Rocket Hotel, New Lane, Bolton

 

The Rocket pictured in May 2012

In March 1960 Bolton Council granted planning permission to local brewery Magee, Marshall and Co for a new pub at New Lane on the Top O'the Brow estate. The following month a licence was granted and construction work began.

The Rocket Hotel opened on 29 November 1961, the first pint being pulled by Mr C. H. Barber, a hotel inspector who had worked for Magees for 61 years. The foaming pint of Magees Mild was handed to the company's chairman, Mr W. B. Shields. According to Mr Shields the pub's name came about because the brewery wanted to get away from traditional pub names. It had been thought that name was a nod to an early locomotive, the Rocket, built by George Stephenson in 1829, or even to the space race that was taking place in the early-sixties. There was also a bus service called the Rocket that began to run from the autumn of 1925 in a five-seat car owned by Henry Martin. The service, from the Royal Oak to Affetside, was so quick that Mr Martin's children nicknamed it The Rocket and the name was subsequently given to the fleet of buses that Mr Martin bought. When Bolton Corporation Transport took over The Rocket in July 1934 they amended the route to run from the Royal Oak to the Starkie Arms at Tonge Moor via Longsight, Harwood Church and Thicketford Road passing close to what was later to become The Rocket pub.

By the end of 1961 the Rocket was advertising for a pianist and in early 1963 live acts were being featured on Friday and Saturday nights. Johnny Dee and the Detours, Frank Barlow, Colin Carey, Hal Williamson, Mike Hale, Mike Wroe And The Pops and Tony Dennett (“Lancashire's Own Joe Brown”) were among the acts seen at the Rocket during 1963 and 1964.

Entertainment ad from March 1963

In January 1970 a fire broke out in the pub lounge. Landlord Clifford Mann had closed up for the night and was watching TV in the living quarters upstairs. His son Norman, aged 17, could smell smoke when he went on to the landing. Mr Mann, his wife Mary and their two sons went downstairs and tackled the fire themselves before the fire brigade arrived. “When we got downstairs we could see from the flashings and cracklings that it was an electrical fire,” he told the Bolton Evening News. However, he insisted that despite serious damage done to the lounge the Rocket would open as normal. “We haven't got any lights back in the pub yet, but we'll be open tonight even if it means by candlelight” he said. “We must remain open.”

It was perhaps with this incident in mind that a number of the pub's regulars came to the aid of a local church after fire damaged part of its premises in March 1972. Fire had wrecked part of the ground-floor rooms at the Independent Methodist Church on Thicketford Road and a number of Rocket regulars helped with the clean-up operation. There was also a whip-round at the pub that raised £10 (the equivalent of over £120 in 2026). What made the gesture somewhat out of the ordinary was that the church was anti-drink, but a number of the Rocket's regulars had past links with the church through its Sunday school and youth club.

“The most obvious thing about it is that these people have got some feelings about the place,” said the church's minister William Owen. Rocket landlord Clifford Mann said it was just a case of people helping each other in a time of crisis. “This is the usual thing among neighbours - if anyone has a fire they help.”

In March 1974, the pub's owners, Greenall Whitley, won an appeal after planning permission was turned down to install betting shops in the car parks of both the Rocket and the Willows Hotel on Willows Lane on the other side of town. Bolton Council objected to the plan on the grounds that the shops would be detrimental to the area and would cause congestion, claims Greenalls claimed were overblown and “in the realms of Alice In Wonderland.” The appeal was heard by a local government inspector who sided with Greenalls. Two betting firms applied to site shops at the Rocket, Arthur Roye in 1975 and D. B. & I. Collins in 1976, but nothing ever came of the plan.

By 1982 the Rocket had been opened for 21 years and for most of that time it had been run by Clifford Mann. But Cliff was now in his sixties and was ready to retire. Originally a Daubhill man he had spent 44 years in the licensed trade and had run a number of pubs in Farnworth before moving to the Rocket. He and his wife Mary were presented with a wall clock to mark his retirement.

Running the Rocket wasn't an easy gig for anyone as it could be one of Bolton's livelier pubs. In July 1967, two youths were charged after fighting outside the pub over the affections of a girl. There was a scandal the following year when the pub's Savings Club was defrauded – by its own treasurer. In 1984 a man was fined after head-butting one of the pub's windows after discovering that his jacket had been stolen from the pub. However, most people's memories of the Rocket are of a good community pub even though the local Camra branch's description was of it “having an enviable reputation that no other pub wanted”.

In 1993 the Rocket became a Burtonwood pub. Ownership changed again in 2005 when it became a Marstons house after they took over the Burtonwood tied estate.

