Nelson Hotel, 30 Chorley Old Road, Bolton

Follow @LostPubsBolton 

The Nelson photographed in 1972.

One night around April 2019, the doors of the Nelson Hotel on Chorley Old Road were quietly closed for the final time. Opening times over the previous year or so had been sporadic, especially during the week but this was the end of almost 160 years of history. The demise of the Nelson means that all the traditional pubs on that stretch of Chorley Old Road – the Stanley Arms ('Sally Up Steps')  the Victory and the Kings Arms - have now closed. Only a more recent addition, the Bunbury's micropub, remains along with one club, the Victory Reform Club.

The Nelson was built in 1861 on the corner of Chorley Old Road and Gaskell Street by a man named Philip Howarth. A joiner by trade Howarth was for many years the licensee of the Elephant and Castle  on Kay Street.

The premises were a beerhouse but Howarth applied for a full licence at the first opportunity. His chance came at the annual licensing session held in August 1862. A successful application would mean he was able to sell wine and spirits as well as beer, but Howarth was one of 17 applicants. At the hearing he stated the Nelson had been built with the intention of it becoming a public house rather than just a beerhouse. He pointed out that many mills had opened in that part of Chorley Old Road and a large number of houses had been constructed in the area. However, the magistrates rejected Howarth's application along with the other 16. (Bolton Chronicle, 30 August 1862). The Nelson would have to wait another 99 years before obtaining a full licence.

Philip Howarth died in October 1862 aged 56 and the pub passed to his wife Charlotte whom he had married in 1858, but by 1875 the pub was being run by John Leather.

Matters at those new mills didn't always run smoothly. In September 1877 there was a strike amongst the cotton workers of Bolton. A number of trade unions used pubs to pay strike money to people out of work. The Nelson Hotel was one of those used by the Self-Actor Minders Association. Other pubs used by the association to pay out strike money in the dispute were the Cross Guns at Deane, the Cotton Tree  on Lever Street, the Park at Moses Gate, the Derby Arms on Churchgate and the Pack Horse at Astley Bridge. Strike pay was 10 shillings a week plus an extra shilling per child.

In the early days of the Nelson, before the construction of houses around Gaskell Street, there was a cricket ground attached to the pub. The Bolton Chronicle of 22 August 1863 reported that players used to meet in the Nelson before matches and that the pub was used as an unofficial clubhouse. It was common for players to turn up at the pub before the game for a drink and then leave their belongings inside before going off to play. However, the paper reported that two young men, Joseph Bradley of Halliwell and Alfred Stones of Chorley Street, were charged with stealing a waistcoat, a return railway ticket, an ancient coin and a silver pencil case, the property of Mr Frederick Topp, a cotton spinner from Farnworth. The pub's landlady, Mrs Charlotte Howarth, challenged the men about the waistcoat when Mr Topp returned to the pub at the end of the game. Bradley produced it from beneath his coat claiming it had been taken for “a lark”. Both he and Stones were apprehended by the police on the Monday following the match and they were kept in custody until the hearing three days later. The Mayor, who was presiding over the bench, discharged the men stating that the degradation they had suffered from being locked up before the hearing ought to be enough punishment.

Cricket wasn't the only sport featured at the Nelson. In the 1890s Bolton Harriers frequently began their cross-country runs from the pub.

By 1880 the Nelson was owned by a local brewer, Joseph Sharman. A native of Derbyshire, Sharman began brewing at the Crompton's Monument  at Mill Hill, a pub owned by his aunt, before building the Mere Hall Brewery, a few hundred yards away from the Nelson, in 1874. In 1880, Sharman converted his business from that of a sole trader into a limited company and the Nelson was one of the original 10 pubs. As part of the transition Sharman received £25,000 in cash – the equivalent of over £3 million in 2019. He lived at the Hollies, just a few yards away from the Nelson on Chorley Old Road on the site of what is now Gaskells Nursery, so the Nelson was effectively his local pub. Sharman lived at The Hollies until his death in 1916.

Sharman's grew to become a sizeable enterprise with 58 pubs and 25 off-licences but the business was bought out by the Leigh brewery of George Shaw & Son in 1927.  Sharman's brewery was closed and the Nelson was a Shaw's pub for three years until 1930 when the brewery was taken over by Peter Walker and Robert Cain Ltd of Liverpool and Warrington. Walker Cain, as it became in 1946, merged with Joshua Tetley & Son Ltd of Leeds in 1960 to become Tetley Walker. It was as a Tetley pub that many older readers will remember the Nelson. Finally, in 1961, it was granted a spirits licence when a raft of Bolton pubs successfully applied for full licences.

