Little John, Ashburner Street

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The Little John was situated in Ashburner Street and was a short-lived beerhouse in the middle of the 19^th century.

The 1848 directory shows James Nuttall as the licensee of an un-named pub in Ashburner Street. By the time the licensing magistrates compiled their list of Bolton beerhouses in 1849 it had a name – the Little John.

Quite why it was named the Little John isn’t given, but a clue can be gleaned further down Ashburner Street where the Robin Hood was situated. Two pubs in Lever Street later pulled the same trick with a Robin Hood and a Little John just yards away from each other.

By 1851 James Nuttall had moved on to a pub on Crook Street. The Little John on Ashburner Street either changed its name or had closed down.

The 1861 census shows James Nuttall working as a cotton waste dealer at 13 Crook Street and ten years later in 1871 he is at the same address but is described as a clock dresser.

Founders Arms, 30-32 Ashburner Street, Bolton

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The block between Spring Gardens and Howell Croft South pictured in 1928 with properties boarded up and ready to be demolished. The Robin Hood can be seen in the foreground with the Founders Arms at the other end of the block. 

The Founders Arms on Ashburner Street dated back to 1806 when it was known as the Founders Inn.  It became the Founders Arms before 1818. There were a number of foundries in the area. Wardle’s directory for 1815 shows Blankley and Elton on King Street; James Kirkman and Co on Howell Croft and the much larger Union Foundry owned by Smalley, Thwaits and Co located on the site of the current market This final foundry gave Ashburner Street its name.  

One of the Founders’ early landlords, Robert Roberts, came to an unfortunate end while on a trip to London to watch the coronation of Queen Victoria in 1838. The Bolton Chronicle takes up the story:

“Immediately on his arrival in London, Mr. Roberts hired a cab to his destination, but had not been sat above a minute, before he was struck with the hand of death, and fell off his seat a corpse.” [1]

By 1876 the landlord was Richard Beckett who had previously been at the Farmers Arms on Derby Street. Beckett had moved to the Crofters Arms at Bradshaw by 1882, but the following year he filed for bankruptcy with debts of £1050 – the equivalent of £115,000 today!

The Founders was situated on the corner of Ashburner Street and Howell Croft – next to where the pelican crossing leads to the Octagon Theatre. At the other end of that block and on the corner of Spring Gardens, was the Robin Hood which was run by the  Ashton family for a number of years. By 1890 their daughter Rachel Briercliffe was the landlady of the Founders Arms so the family had both corners covered in what was a competitive part of town. Rachel had married a solicitor, Robert Briercliffe, in 1885 and the couple took over the pub a few years later. Robert continued in his work as a solicitor while Rachel’s background in the pub business meant that was the licensee. By 1901 they had retired to 2 Derby Road, Southport. Rachel died in 1917.

The Briefcliffes were succeeded at the Founders by Thomas Albert Ashton Tong who spent over 25 years at the pub. Tong was born in Ashburner Street at the end of 1869, the son of James Ashton Tong, an iron moulder in one of the local foundries. He married in 1895 and took over the Founders – by now a Magees pub - shortly afterwards. Thomas’s wife Sarah died in 1917. Thomas himself died in January 1925. His daughter Nellie was living in Oakwood on Chorley New Road by the time she married in 1940.

The Founders closed soon after Thomas Ashton Tong’s death. The pub’s full licence was transferred in 1926 to the Brooklyn Hotel on Green Lane. The building was demolished in 1928 along with its neighbour the Robin Hood. The civic centre was built on the site. The children’s library is situated on the site of the former Founders Arms.

[1] Bolton Chronicle, 30 June 1838.

[2] Manchester Courier, 29 June 1883.

Hole I'Th Wall, 20 Ashburner Street

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The Hole I’The Wall was situated at 20 Ashburner Street. While we can only guess why this beerhouse was so named, Ashburner Street was named after the steelworks that stood at one end of the street where the market has stood since 1932.

The Hole I’Th Wall dated back to around 1840. Joseph Broughton ran the premises for many years. He was there at the first mention of a beerhouse in that part of Ashburner Street, which was on the 1841 Census. At that time he lived there with his wife Alice whom he married in 1830 when the couple were both aged 19.