But being a good community pub doesn't necessarily make it pay. In September 2015 plans were lodged by retail group Spar to demolish the Rocket and replace it with a convenience store. Marstons were willing to sell the pub. The plans made reference to anti-social behaviour including one incident where a man was attacked in the pub toilets.

The Rocket closed on 10 January 2016 a little more than 54 years after it opened as a pub. The building was subsequently demolished and the Spar opened on the site in March 2017.

Willows Hotel, 296 Willows Lane, Bolton

 

The church of St George The Martyr was opened in 1880 on land off St Helens Road. Living accommodation for the first vicar, the Rev T. A. Clarke, was provided a few hundred yards away on Willows Lane at an existing 14-room building known as Hawthorn Lodge.

In 1955 the vicarage was quietly sold to local brewery company Magee, Marshall and Co based just off Derby Street. Magees had their eye on a particular issue affecting one of their town centre pubs. Woolworths were looking to extend their Deansgate store and wanted to buy the Three Tuns on Bridge Street, a Magees house directly behind the store. What was particularly useful about the Three Tuns was that it had a full licence. This enabled them to sell wines and spirits as well as beer, and in the fifties these licences were difficult to come by – unless an existing licence was transferred. 

Magees did a deal with Woolworth and sold the Three Tuns; however, they then moved to transfer the pub's licence to their new pub, which they had named the Willows Hotel.

News of the decision to grant the application broke in the Bolton Evening News of 7 March 1956. “We are aware that the number of licensed premises in the town centre is probably too many,” Magees spokesman Mr W.C. Lawson told the paper. “The interesting thing about this is that within 220 yards of the Willows-lane premises there are no licensed houses. Within 440 yards there are three – all off-licenses.” Mr Lawson went on to produce a petition signed by 616 people all of whom lived within 220 yards of the premises. Of those 88 percent were in favour of the new pub, five percent were against and seven percent “couldn't care”. One of the supporters, Cormack Neary, a retired tailor, told the paper “I live behind the house and consider there to be room in the area for an hotel.” Another local resident, Thomas Gardner, pointed out that it was either a 20-minute walk or a bus ride to the nearest pub, the Oddfellows on St Helens Road.

The following night some opposing views appeared on the BEN's letters page. “Surely the members of St George The Martyr Church should have some explanation why the building was sold for this purpose,” wrote one correspondent. Another claimed that the new use for the building came as “a complete surprise.”

In April 1956 the licence transfer was rubber-stamped and Magees announced that the vicarage would open as a public house before Christmas. The lounge, dining room and part of the hall would become the pub lounge; the study would become a smoke room; the scullery and store would make way for a vault, and the kitchen and remainder of the hall would form the bar.

The Three Tuns closed its doors for the final time on 26 November 1956. At midday the following day the Willows Hotel opened with a small ceremony in the bar performed by the Mayor Of Bolton, Alderman Peter Lowe. Guests, including members of the town council, admired the contemporary style of decoration.

At the beginning of 1960 plans were approved to extend the pub. Food was introduced in 1966 and music, in the form of a pianist, was added the following year.

By March 1974 the Willows was owned by Greenall Whitley who had taken over Magee, Marshall in 1958 and closed the brewery in 1970. Greenalls tried to open betting shops on the site of two of their Bolton pubs, the Willows and the Rocket on New Lane at Top O'Th Brow. Initial plans had been rejected by Bolton Council on the grounds that the shop would be detrimental to the area and could bring parking problems. However, Greenalls appealed the decision claiming that the council's case was based on speculation on what might happen placing it “in the realms of Alice In Wonderland.” The appeal was heard by a local government inspector who found in Greenall's favour, but despite interest in June 1974 from a betting firm named Arthur Roye no bookies was ever opened on the site.

December 1975 lunchtime menu

A refurbishment in the autumn of 1975 led to the opening of the Regency Room and the expansion of the Willows' food offerings. In 1979 a single-storey extension to the rear of the pub saw tanks installed. This meant that beer was delivered in vehicles that resembled petrol tankers with the beer being stored in the tanks. But the Willows was never one for real ale-lovers, apart from a period in the late-nineties when Stones Bitter was served on handpump for a while. A 1982 CAMRA listing shows that it served keg Greenall beers on electric pumps.

The nineties saw jazz nights on Thursdays; there were quiz nights, a karaoke, a big screen for live football matches shown on TV. But by 1999 Greenalls had got out of brewing and pubs and the Willows was part of Scottish and Newcastle Breweries tied estate. It was subsequently sold to Admiral Taverns who in turn sold it on to Punch Taverns in 2005.

In 2010 the Willows closed down after just 54 years as a functioning pub. It never reopened and was finally de-licensed in 2014. In a strange quirk it reverted to religious use, albeit this time in the shape of an Islamic educational centre.