Churchgate Tavern, 33 Churchgate, Bolton

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This pub is not the current Churchgate pub situated at 11-13 Churchgate and which was previously known as the Brass Cat, the Bears Paw and the Golden Lion.

A 1975 image of the Sandwich Inn. The left-hand side of the premises was number 33 Churchgate, the site of the former Churchgate Tavern. Image copyright Bolton Council.

This was the Churchgate Tavern situated at number 33 Churchgate next door to what is now the Pastie Shoppe and just a few doors up from the Boars Head (now Hogarth's). 

The pub lasted for just a few years in the 1850s and 1860s but it became notorious largely because of its licensees, George Smethurst and Isabella Dewhurst.

Born Isabella Walker in 1828 at Coverdale in the Yorkshire Dales, by 1841 Isabella and her older sister Margaret were living at Oakenbottom, Breightmet after their mother Jane had married a coal miner, Jonathan Shaw.

In December 1849, Isabella married Thomas Dewhurst, a Little Lever-born stonemason, and by 1851 the couple were living at 36 Back Turton Street. He was 27, she was 22.

Quite how Isabella Dewhurst got involved in the pub business isn’t clear, but while it was a career that lasted little more than a decade it became very profitable for her. However, any fortune is unlikely to have been made through the sale of beer.

George Smethurst and Isabella Dewhurst opened the Churchgate Tavern around 1853. Although the 1861 census states Isabella Dewhurst was married it is obvious her relationship with Thomas Dewhurst was at an end. Instead, she was living at the pub with the 33-year-old Smethurst along with a servant girl and two female lodgers.

Smethurst was charged with perjury in December 1859 following a case in which he was initially charged with staying open late. He had already been charged with illegal hours a couple of weeks earlier but a lack of evidence resulted in the charges were dropped on that occasion. This time a man named Nicholas Heyes, who owned 33 Churchgate and was the landlord of the Wellington beerhouse,  Union Buildings, was in the Churchgate when police arrived in the early hours of one Saturday morning just before Christmas. Heyes claimed he was there to see Smethurst having been to Manchester with someone who was claimed to be Smethurst's wife but was actually Isabella Dewhurst. The pair had been to look at a property he was thinking of buying and he wished to discuss the matter with Smethurst. The other people in the pub at the time were a female servant, a male lodger and a female lodger. Heyes claimed to have arrived at the Churchgate with 'Mrs Smethurst' some time between 11 and 11.30pm. However, the case turned on the evidence of a senior police officer, PC Holgate, who claimed he was at the pub at a quarter to eleven that night and saw Smethurst's wife there some time before Heyes claimed the pair had returned from Manchester. [Bolton Chronicle, 24 December 1859 and 31 December 1859]. Smethurst, Heyes, the female servant and female lodger were all sent for trial. But when the case came to trial at the South Lancashire Assizes at Liverpool in April 1860 no evidence was presented and the case was dismissed.

In July 1860, Isabella Dewhurst appeared in court accusing a beerseller from Radcliffe named Wright Jones of stealing £100 in gold sovereigns from her along with a gold watch. Mrs Dewhurst claimed she hadn't lived with her husband for nine years but had lived with Smethurst for the past seven years. She stated that she had a little money before she moved in with Smethurst but unbeknownst to him she had saved £100 – the equivalent today of around £12,000. How she had managed to save all that money wasn't explained. She did say that on the day in question, Smethurst had been drinking all day and left the Churchgate, but she was worried that he may find the £100 so she and Jones went to the bank to deposit the coins. The bank was closed so they went to two pubs: Holden's Vaults (the Higher Nag's Head) and the Three Crowns. Mrs Dewhurst went to the water closet – the toilet – and on her return her watch and the bag of money had gone – as had Wright Jones. An off-duty police officer, Thomas Chadwick, was in the Three Crowns and suggested that the money had gone missing in one of three places: either in the pub or during Mrs Dewhurst's journey to or from the toilet. She was described in the Bolton Chronicle's report of the case on 7 July 1860 as “a notorious woman” and when she was asked in court as to whether she had previously been charged with running a brothel she managed to avoid giving a straight answer. Perhaps her reputation went before her as the case against Jones was dismissed.

George Smethurst killed himself by hanging in March 1863. His relationship with Isabella Dewhurst had disintegrated largely due to his alcoholism. He had issued threats against her on a number of occasions and her stepfather Jonathan Shaw had moved in with her to offer some sort of protection.

