Churchgate Tavern, 33 Churchgate, Bolton

Follow @LostPubsBolton

This pub is not the current Churchgate pub situated at 11-13 Churchgate and which was previously known as the Brass Cat, the Bears Paw and the Golden Lion.

A 1975 image of the Sandwich Inn. The left-hand side of the premises was number 33 Churchgate, the site of the former Churchgate Tavern. Image copyright Bolton Council.

This was the Churchgate Tavern situated at number 33 Churchgate next door to what is now the Pastie Shoppe and just a few doors up from the Boars Head (now Hogarth's). 

The pub lasted for just a few years in the 1850s and 1860s but it became notorious largely because of its licensees, George Smethurst and Isabella Dewhurst.

Born Isabella Walker in 1828 at Coverdale in the Yorkshire Dales, by 1841 Isabella and her older sister Margaret were living at Oakenbottom, Breightmet after their mother Jane had married a coal miner, Jonathan Shaw.

In December 1849, Isabella married Thomas Dewhurst, a Little Lever-born stonemason, and by 1851 the couple were living at 36 Back Turton Street. He was 27, she was 22.

Quite how Isabella Dewhurst got involved in the pub business isn’t clear, but while it was a career that lasted little more than a decade it became very profitable for her. However, any fortune is unlikely to have been made through the sale of beer.

George Smethurst and Isabella Dewhurst opened the Churchgate Tavern around 1853. Although the 1861 census states Isabella Dewhurst was married it is obvious her relationship with Thomas Dewhurst was at an end. Instead, she was living at the pub with the 33-year-old Smethurst along with a servant girl and two female lodgers.

Smethurst was charged with perjury in December 1859 following a case in which he was initially charged with staying open late. He had already been charged with illegal hours a couple of weeks earlier but a lack of evidence resulted in the charges were dropped on that occasion. This time a man named Nicholas Heyes, who owned 33 Churchgate and was the landlord of the Wellington beerhouse,  Union Buildings, was in the Churchgate when police arrived in the early hours of one Saturday morning just before Christmas. Heyes claimed he was there to see Smethurst having been to Manchester with someone who was claimed to be Smethurst's wife but was actually Isabella Dewhurst. The pair had been to look at a property he was thinking of buying and he wished to discuss the matter with Smethurst. The other people in the pub at the time were a female servant, a male lodger and a female lodger. Heyes claimed to have arrived at the Churchgate with 'Mrs Smethurst' some time between 11 and 11.30pm. However, the case turned on the evidence of a senior police officer, PC Holgate, who claimed he was at the pub at a quarter to eleven that night and saw Smethurst's wife there some time before Heyes claimed the pair had returned from Manchester. [Bolton Chronicle, 24 December 1859 and 31 December 1859]. Smethurst, Heyes, the female servant and female lodger were all sent for trial. But when the case came to trial at the South Lancashire Assizes at Liverpool in April 1860 no evidence was presented and the case was dismissed.

In July 1860, Isabella Dewhurst appeared in court accusing a beerseller from Radcliffe named Wright Jones of stealing £100 in gold sovereigns from her along with a gold watch. Mrs Dewhurst claimed she hadn't lived with her husband for nine years but had lived with Smethurst for the past seven years. She stated that she had a little money before she moved in with Smethurst but unbeknownst to him she had saved £100 – the equivalent today of around £12,000. How she had managed to save all that money wasn't explained. She did say that on the day in question, Smethurst had been drinking all day and left the Churchgate, but she was worried that he may find the £100 so she and Jones went to the bank to deposit the coins. The bank was closed so they went to two pubs: Holden's Vaults (the Higher Nag's Head) and the Three Crowns. Mrs Dewhurst went to the water closet – the toilet – and on her return her watch and the bag of money had gone – as had Wright Jones. An off-duty police officer, Thomas Chadwick, was in the Three Crowns and suggested that the money had gone missing in one of three places: either in the pub or during Mrs Dewhurst's journey to or from the toilet. She was described in the Bolton Chronicle's report of the case on 7 July 1860 as “a notorious woman” and when she was asked in court as to whether she had previously been charged with running a brothel she managed to avoid giving a straight answer. Perhaps her reputation went before her as the case against Jones was dismissed.

George Smethurst killed himself by hanging in March 1863. His relationship with Isabella Dewhurst had disintegrated largely due to his alcoholism. He had issued threats against her on a number of occasions and her stepfather Jonathan Shaw had moved in with her to offer some sort of protection.

In June 1863 Isabella Dewhurst was in court once again, this time alongside Edward Gordon who was said to come from a respectable family in Stockport. The pair were summoned for having acted in the management of “a house of ill-fame” [Bolton Chronicle 13 June 1863] on Churchgate – the Churchgate Tavern. The charge was only avoided when their representative pointed out that Gordon was due to report for duty with the Cheshire yeomanry the following morning or he would suffer a fine of £10. If the summons was withdrawn Gordon would undertake to ensure that the premises would be run properly and the magistrates agreed.

In 1866 the Churchgate was sold by Nicholas Heyes along with an adjoining cottage occupied by Isabella Dewhurst and shortly afterwards she moved to the Music Tavern on Gaskell Court off Churchgate. The pub no longer exists although Gaskell Court can still be seen. 

Later that decade, in 1869, Mrs Dewhurst testified at the London divorce court in the case of James Hardman, whose father was a well-known manufacturer in Bolton. Hardman had already obtained a decree nisi on the grounds of his wife’s adultery, but Mrs Dewhurst was one of a string of witnesses who claimed that he, too, was an adulterer. She claimed he had stayed for two nights at the Churchgate Tavern in 1865 with a young woman.

With the sale of 33 Churchgate, the Churchgate Tavern closed down. In 1870 it was occupied by a “painter and paper hanger” named William Goodwin and it later became a confectioners and a temperance bar. It was bought by the Sabini family in the 1930s and it was under their ownership that it is perhaps best remembered. The Sabinis later bought the property next door – number 35 – and sold ice cream alongside soft drinks. Dorina Sabini and her brother Bruno worked at the premises all their lives and it became the Sandwich Inn in 1970 two years after Dorina married Peter Green. The Sandwich Inn closed in December 2002 when Peter, Dorina and Bruno all retired. [Bolton Evening News, 9 June 2003.  Retrieved 15 October 2019]. It was converted into offices.

“A youth named Jabez Ratcliffe was in custody in Monday, at the Sessions Room, Bolton, on the charge of stealing on the 23rd June two pairs of boots and during the night of 5^th inst 14 shillings from a drawer in the house of his father Richard Ratcliffe in Lever-lane, Little Lever....During the Wednesday night....the prisoner took 14 shillings from a drawer in his father's house. Afterwards the robbery of the two pairs of boots was discovered; the prisoner had sold them to Mary Curran, a dealer in the Market Hall for 8 shillings. Police-sergeant Henderson succeeded in recovering one pair of boots. The prisoner had spent the night after he took the 14 shillings, at Isabella Dewhurst's beerhouse and brothel, Churchgate The prisoner was committed for trial." - Bolton Chronicle, 16 July 1864.