Green Rooster Cabaret Club, 54-56 Deane Road, Bolton

 

Ad from 1960

Number 54 Deane Road was situated on a block that ran from Wareing Street to Stanley Street South. The Windmill pub was next-door-but-one and the original Derby Ward Labour Club was on the corner of the next block at number 62. In 1905 number 54 was a draper's shop and by 1924 both it and number 56 were owned by Arthur Flitcroft, the former premises still operating as a drapery and 56 as a newsagents.

By October 1958, 54 Deane Road was the base for a property maintenance company, Ashcroft Roof Repairs. The owner of the business was Lauchlan Ashcroft. Born in 1930 it's fair to say that Ashcroft already had a chequered past with a string of court appearances to his name, mainly for motoring offences. When, in December 1951, he stood trial for taking a car without the consent of its owner he told the court that he wanted a long sentence and that when he got out he would do the same again. He got six months.

Lauchlan Ashcroft turned his ground-floor premises into Lock's Transport Cafe, but in 1959 he once again fell foul of the law. Premises needed licenses for anything and everything; installing a juke box required a music licence and as someone who had form in flouting the law that was something Ashcroft didn't bother to get. For five nights in February police spent half an hour each evening watching the cafe. When they approached Ashcroft he said that the owners of the juke box would consider it a test case because there wasn't excessive noise. By the time the case came to court he had changed his tuned saying he now understood that he needed a licence. He said that a number of his customers were truck drivers and had requested that a juke box be installed, but the magistrates issued him with a £2 fine.

But either Lock's Transport Cafe wasn't working or Lauchlan Ashcroft decided that he needed to take the business to another level because at the beginning of June 1960 the Green Rooster Cabaret Club opened at 54 Deane Road. Opening night acts included Betty McKenna, Johnny Lee, and the Jay Bellis Trio. Over the coming weeks the club also staged auditions for aspiring musicians.

The Green Rooster didn't last for long. At 11.25pm on 1 October 1960 police entered the club where they found 13 members with either full or half-empty glasses long after last orders. The raid was headed by the town's deputy chief constable, Chief Superintendent Higham. Around 50 or 60 people were on the premises but the police only charged those who had drinks in front of them. The 13 who were fined were aged between 16 and 33 years old although most were in their late teens and early twenties. Ashcroft was fined over £45 on 26 charges of supplying liquor and aiding and abetting the consumption of liquor after hours. Also fined were two committee members, John Alexander McKinley Smyth and Kenneth Byron. It transpired that the 21-year-old Smyth had provided most of the capital to keep the club open and Ashcroft pleaded for leniency towards him, but given that Smyth was allegedly the heir to a £250,000 fortune it's doubtful he struggled to pay his £45 fine.

As a result of the raid the Green Rooster was struck off the club register and Ashcroft had to give an undertaking not to open the club in the next 12 months. The club did re-open in July 1962 but without a drinks licence. It was known as the Regent Club and the opening night saw the Fred Lang Trio appear along with vocalist Eddie Earle. Both had played at the Green Rooster. However, it seems that Lauchlan Ashcroft wasn't involved – not directly, at any rate. An application for a drinks licence was heard three months later in October 1862 when the applicant was a Mrs M. S. Martin. The application was refused as it was thought it would prejudice the planned redevelopment of the area. The Regent closed down. 

Number 54 Deane Road went back to being a shop. Ann Grant moved there from her premises on Longcauseway in Farnworth and sold a variety of household goods. But plans for the redevelopment of the area finally came to fruition towards the end of the decade. The shop closed at 4pm on Friday 1 August 1969 and was demolished shortly afterwards.

Lauchlan Ashcroft left Bolton and by 1971 he was in living in Harrow and running the Gardenia nudist club in St Albans. In 1998 he was jailed for historical sex offences against children committed over more than two decades at the Gardenia. He died in 2005.