In June 1863 Isabella Dewhurst was in court once again, this time alongside Edward Gordon who was said to come from a respectable family in Stockport. The pair were summoned for having acted in the management of “a house of ill-fame” [Bolton Chronicle 13 June 1863] on Churchgate – the Churchgate Tavern. The charge was only avoided when their representative pointed out that Gordon was due to report for duty with the Cheshire yeomanry the following morning or he would suffer a fine of £10. If the summons was withdrawn Gordon would undertake to ensure that the premises would be run properly and the magistrates agreed.

In 1866 the Churchgate was sold by Nicholas Heyes along with an adjoining cottage occupied by Isabella Dewhurst and shortly afterwards she moved to the Music Tavern on Gaskell Court off Churchgate. The pub no longer exists although Gaskell Court can still be seen. 

Later that decade, in 1869, Mrs Dewhurst testified at the London divorce court in the case of James Hardman, whose father was a well-known manufacturer in Bolton. Hardman had already obtained a decree nisi on the grounds of his wife’s adultery, but Mrs Dewhurst was one of a string of witnesses who claimed that he, too, was an adulterer. She claimed he had stayed for two nights at the Churchgate Tavern in 1865 with a young woman.

With the sale of 33 Churchgate, the Churchgate Tavern closed down. In 1870 it was occupied by a “painter and paper hanger” named William Goodwin and it later became a confectioners and a temperance bar. It was bought by the Sabini family in the 1930s and it was under their ownership that it is perhaps best remembered. The Sabinis later bought the property next door – number 35 – and sold ice cream alongside soft drinks. Dorina Sabini and her brother Bruno worked at the premises all their lives and it became the Sandwich Inn in 1970 two years after Dorina married Peter Green. The Sandwich Inn closed in December 2002 when Peter, Dorina and Bruno all retired. [Bolton Evening News, 9 June 2003.  Retrieved 15 October 2019]. It was converted into offices.

“A youth named Jabez Ratcliffe was in custody in Monday, at the Sessions Room, Bolton, on the charge of stealing on the 23rd June two pairs of boots and during the night of 5^th inst 14 shillings from a drawer in the house of his father Richard Ratcliffe in Lever-lane, Little Lever....During the Wednesday night....the prisoner took 14 shillings from a drawer in his father's house. Afterwards the robbery of the two pairs of boots was discovered; the prisoner had sold them to Mary Curran, a dealer in the Market Hall for 8 shillings. Police-sergeant Henderson succeeded in recovering one pair of boots. The prisoner had spent the night after he took the 14 shillings, at Isabella Dewhurst's beerhouse and brothel, Churchgate The prisoner was committed for trial." - Bolton Chronicle, 16 July 1864.

Fisherman's Hut, Churchgate

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The Grand Theatre, Churchgate, a possible site for the Fisherman's Hut

The Fisherman's Hut was short-lived pub situated on Churchgate. Whereabouts on Churchgate has not exactly been ascertained.

The pub doesn't appear on the list of licenced premises for 1849 but it was in existence by the beginning of 1851. On 4 January that year, the Bolton Chronicle reported that John O'Neil was sent to prison for a month over the theft of money from Robert Ramsden. The two men were in each other's company at the pub one Thursday morning and Ramsden offered to buy a round of drinks. He took out his purse and, as he was already drunk, O'Neil helped put the purse back in to Ramsden's pocket. However, he was seen by Richard Marriot, who was also present, to take something out of the purse. When challenged he threw two half-crown coins on to the floor. The case hinged on Marriot's evidence. Ramsden was not only too drunk to remember the incident but he was still too drunk to give evidence in court two days' later.

The Fisherman's Hut was let to William Sanderson in 1853. Sanderson was born in Warrington in 1803. He was a cabinet-maker by trade but he already had some experience of appearing in front of the magistrates. In 1845 he had been fined 5 shillings and ordered to pay 14 shillings costs after he committed an indecent assault on a woman named Mrs Seddon on Great Moor Street and “exposing his person before her” [Bolton Chronicle, 24 May 1845]. He was also fined 5 shillings in 1851 but this time for selling goods on Bradshawgate at a place not appointed for market purposes. In those days Bradshawgate was around 16 feet more narrow than today and traders would line the street with their wares often causing what can only be described as a nineteenth century traffic jam. Even so, his 5 shilling fine was the same as he received for an indecent assault. Such inconsistencies were not uncommon in Victorian times.