The Bolton branch of the Campaign For Real Ale published a list of all the town's pubs in 1982. At that time the Nelson was a keg-beer Tetley pub. Indeed, it was never one for the real ale purist. However, the pub's interior was a classic design of lounge on the right of the front entrance and a vault to the left that could be reached by a separate entrance in Gaskell Street. That vault later became a pool room.

Tetley's gradually got out of the pub trade during the nineties. The Nelson was one of a small number of pubs that ended up in the hands of an individual rather than a pub group. It became notable for distinctive bright blue shutters both upstairs as well as downstairs which suggested that the licensee didn't live on the premises. However, opening times became sporadic and WhatPub's suggestion that the Nelson closed in April 2019 appears to be an estimate albeit a fairly accurate one. 

In August 2020 planning permission was granted to convert the pub into flats.

Kings Arms, 177 Chorley Old Road

Follow @LostPubsBolton

The Kings Arms pictured in the early-1930s. The shot was taken by Walkers as part of a pictorial review of their tied estate in the Bolton area. The old St Luke’s church is pictured to the right of the pub. Its foundation stone was linked by local dignitary Peter Ainsworth of Smithills Hall in 1869. The church opened by licence in 1871 and was consecrated in 1874. It was destroyed by fire in the early-1970s and was replaced by a single-story building. St Luke’s Street runs to the left of the pub. Note the separate entrance to the vault on the corner of the pub. That had long since been bricked over when this writer first drank there in the late-seventies.

The Kings Arms on Chorley Old Road dated back to the late-1870s. A small pub, its layout was similar to that of the Dog and Partridge on Manor Street: a small vault to the left of the main entrance, a pool room towards the rear and a large lounge running along the whole of the right-hand side of the pub.

The first recorded landlord was John Balshaw (1855-1894) who was already living at the pub in 1881 along with his wife Sarah. The couple married in 1876. Sarah’s family hailed from the Daubhill area and the 1871 Census has her living with her family on Swan Lane.

Oddly, the 1891 census has John and Sarah living around the corner in St Luke’s Street.

After John died in 1894, Sarah took over the pub. She met Walter Brown and the couple married in 1896, but they remained at the Kings Arms until at least 1911. However, the pub had earned the nickname of 'Balshaw's' by which it was known locally for many years after.

The Kings was owned by Robert Wood of the Prince Arthur brewery, but it was sold to Tong’s of Deane after wartime raw material restrictions forced Wood’s to cease brewing in 1917. Tong’s in turn sold out to Walker Cain Ltd of Liverpool in 1923 and the pub fell into the hands of Tetley after they bought Walker’s in 1960. Admiral Taverns were the owners when the Kings closed in the summer of 2010. The premises were converted  into offices and are now occupied by a legal firm.

The Kings Arms pictured around 1973. 

The Kings Arms pictured in 2014. (copyright Google Street View).

Ziggis Fun Pub/Victory Conservative Club, Chorley Old Road

July 2016 after the former Ziggis Fun Pub had been converted to a Spar. Copyright, Google Street View.

If people think the pubs of Bolton have had it tough in recent years then the political clubs have had it worse. Labour clubs in particular have not so much been decimated but almost completely wiped out, Farnworth & Kearsley Labour Club survives and while Rumworth Labour Club became the privately-owned Rumworth Hall it failed to survive the pandemic and is now a wedding venue. Tonge Ward, Great Lever, Breightmet, Bradford Ward, Bolton Central and Derby Ward have all gone.

The Conservative Clubs have fared rather better and in 2014 the Association of Conservative Clubs’ website listed no fewer than 18 remaining in the town, something that chimes with the often-made suggestion that more people go in Conservative Clubs because they’re more nicely decorated.

But one of the earliest casualties of the demise of the political club was indeed a Tory club - Victory Conservative Club on Chorley Old Road. The club dated back to the first decade of the twentieth century but the decision was taken in 1985 to sell the premises. The club was therefore sold to a reputable Wigan firm named Dickinsons (The Bottlers) Ltd. Dickinsons had been in business since the thirties but their line of trade was bottling beer rather than running pubs. Their plant filled bottles for a number of breweries and eventually became part of the Greenall’s group.

But a former Tory club and a long-established local firm – what could possibly go wrong?

The result was Ziggis Fun Pub and there are two distinctive schools of thought about that establishment. To be fair it is very well-thought of by the people who frequented the place. Go on Facebook forums and those commenting on the pub have fond memories. 