The Broughtons appear not to have any children. The only person to live with them was Ann Spencer, a washer-woman who was Alice’s mother. Sadly, they were down to just Joseph Broughton and Ann Spencer in 1861 following Alice’s death in 1857. He married again, to Margaret Bentley in November 1863 and by 1871 he had moved to Davenport Street. Oddly, despite having spent much of his adult life in the licensed trade the census return for that year describes him as a ‘retired brickmaker’.

The Hole I’Th Wall was bought by Magees later in the nineteenth century. The pub closed in 1931 and was subsequently demolished. The Octagon Theatre now stands on the site.

 The bottom end of Ashburner Street looking up towards the library is shown in this September 2014 image (copyright Google Street View). The multi-story car park is on the left, the Octagon Theatre is on the right.  The Hole I’Th Wall was near to the top of the theatre building as shown on this image.

Robin Hood, Ashburner Street

The Robin Hood pictured after its closure in 1927. Demolition had begun prior to the construction of the Civic Centre. Part of Bolton Library stands on the site as can be seen in the image at the foot of this page. Spring Gardens runs down by the side of the pub. The former Founders Arms (closed 1926) is at the other end of the block on the corner of Howell Croft South. Image from the Bolton Libraries and Museum Service collection. Copyright Bolton Council.

The Robin Hood stood on the corner of Ashburner Street and Spring Gardens and dated back to some time between the 1840s. It appears on the 1849 list of Great Bolton beerhouses when it was owned by William Ashton Entwistle.

The pub played a major role in the erection of the statue of Dr Samuel Taylor Chadwick, which still stands in Victoria Square. Dr Chadwick was a medical doctor and philanthropist from a wealthy farming family who moved to Bolton from his native Urmston in 1837. He soon gained a reputation as an able doctor with a willingness to help the poor and he worked tirelessly to improve the public health of the town. He gave generously in time and money to a wide range of schemes to improve the lives of the local working classes.

On his retirement in 1868 Dr Chadwick gave £22,000 to establish an orphanage and model dwellings in the town. The rent from the houses would be used to provide revenue for the orphanage. The Chadwick orphanage opened in 1874 on Chadwick Street, The Haulgh. It remained in use as a children’s home until 1930 and the building was demolished in 1968. [1]

The idea of a statue for Dr Chadwick originated among the working classes with the first meeting on the subject held by landlord James Ashton at his pub, the Robin Hood, in January 1868. The idea soon spread and a public meeting chaired by the town’s mayor, James Barlow took place later that same month. A fund was set up with an upper limit of one guinea each the idea being that the subscription should not be dominated by the wealthy. However, momentum stalled and by the time the statue was cast in 1871 the fund hadn’t reached the £963 owed to the manufacturer. The one guinea limit was lifted and it was telling that 17,683 subscribers donated less than sixpence each – or the equivalent of less than £2.50 in today’s money.

The statue was unveiled outside the newly-built Town Hall in August 1873 although neither Samuel Chadwick, nor his wife Anne, were present, his ill-health having caused him to retire to Southport.

Four months after the unveiling James Ashton, who was instrumental in the idea for the statue, died at the age of 49. [2]

The Robin Hood was a Sharman’s pub until the last two years of its life. Sharman’s sold out to George Shaw & Son Ltd of Leigh in 1926 and in 1928 the Robin Hood shut its doors for the final time. The building had been bought for demolition by Bolton Council along with the Founders Arms just a few doors along.

The council built the Civic Centre on the site and Bolton Central Library stands on the exact site of the Robin Hood.  

[1] Public Monuments and Sculpture Association. Retrieved 21 April 2014.

[2] Annals Of Bolton, James Clegg, 1888

The site of the former Robin Hood pub, now part of the Bolton Central Library. Spring Gardens runs down the hill on the left of the building in this picture, Ashburner Street continues to the right of the image. Both the Robin Hood and the Founder’s Arms, which was situated at the other end  of this block, were demolished in 1928 to make way for the Civic Centre.

Market Hotel (T'Crate Egg), Ashburner Street

The Market Hotel pictured in 1950. Image from the Bolton Library And Museums Service collection. Copyright Bolton Council.