By 1851 Sanderson was living in lodgings near Shipgates, but he entered the pub trade shortly afterwards and took over the tap room of the Ship Inn on Bradshawgate. Tap rooms were often like a pub within a pub. They aimed at a lower class of customer than the main rooms and were only reached by a separate entrance. The bar now known as Barristers on Bradshawgate was the tap room of the Swan Hotel in the 19^th century and for much of the 20^th century.

Sanderson was back in front of the magistrates again after taking over at the Fisherman's Hut. In January 1855 he was found guilty of “harbouring bad company and prostitutes” at his pub and fined 20 shillings plus costs.

He was back in court again in January 1856 this time accused of a much more serious offence. In September 1855 a carter named Roger Walsh was followed from Oxford Street into Old Hall Street by three men. He was attacked and his cart robbed but his cries attracted the attention of a number of passers-by and the three men were eventually arrested for the robbery. One of the men was William Sanderson's son John. A week before the case came to trial Daniel Seddon, a horse dealer, went to Tottington where Walsh was living and brought him to the Fisherman's Hut. Sanderson was accused of offering Walsh £3 if he withdrew his evidence against John Sanderson and it was alleged he sent Walsh away to Liverpool for the duration of the trial. William Sanderson and Daniel Seddon were later arrested and charged with dissuading and preventing a witness bound over from giving evidence. Walsh's failure to appear in court meant the case against John Sanderson and the other two men collapsed. However, a warrant was out for Walsh's arrest and after he returned to the area he gave police information leading them to William Sanderson and Daniel Seddon. Sanderson and Seddon were sent for trial at the assizes in Liverpool; however, no evidence was offered against them and they were set free. Seven years later, John Sanderson was charged with stealing a looking glass from his father's shop in Bank Street. The report at the time [Bolton Chronicle, 31 January 1863] pointed out that he had three convictions against him and had spent a total of six years in jail. Despite William Sanderson's plea for leniency John Sanderson was jailed for three months.

William Sanderson's time at the Fisherman's Hut came to an end in the summer of 1856. Jane McCann, “a young woman of immoral habits” according to the Bolton Chronicle of 16 August that year, was accused of stealing 5 shillings from John Warbrick, whose company she had kept one afternoon at the pub. Warbrick fell asleep but he was awoke by a young man who asked him if he was missing anything. He put his hand in his pocket and found that his money had gone. He told a police officer but when Jane McCann was arrested no money was found on her. The case was dismissed and Warbrick was advised by magistrates to keep better company.

However, the police used the case to take the opportunity to bring William Sanderson to court once again and he was charged with “keeping a house of ill fame.” John Warbrick and two police officers were called as witnesses. Sanderson was found guilty and fined 10 shillings with 18 shillings costs. Later that month, the pub was up to let. William Sanderson moved to 6-8 Bank Street where he worked as a beerseller and cabinet maker. The Fisherman's Hut limped on for a couple more years and after being advertised to let once again in January 1858 it disappears from the records.

There is no indication as to where the Fisherman's Hut was situated on Churchgate. However, just as the pub closed in 1858 another pub, the Concert Tavern, opened at 28 Churchgate. Given that most of the drinking establishments on Churchgate were long-established public houses not many beerhouses came and went. It could be that licensee Thomas Worsley simply took over the Fisherman's Hut and renamed it the Concert in a bid to disassociate it from its past. The Concert lasted until 1908 when it closed and was incorporated into the entrance of the revamped Grand Theatre.

"James Simpson was brought up for taking a basket from the beerhouse of William Sanderson, Churchgate, on Tuesday night. He had had some drink and stated to the magistrates that he had been asleep and was “duzzy” and that he did not intend to steal the article. The complainant had got the basket and was satisfied. The prisoner was discharged." - Bolton Chronicle, 4 February 1854.

Ringers Pulling The Ropes, Churchgate

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A printed of Churchgate from 1822

Ringers Pulling The Ropes was apparently a public house on Churchgate, close to the Parish church.

The only record we have of the pub is a very tenuous one. It comes in an article called The Gates Of Bolton written by W.J. Redford, a series of which appeared in the Bolton Evening News in 1905.

On 18 February 1905, the paper published an article by Redford on the Churchgate area and he takes a look back a hundred years to the early part of the nineteenth century.

“Before leaving the parish church of St Peter's I wish to make a few remarks on the yard and surroundings. In the early part of the nineteenth century there were old houses nearly to the steeple and a public-house with the sign “Ringers pulling the ropes”. No huge wall existed in Churchbank as we see now, but a sloping bank adorned with trees.”