Those who lived nearby might give a different view.

Dickinson’s gutted the entire club, put a long bar on the left-hand-side wall and the rest was just one big room with a dance floor at the far end. Bar staff frequently got up and danced on the bar and on a platform in front of the DJ stand and the pub did pretty well for a while.

Ziggis also had a late licence and was situated in a residential area and Thursday and Sunday nights were the worst. There were complaints about late-night noise as punters left the pub once it closed at about 1am and the residents took their case to the Bolton Evening News which resulted in some unwelcome publicity.

Pubs such as this tend to be cyclical and fun pubs had their day in the mid-eighties. People get tired of them after a relatively short period of time and their continued success depends largely on location. Fun pubs in Blackpool and Benidorm find it difficult enough, but such a pub in the Chorley Old Road area of Bolton had only a limited shelf life.

When Ziggis closed in 1987 it had been open for just two years but the news was greeted with delight by people living nearby. [1] The premises later re-opened as Nero’s and then Funny’s and limped on into the mid-nineties but it was never quite the same.

Dickinsons sold the premises which became a retail outlet and this old Wigan firm was liquidated in 2004. The former Ziggis became a Spar franchise in 2011 but is now a Premier store.

[1] What’s Doing, the Greater Manchester Beer Drinkers monthly magazine. September 1987 issue.

Updated 18 January 2022 to include information on a conversion to Premier store and also the Rumworth Hall's demise. In addition, reader Col has put the year of Funny's closure as no earlier than 1994. (See comment below).

Sally Up Steps/Stanley Arms

The former Sally Up Steps, now the Nam Ploy Thai restaurant, pictured in May 2012. By the early 1980s the pub consisted of the building at the top of the steps, though the original pub - the  Stanley Arms - was just one half of that building - the part to the right of the door. A 1987 refurbishment saw the pub expanded into the rest of the row to the left of the pub. Image Copyright: Google Street View.

The Sally Up Steps was situated on Chorley Old Road, close to the junction with Kirkhall Lane.

The pub was one of three in Bolton known as the Stanley Arms but acquired its nickname after one of its landladies and because the main entrance was up a flight of stairs at the front of the pub. In his book Peace! Beer In The 1920s and 1930s, Ronald Pattinson maintains that it was already nicknamed Sally Up Steps by the time Mass Observation surveyed the town around 1936.

The Deane brewery, William Tong’s, owned the pub until 1923 when they were taken over by Walkers of Warrington. Walkers merged with the Leeds brewery of Joshua Tetley in 1960 to form Tetley Walkers, but during the 1980s the brewery decided to re-brand a number of pubs as Walker’s outlets and began to brew a new range of beers for those pubs some of which were based on old Walker’s recipes.

In February 2011, Terry Byatt told the Lost Pubs Project this story about the Stanley Arms over a hundred years ago:

My grandfather's elder sister ran the "Sally Up Steps" pub in Bolton before the First World War.  I remember as a child him telling me that she had a parrot that could whistle like the tram conductors and stop the tram outside the pub!  Apparently the parrot also used to drink beer, get drunk and then fall off its perch, when its noted phrase was "Polly Poorly". [2]

By the mid-eighties the Sally Up Steps was a small pub that had already been knocked into an adjoining property a number of years earlier. Then – as now – five stone steps led from the street level to the pub. To the left of the main entrance there was a small vault, access to which was down three more steps. A small lounge was situated at the front of the pub with a pool room and toilets towards the rear.

In 1987 it was time for the pub to receive its refurbishment and a conversion to a Walkers outlet. Its small size meant that with around 30 people in it the pub was packed so in order to try and drum up some more custom to help pay for the refurbishment Tetley Walker decided to buy up three adjoining properties and expand the pub to some four times its former size.

The Stanley Arms was officially renamed Sally Up Steps in the autumn of 1987 when it reopened after an extensive re-fit. There was now a car park to the rear of the pub as the brewery tried to attract food trade. In March 1989 it was reported that the pub had been wallpapered not much more than a year after it had reopened. [3]

In 2009 Sally Up Steps was named as one of the best pub names in the country (Bob’s Smithy was also on the list) but by then the Sally Up Steps had closed. It is now the Nam Ploy, a Thai restaurant.

Sally Up Steps pictured in the late-1920s.

[1] Peace! Beer In The 1920s and 1930s, by Ronald Pattinson.

[2] Lost Pubs project. Retrieved 25 March 2014.

[3] What’s Doing, the Greater Manchester beer drinkers monthly magazine. March 1989 issue.