Standard Arms, 50-52 Hulme Street, Bolton

Follow @LostPubsBolton 

What was once Hulme Street is now a continuation of Cross Street. The Standard Arms would have been situated on the  left of the photo. Photo taken 2014. Copyright Google.

There were two pubs in Bolton called the Standard. The Standard Hotel stood on Gray Street, just off Prince Street. We're interested in the Standard Arms which was situated on Hulme Street, close to its junction with Dean Street.

The area bounded by Folds Road, Prince Street and Kay Street was built up in the middle of the nineteenth century and with new housing developments came the beerhouses. Like many beerhouses at the time, the Standard Arms only became licensed when a householder paid 2 guineas (£2.10) to allow himself to sell beer.

The first record we have of the Standard Arms is in the 1869 Bolton Directory when David Hilton was the licensee. Hilton actually stepped down from the pub for a short while and the 1871 directory has a Solomon Hilton – presumably a relative – as the licensee. Local directories were often compiled the previous year and in January 1871 David Hilton was back as the licensee. The Bolton Beer And Wine Sellers Association held their quarterly meeting at the Standard Arms that month. [Bolton Evening News, 12 January 1871].

Solomon Hilton went off to be a clogger working from shop premises in Folds Road. By 1881 he was living in Chew Moor. David Hilton later moved to the Middleton Arms, not far away from the Standard Arms, on Charles Street. He died in 1882. 

By 1882 the pub was owned by the Spread Eagle Brewery based at the Spread Eagle pub on Hough Lane in Eagley.

In 1901, landlord John Murphy was brought up in front of the magistrates on the charge of serving alcohol to a drunk. Two police officers went into the pub one night and saw a man named John McCormick who was seated in the vault in a drunken condition. In those days not all vaults had tables and it was common for customers to sit on benches and leave their drinks on the bar counter. McCormick went to the counter and picked up a pint pot containing beer and when challenged by the landlord insisted he had paid for it. One of the police officers suggested to Murphy that McCormick was drunk, something Murphy denied. McCormick was then asked to go outside. He staggered out and created such a commotion with the two policemen that he had to be taken to the town hall to be locked up. He was later fined for being drunk and disorderly. Both Murphy and his wife denied serving McCormick claiming that neither of them had even seen him enter the pub. The magistrates were having none of it and fined Murphy 10 shillings although they decided not to endorse his licence. [Bolton Evening News, 18 April 1901]

In 1908, landlady Mary Ann Walsh was the victim of a scam involving a 54-year-old man named Thomas Harvey Williams who entered the pub one day and asked to cash a cheque. He claimed to be a local councillor and that as he wasn't well enough to go to a bank he would like to cash a cheque for £2 and 5 shillings (£2.25) – the equivalent now of about £270. When Mrs Walsh came to cash the cheque it in her bank account it bounced. Williams was also charged with carrying out a similar fraud against the landlord of the Waggon and Horses, Bury Old Road, Heywood and against shopkeepers Mr Alston of Bridge Street and Mr Hornby of Higher Bridge Street. Williams was sentenced to four months in prison with hard labour. Since the offences had been committed he had spent three months in jail for another matter. He had been in and out of jail for much of his life albeit on minor offences. [Bolton Evening News, 13 January 1909].

The Standard Arms closed in 1911.The area around Hulme Street was knocked down in the sixties and new housing built on the site of the Standard Arms in the nineties. The stretch of Hulme Street where the pub once stood still exists but is completely unrecognisable from the early part of the twentieth century. It is now a continuation of Cross Street.