The earliest licensing records we have seen go back to 1778 and there is no mention of any pub whose sign could possibly be the “Ringers Pulling The Ropes”. There was a pub in 1778 called the Rising Sun and a pub by that name certainly existed later in Churchbank. Other than that there is nothing.

Mr Redford also makes comment on the Swan Hotel claiming there is a stone or sill inside the hotel dated 1637 which would make it just one year younger than the rebuilt Man and Scythe next door. However, he goes on to add an interesting suggestion about a former name.

“It has been suggested this old hostelry (formerly with its three-pointed roof) which can be entered from two gates, be the one referred to as Boltane by a Cistercian monk of Deane named Albertus, it is very interesting as once being known by the sign of the 'Jolly Cistercian' hanging from the corner of a strong wooden lintel swinging to and fro and creaking in the windy weather. There was a sundial upon a stone pillar, casement and steps and inscribed upon a plate 'Time flees, improve each fleetyng hour' with a horse-mount stone water trough and cross-stone.”

So was there a pub called Ringer Pulling The Ropes and was the Swan Hotel once known as the Jolly Cistercian?

Concert Tavern, 28 Churchgate, Bolton

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The Concert Tavern was located on Churchgate on the site of what is now Churchgate House.

The pub dated back to the 1850s and by the end of that decade it was being run by Thomas Worsley. Thomas was born in 1812. He married Charlotte Howarth at Deane church in 1833 and by 1841 the couple were living in Bark Street where Thomas was employed as a cotton spinner. The family were in Halliwell by 1851. The 1861 census shows that Thomas was working as a cotton spinner as well as being a beer seller at the Concert Tavern, though it may well have been that Charlotte was running the pub.

Charlotte Worsley died in 1868, but in October of that year Thomas married again, this time to Nancy Dowling, a widow from Blackburn Street who was 11 years his junior.

By 1871, the Worsleys were still at the Concert Tavern. However, they are listed as lodgers with Thomas working as a chimney sweep. The house was owned by another resident, the 23-year-old Louise Waring. Thomas died the following year and the running of the pub was taken on by John Helm.

The Concert Tavern was owned by the Bolton brewery of Atkinson’s in the 1890s. It was later bought by Bolton Theatre and Entertainment Company Ltd who leased it to Tong’s who supplied the pub. But Bolton Theatre and Entertainment owned the nearby Grand Theatre which they opened in 1894. 

In 1908, they closed the Concert Tavern and incorporated the pub into an extension to the Grand. The final landlord was Ethelred Black who had been at the Town Hall Tavern in 1901.

The theatre was demolished in 1963 and Churchgate House was built on the site. See the August 2015 image below (copyright Google Street View).

Antelope (Antelope's Head), Churchgate, Bolton

The ABC Cinema on Churchgate is seen here in the summer of 1976 with 'It Shouldn't Happen To A Vet' as the main feature. The Antelope occupied the right-hand part of the premises. Copyright Bolton Library and Museums Service.

The Antelope Inn – or the Antelope’s Head as it was sometimes known – stood on Churchgate and was used as a pub for almost a hundred years from around the 1790s onwards. It was situated at 27 Churchgate, halfway between the Golden Lion and the Boars Head.

To the rear of the pub was Antelope Court which contained a three-storey silk mill, tenement dwellings and a bakehouse. At the back of Antelope Court, overlooking the River Croal, was a pit where cock fights would take place. [1] Cock fighting was hugely popular in Bolton with wagers taking place on the result of fights. But gambling was illegal as the Antelope’s landlord Mr Gee discovered in 1829. He was fined £5 for allowing gambling on his premises – the equivalent of around £500 today. [2]

Fred Hill’s 1981 book Churchgate: 50 Years Ago, A Biography Of Lifestyles In The Early Thirties shows pictures of the Antelope Court cock-fighting pit taken at the time he wrote his book. It is also an interesting read from a modern-day perspective even when he talks about the area in the early-eighties. An artist’s impression of Antelope’s Court by Robert Hampson (1925-1996) can be seen here. 

Steve Fielding gives an account of a murder in Antelope’s Court in 1883. An extract from his book Murderous Bolton can be seen here. He notes that the site is reputedly haunted.

