existence by a spinster, Ann Helme. 

Miss Helme was born around 1807 in the village of Longworth situated some five miles north of Bolton. The village was purchased by Bolton Council in 1907 and Delph Reservoir was constructed on its site. 

Little is known of Ann Helme's early life. However, by 1841 she was working as a servant at Grundy Fold, a small collection of buidlings situated not far from Fernhill Gate at the end of what is now Greenhill Lane (known at that time as Green Lane). 

By 1861, Ann Helme was living with a servant at the Black Cow beerhouse on the Bolton to Westhoughton road. This was sometimes referred to as the 'Old Road' and is now known as Wigan Road. Given that the beerhouse doesn't appear in the 1855 local directory we can only assume that it was set up in the late-1850s. 

 In 1863, Miss Helme was prosecuted for allowing her pub to be open before midday on a Sunday. Opening hours in those days were quite liberal the exception being on a Sunday morning when people were expected to be at church and pubs were forced to close. The 1830 Beerhouse Act enabled people to set up pubs on payment of 2 guineas (£2.10). Many pubs began in this fashion and were initially just a person's sitting room. There was no bar and because only beer was served there were no optics or bottles of spirits. Quite often there would be a beer barrel on a stillage. As a result, the cost of setting up a pub was minimal. 

This arrangement also made it easy to close down a pub and convert the premises back to a home residence. That's what appears to have happened in the case of the Black Cow. By 1881 Ann Helme was a retired beerseller living at 506 Fernhill Gate, which was how Wigan Road was known in those days. 

Number 506 still exists. It's one of a small row of houses near what used to be the Rumworth Hotel. 

The Black Cow was one of a number of pubs and beerhouses that have come and gone in the Fernhill Gate area over the years. James Heyes was running a beerhouse next door to the Black Cow in 1871. This was named the Wellington in 1881 but subsequently disappeared. There was also pubs in the area named the Colliers Arms that appears on maps from the 1890s. The most permanent pub in the area was the Rumworth Hotel which opened in 1893 and closed in 2011.

Bradford Arms, 23 Bridgeman Place, Bolton

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The Bradford Arms pictured around 1930 just a few years before it closed

The Earl of Bradford owned land around Great Lever, Farnworth and part of the area to the south-western part of Bolton town centre, so it’s no surprise that the name ‘Bradford’ features prominently in the town. The earldom itself refers not to the conurbation in West Yorkshire as one might assume, but to the area of Bradford in Shropshire. That’s where the Bridgeman family, who hold the earldom, originated. A baronetcy was created for the Bridgemans of Great Lever in 1660. The fourth baronet was named Sir Orlando Bridgeman while the fifth baronet, Sir Henry Bridgeman became Baron Bridgeman in 1794.

A number of street and pub names make reference to the Earls of Bradford: Bradford Street, Bradford Road, Bridgeman Street, Bridgeman Place and no fewer than four pubs in the area named the Bradford: three pubs in Bolton while a fourth, in Farnworth, is the only one to survive.

The Bradford Hotel (later the Bradford Arms) was situated on Bradford Street; there was a Bradford Arms on Foundry Street, off Thynne Street, and somewhere between the two, on Bridgeman Place, was another Bradford Arms which was possibly the earliest of the four.

The pub began in the late-1850s when it was opened by a man named James Seddon Hulme. James was born in Little Lever in 1819 to a single mother, Alice Hulme. He was brought up by his grandparents but he appears to have had at least one child – and perhaps as many as six - with a woman named Margaret Barlow although the couple weren't married until much later. Certainly, the eldest child, Harriet Barlow was living with James Hulme and his grandparents at Grundy Fold in Little Lever by 1851. By then, Margaret Barlow was living in lodgings at Taylors Lane, Ainsworth.

James Hulme married in June 1854 – not Margaret Barlow but a widow named Mary Seddon (nee Henry). Oddly, he took her previous married name as part of his own name and became known as James Seddon Hulme.

Mary had previously run a pub on Churchgate and shortly after they married the couple moved to premises at 23 Bridgeman Place and opened it up as a beerhouse. The Bradford Arms, as it became known, would be run by members of James Seddon Hulme's family for the next 80 years.

Mary Hulme died in January 1876. James remarried in December of that year. He turned to his old flame and married Margaret Barlow at Holy Trinity church.

James and Margaret Hulme died within weeks of each other in 1892. James died on 24 May and Margaret on 13 July. The pub business had been good to him and he left an estate worth £871 – around £105,000 in today's money.

The Bradford Arms was taken over by the family of James and Margaret's daughter Hannah. She had moved to Radcliffe with her mother in the 1860s and in 1881 she married a neighbour, Philip Eastwood. The couple moved in to the Bradford Arms on their marriage and they took over the running of the pub after Hannah's parents died.

The Eastwoods were to remain at the Bradford for the rest of its time as a pub with Philip taking over as landlord.

Hannah died at the Bradford Arms in November 1918. Philip Eastwood died in December 1935 at the age of 83. By then the Bradford was owned by Walker Cain's having previously been sold by the Eastwoods to a Bolton brewer Joseph Sharman's. Sharman's was taken over by the Leigh firm of George Shaw in 1926 and they were in turn taken over by Walker Cain Ltd of Liverpool and Warrington in 1930.

The Bradford closed in 1936 although it is likely to have shut on Philip Eastwood's death with the licence formally rescinded weeks later. On closure, the pub was converted to a private residence but it was to remain standing for over 20 years after it ceased to be a pub. It was demolished in the early-1960s and a service station and bus lay-by was built on the site.

An intriguing set of photographs from the Bolton Museum collection shows the building in 1957 just a few years before the building and the rest of the row were demolished. The pub signs have been removed but it's unmistakably the former Bradford Arms.

Two of the photos are reproduced here with permission of Bolton Library and Museum Services (copyright Bolton Council).

Note Carlton Street - which still exists - where the car is standing

Philip Eastwood (seated left) pictured in 1910 along with the rest of his family. Mr Eastwood ran the Bradford Arms from 1892 until his death in 1936. The pub was opened by the father of his wife Hannah (seated right).