The rather anonymous-looking wall seen on the photo at the bottom of the page  is something that thousands of Boltonians will pass everyday as they walk through the Newport Arcade on Newport Street, but it marks the spot of the Market Hotel (or T’Crate Egg, to give it its nickname) which was situated on the corner of what is now Ashburner Street and Coronation Street. It was a pub lost to the redevelopment of the west side of Newport Street in the late fifties.

This 1957 photo clearly shows Timpson’s shoe shop on Newport Street in the distance. In those days Ashburner Street was a thoroughfare that extended all the way down to Newport Street.

Although the Market was situated on the corner with Old Hall Street South no street by that name exists any more. In the 19th century Old Hall Street ran all the way from Deansgate to Great Moor Street but when the Town Hall was built in 1873 it carved the street in two. Old Hall Street North still exists; it’s the street just off Deansgate down the side of Whittakers that contains some ladies’ toilets and not much else.

The site of what was once Old Hall Street South is now Coronation Street which in those days ran parallel to Old Hall Street from the side of the Wheatsheaf Hotel to where it met Ashburner Street. When the shops on Newport Street were finally re-built in 1962, Coronation Street and Old Hall Street South were re-aligned to link together to form one continuous thoroughfare between Victoria Square and Great Moor Street.

In his book Bolton Pubs 1800-2000, Gordon Readyhough [1] reports that the Market was a beerhouse known in 1849 as the Goose With Two Necks and was later known as the Globe Vaults. It became the Market Hotel after Bolton’s wholesale market moved to Howell Croft South in 1871 and occupied the space where the Great Moor Street multi-storey car park now stands. One of the traders nearest to the pub dealt in eggs and the Market became known by the nickname ‘T’Crate Egg’ because of the habit of the trader to unload his crates of eggs by the pub door.

The pub received a full licence in 1879 when the Cross Axes on Wood Court off Deansgate (near the Old Three Crowns) closed down and licence was transferred to the Market.

When football became a professional game in the 1880s many Scottish footballers came south in search of paid football employment, but many had other jobs, often easy jobs in the mills owned by club officials but in 1886 the captain of Great Lever FC was one such Scot, Jimmy McKernan [2], a professional footballer but also making a living as landlord of the Market. The Great Lever club played on the Woodside Ground, situated on the site of what later became the Norweb offices near to Green Lane, and along with the likes of Halliwell FC and Bolton Wanderers were considered one of the major football forces in Lancashire at the time, competing in the FA Cup and supplying one player to the England team in 1883. However, with the advent of the Football League in 1888 and the Wanderers rise to pre-eminence the original Great Lever club faded away, although the name has recently been revived by a junior club.

By 1890 the Market was owned by John Atkinson & Co Ltd whose brewery stood on Commission Street in the area now covered by the new Sixth Form College. Atkinson’s sold out in 1895 to Boardman’s United Breweries of Manchester who in turn sold their breweries and pubs to another Manchester firm, Cornbrook’s in 1898 and it was as a Cornbrook pub that the Market ended its days.

The Market closed in February 1957 and prior to its demolition someone had the idea of taking photographs of the area as a record of how it looked prior to the area being redeveloped. To be honest, in these pictures the exterior of the pub was beginning to look a little bit run down but they give an idea of the Market Hotel and its immediate surroundings over 50 years ago.

A number of photos were taken of the pub in1957 but as the pub closed in February of that year some may well have been taken slightly before then.

You can see the photographs here, here, here here here here, and here.

Note the green sward of grass opposite the Market Hotel. Properties on this stretch were demolished in the late forties. The area was grassed over in 1950 and benches placed around the perimeter making a pleasant resting place for weary shoppers. By the time this aerial photo was taken in 1959
the grassed area was being used as a car park, an arrangement that lasted until the Octagon Theatre was built on the site in 1967, while the former car park in Howell Croft South was used as a bus station until buses moved to a redeveloped Moor Lane in 1969. As you can see the Market had been demolished along with all the surrounding property and work had commenced on redeveloping the area.

The wholesale market from which the pub took its final name moved from Howell Croft South to Ashburner Street in 1932, thus denying the pub some of its trade.



[1] Bolton Pubs 1800-2000, Gordon Readyhough, published by Neil Richardson (2000)

[2] Leisure In Bolton, 1750-1900, Robert Poole (1982)