A look at local directories show landlords coming and going from the Antelope. It was in a very heavily-pubbed area of the town centre and theatres began to spring up on the other side of Churchgate during the nineteenth century. Indeed, one licensee of the pub, Peter Crook, was declared bankrupt in 1858. He was at the Starkie Arms on Tonge Moor Road in 1849 but moved to the Antelope’s Head in the early-1850s. By 1858 he was living in lodgings on Shipgates, just off Bradshawgate, when he was hauled before the judge and presumably off to the debtor’s prison. [3]

By 1869 the tenancy of the Antelope was being advertised in the Bolton Evening News. It was described as being “a well-known and fully accustomed house”. Previous landlord Josiah Hurst had moved on to another pub. [4]

But by 1880 the Antelope’s time was up. It ceased to be a pub and was converted into retail premises and served as a butcher’s shop run by Edmund Aspinall for many years. Mr Aspinall was educated at Settle’s private school (formerly the Free Reading School, founded 1748) in Antelope Court. He became a Conservative councillor in 1897 for Derby Ward, and was the leader of the  Conservative group on Bolton Council for over 20 years. He was the Mayor of Bolton in 1923-24 [more on Edmund Aspinall here]. Older readers may be familiar with the Aspin Hall in Aspinalls Buildings on Deansgate. Aspinall’s Buildngs was founded by Edmund Aspinall.

The butcher’s shop closed in the mid-1920s and the site was demolished shortly afterwards. The Capitol Cinema was built on its site and opened on 13 February 1929 with the screening of Dolores del Rio in Ramona. The cinema underwent a refurbishment in 1956 and was renamed the ABC in 1962. The initials stood for Associated British Cinemas, the cinema's owners. The ABC closed as a cinema in 1 October 1977 with Barbra Streisand in A Star Is Born. [5]  Like many cinemas it became a bingo hall before opening in 1979 as JJB Sports, a leisure centre with squash courts in the cinema’s former seating area. That building was demolished in 1988 and Stone Cross House was built on the site. The Inland Revenue moved in and HMRC, as it is now, still maintains a presence on the site along with offices for a number of small businesses.

[1] Churchgate Conservation Document, Bolton Council, 2008. Accessed 23 November 2015. 

[2] Manchester Courier, 30 May 1829.

[3] Manchester Courier, 5 June 1858.

[4] Bolton Evening News, 15 May 1859

[5] Cinema Treasures. Accessed 23 November 2015. 

The site of the Antelopes Head, Stone Cross House, pictured in August 2015 (copyright Google Street View).

Music Tavern, Gaskell Court, off Churchgate

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The Music Tavern was situated on Gaskell’s Court, off Churchgate, and although it was only a pub for perhaps 20 years or so in the nineteenth century it became one of the town’s most notorious beerhouses. It grew out of a lodging house on one of the many courts that led down tiny alleyways off the main streets of Bolton. Practically all have disappeared, though the entrance to Gaskell Court can still be seen next to the Churchgate pub, formerly the Brass Cat.

There is no mention of any licensed premises on Gaskell Court prior to the 1851 census when 26-year-old John Roberts was named as a beerseller. He lived there with his 21-year-old wife, Ellen, two children, his mother-in-law, a brother-in-law, a servant and no fewer than 14 lodgers. By 1859 Sarah Kearsley was announcing in the local press that she had taken over. The premises were certainly commodious and Ms Kearsley was able to offer “apartments for families”. [Bolton Chronicle, 7 April 1859].

Sarah Kearsley was only at the Royal Music Tavern, as it then was, for a few years. By Christmas 1862, John Fielding was in charge and he put on a Christmas tea party for 40 women over the age of 60. They were entertained by Mr Fielding's three children playing the piano, violin and the piccolo. One of the attendees was Betty Pearson of Farnworth who was in her 108^th year. Mrs Pearson's daughters, aged 64 and 76 were also present along with a woman aged 98 and four others over the age of 80. People born at the end of the 18^th century – as these women were – had a life expectancy of less than 40 years at birth. (source: Wikipedia )

By the late-1860s the pub was known as the Music Tavern and it was being run by one of Bolton’s most notorious characters – Isabella Dewhurst.

Mrs Dewhurst had previously been at the Churchgate Tavern (no relation to the similarly-named pub a few doors further up_. However, she had to leave when the Churchgate was sold and converted into retail premises. Situated at 33 Churchgate it was much later part of the Sandwich Inn.

The Churchgate was notorious in being a brothel as well as a beerhouse, but it paid well. Her partner George Smethurst was ostensibly its landlord but Isabella Dewhurst managed to save £100 in sovereigns, apparently unbeknownst to Smethurst. How she saved the money – the equivalent of £12,000 today – can only be the subject of some speculation.

There was a bizarre incident at the Music Tavern in January 1868 and it caused Mrs Dewhurst to be hauled in front of the court. She was charged with permitting disorderly conduct at the house after police arrived one Sunday and found customers wrestling for beer. The case was dismissed on a technicality, the summons only having been served the previous day.

Justice finally caught up with Isabella Dewhurst in July 1868 when she was charged with keeping a disreputable house. The case was proved by two young women, 17-year-old Nancy Mather and Elizabeth Ann Hull, aged 20. Both girls stated that they had gone voluntarily to the pub and that different sorts of people – often in great numbers - visited the premises for immoral purposes. Mrs Dewhurst was absent from court and the case was heard in a side room away from the public but with reporters present. Her representative, Mr Ramwell, stated that if girls didn't visit these places then they wouldn't exist. The Magistrates found her guilty had the options of fining Mrs Dewhurst up to £10 or jailing her for a month with or without hard labour.

The Bolton Chronicle of 11 July 1868 takes up the story.:

“The Magistrates consulted a few minutes and the Mayor then announced they had decided on committing Mrs Dewhurst for a month, with hard labour in each of the two cases – the second month to take effect upon the expiration of the first. His Worship added that Mr Superintendent Beech deserved the thanks of the Bench for having brought the matter so clearly before them.”

The police were then sent to the Music Tavern to bring Isabella Dewhurst into custody ready to begin her sentence at the New Bailey, the 18^th century prison next to the River Irwell on the Manchester-Salford border. It was to create great excitement in the town and Mrs Dewhurst was determined to go down with an air of defiance about her. But it was not to be.

The Chronicle's report continued:

“The defendant was immediately brought into custody, and taken to the police station. She is well known in the town and is possessed of considerable means. She was exceedingly well-attired on Monday [the day of the trial], wearing a silk dress, velvet mantle and veil. A handsome drag or dog-cart belonging to her was driven to the Police Office in the expectation that she would be allowed to the New Bailey in her own conveyances, under police escort; but she was sent along with two male prisoners, to one of whom she was handcuffed, by the Bolton to Manchester omnibus, which left soon after three o'clock in the afternoon. A large crowd of persons witnessed her departure from the Police Office and they saluted her with loud hootings.”

While it was the end of Isabella Dewhurst's time as a pub landlord it didn't end her association with the Music Tavern. Her former associate Edward Gordon took over the running of the pub after she was sent to jail. In April 1869, she was involved in another court case when she was sued by Gordon over the theft of some money from the pub. Mr Gordon took over the tenancy of the Music Tavern from Mrs Dewhurst in 1868, but the building was actually owned by Nicholas Heyes, the landlord of the Welcome Traveller on Union Buildings just off Bradshawgate. Despite having no further business at Music Tavern – at least not with regards to the sale of beer - Mrs Dewhurst regularly stayed there and was accused by Mr Gordon of having stolen £22 from a cashbox at the pub– a considerable sum in those days.

“Isabella Dewhurst Back On The Scene”, yelled the Bolton Evening News of 10 April 1869. But after claim and counter-claim from both parties the judge, J.S.T. Greene found in favour of Mr Gordon but to the tune of just £7. During the course of the case it transpired that Mrs Dewhurst already owned several properties from which was receiving rents. She said she lived in Blackpool for seven or eight weeks at a time and wasn’t without money. The cashbox in question was her own and contained rents from her properties.

The beginning of the end for the Music Tavern came in September 1869. An Act of Parliament passed that summer gave local magistrates the power to strip beerhouses of their licences. Prior to that beerhouse keepers simply paid a fee of two guineas for their licence. Now the magistrates in Bolton required every beerhouse in the town to re-apply for their licence on an annual basis and on this the first occasion they closed down some 50 of them. One was the Music Tavern and Edward Gordon was up before the bench on the first day of the hearing. While he claimed the pub had been cleaned up since he took over the tenancy, the local constabulary claimed it was very much business as usual.

As the Bolton Evening News reported on 2 September 1869:

“This house was the notorious one formerly kept by Isabella Dewhurst. The present tenant entered on the 14th of July last year, and since that time, it was alleged, the character of the house had been entirely changed. The complaint against the house was that it was a notorious haunt of prostitutes and bad characters generally. The Mayor to the applicant: How long have you lived in the house? – Gordon: Two and a half years. - The Mayor: Then you lived with Isabella Dewhurst? Gordon: Yes, sir. – Police constables Greenhalgh and Fletcher both gave the house a very bad name. There were two girls in the house, ostensibly as servants, but they were in reality prostitutes. They knew as many as four loose girls kept there a few days ago”.

Mr Gordon’s application was thrown out and the Music Tavern lost its licence. The pub closed down the following month, but not before he received at least three more visits from the police, who were keeping their eye on the pub despite its imminent demise. They found Edward Gordon selling sherry and wine which, being a beer house, he was not licensed to do and he was hauled before the court again. He left for America early in 1870.

Such was Isabella Dewhurst’s reputation that her name was also used by the authorities to close down the New Inn on St George’s Road. That the beerhouse was “the resort and residence of prostitutes and bad characters generally” didn’t help, but the fact that Mrs Dewhurst had been seen playing cards there was also brought up at the hearing. Mrs Dewhurst’s sister, Margaret, was the wife of the licensee, James Mason.

Isabella Dewhurst went to live in a property she owned in Coe Street, a very basic weaver's cottage off Bridgeman Street in a poor part of Bolton. By 1871, she was joined by her niece, Isabella Banks Walker, the daughter of her sister, Margaret. Isabella Banks Walker married a local clerk, Alfred Aldred, in 1873 and the couple went to live at another of Mrs Dewhurst’s properties in Silverwell Street. It was there that Isabella Dewhurst died on 16 July 1876. She was 48.

Mrs Dewhurst's estate, as proved by Alfred Aldred and his brother, a local accountant named Bold Aldred, came to £1500 – a huge amount of money in those days. But if Isabella Dewhurst’s gains – ill-gotten or otherwise – were unable to get her beyond a weaver’s cottage on Coe Street, the beneficiary of her will, her niece Isabella Aldred, made wise use of her bequest. In 1878, the Aldreds bought 66 acres of farmland at Old Clough Farm in Worsley. By the end of that decade they had emigrated to New Zealand where they were to spend the rest of their lives. Alfred Aldred died in 1930, Isabella Aldred died in Auckland in 1937.

AN UNDESIRABLE CUSTOMER – William Burns, painter, Back-King Street, was charged with being drunk and disorderly in Churchgate. Isabella Dewhurst, beerseller, said the defendant came into her house on Wednesday afternoon, and suspecting him to be a bad character, she ordered him to leave. He refused to go and she sent for a policeman. Having been previously convicted he was fined 10 shillings and costs, in default 14 days hard labour. - Bolton Chronicle, 2 May 1868.

Churchgate pictured in September 2014 (copyright Google Street View). The Brass Cat is the white building in the picture and immediately to its left is the entrance to Gaskell House. In the nineteenth century it led to Gaskell Court, home to the Music Tavern. 

Article written 9 April 2015.
Updated 19 October 2019 with more details on Isabella Dewhurst.

Legs Of Man, 24 Churchgate

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The Legs Of Man can just about be seen in the distance in this 1950s view looking up Churchbank towards Churchgate.

The Legs Of Man public house stood at 24 Churchgate in between the Grand Theatre and the Theatre Royal in what for over a hundred years was the entertainment centre of  Bolton.

The pub dated back to the late-eighteenth century. Gordon Readyhough puts its establishment at 1790. [1] Certainly, it doesn’t appear on the 1779 list of Bolton alehouses [2], though it was certainly in existence by 1800. That was when it was first used as the headquarters of one of Lancashire’s earliest Masonic lodges, Anchor and Hope, which was based at the pub from 1800 to 1801 and from 1804 to 1844. [3] The St John’s lodge also met there from 1846 to 1856. [4]

The Legs Of Man was run by the Thorp family for much of the nineteenth century. William Thorp took over around 1818. A year earlier, when he married the widow Mary Cooper, his profession was described as a warehouseman. But by the time the Bolton Directory for 1818 was published just a few months later he was the landlord of the Legs Of Man. He ran the pub until his death at the age of 62 in 1845 and was succeeded by his widow, Mary who ran the pub with John Cooper, a son from her first marriage.

Mary died in 1856. John Cooper – described as a ‘brewer’ when he married Ann Butler in 1858 - remained at the pub for a few years after her death.

Cooper’s profession suggested that, like many other pubs in the town, the Legs Of Man brewed its own beer. But while it became a tied house owned by a brewery later in the eighteenth century it was actually owned by three breweries in succession: Magee’s, followed by Tong’s, and finally the Salford brewery of Groves and Whitnall. Pubs usually changed hands when breweries were taken over so it was perhaps an indication of the competition in the Churchgate area with seven pubs and two theatres in a stretch of around 200 yards.

But it could also be argued that competition of a different kind saw off the Legs Of Man. The advent of television, which reached the north-west in the early-fifties, affected theatre audiences as customers stayed at home and watched the new medium. The Legs was hit due to its reliance on passing custom before and after shows.

The Legs Of Man closed in March 1962. The Theatre Royal closed later that same year. The Grand Theatre became a bingo hall in 1961 but that failed and it closed in 1963. [5] All three buildings were demolished and Churchgate House was built in their place.

[1] Bolton Pubs, 1800 – 2000, by Gordon Readyhough. Published by Neil Richardson (2000).

[2] Pubs Of Bolton Town Centre, 1800 – 2000, by Gordon Readyhough. Published by Neil Richardson (1986).

[3] Lane’s Masonic Records. Accessed 11 March 2015.

[4] Lane’s Masonic Records. Accessed 11 March 2015. 

[5] Arthur Lloyd. Accessed 11 March 2015.

Bush Hotel - Star Inn - Star Concert Room, Churchgate

The Bush Hotel – formerly the Star and before that the Cock Inn - on Churchgate pictured in 1938. The Bush is in front of Theatre Royal’s canopy as we look. The Venue currently stands on the site.

The music hall was the most popular form of mass entertainment for the working-class public of Britain in the nineteenth century. In his book Popular Leisure And The Music Hall in 19th century Bolton written in 1982, Robert Poole claims the first music hall in Britain was at the Millstone on Crown Street in Bolton where landlord Thomas Sharples opened a singing and supper room around 1830. That claim has been challenged by some who believe the music hall began in London at least two years earlier or that its origins were in the coffee taverns of the late-18^th century. Even so, music hall didn't become a cultural phenomenon until around 1850 by which time Thomas Sharples had been in business in Bolton for 20 years. It has been claimed that Sharples was once a ventriloquist travelling from pub to pub with his dummy before he took over the Millstone (Moran family reminiscences, Bolton Evening News, 25 April 1882).

The Millstone still exists today and given the size of the pub – twice the size now as it was before it was extended in 2000 - such a supper room can only have been held upstairs.

No doubt the size of the Millstone hindered Thomas Sharples and his ambitions. Bolton's centre was Churchgate and we know that by 1838 Sharples had also taken on the Cock, a pub that had existed since at least the 1770s and allegedly got its name from the cock fights held there. It was a little more genteel by now and it was popular with churchgoers who would dine there on a Sunday lunchtime after attending service at the nearby Parish Church.

The Bolton Chronicle of 4 August 1838 reported that the Albion Lodge No. 46 of the United Odd Fellows held their annual dinner at the pub - “an excellent dinner provided by the worthy host and hostess, Mr and Mrs Sharples.”

However, not all functions held at the Cock were as civilised as the Odd Fellows. The Bolton Chronicle of 6 July 1839 reported that Robert Ogden was charged with being disorderly and indecently assaulting a number of females at the pub. The incident happened during a christening when Ogden introduced himself into the assembled company and, as the paper put it “took indecent liberties,” with some of the females. “To preserve their chastity he was given into custody.” He was fined 20 shillings (£1) plus costs.

By June 1840, the Cock had become the Star and Thomas Sharples laid the corner stone for the new music room. Ever the showman he put on a ceremony in order to extract the maximum publicity with singers performing the national anthem prior to coins from the reigns of George II, George III, George IV, William IV and Queen Victoria all being deposited beneath the stone.

The Bolton Chronicle was impressed. In its edition of 13 June 1840, the paper said:

“This room, we understand, when completed, is intended as a lounge, music room and museum, and in addition to a great number of interesting and valuable curiosities, will be the repository of Mr Sharples's valuable selection of paintings. For size, we believe it will exceed any other room in the town.”

The Chronicle kept its readers abreast of progress and on 9 September 1840 it gushed at the show Sharples put on for the opening night of the Star's music room. “It was enrapturing beyond conception,” said the paper.

Even the transfer two months later of two Oddfellow lodges, “Welcome Traveller” and “Orthodox”, from the Millstone, was accompanied by a show. Members of the two lodges walked in procession the short distance from the Millstone to the Star and as they approached the pub Thomas Sharples set off fireworks to welcome them. Mrs Sharples then put on a meal for no fewer than 300 people.

Like many music halls and concert room there were a variety of acts, some of which involved wild animals. On 11 February 1844, Matthew Ferguson, the keeper of the menagerie, was killed by Barney, one of the Star’s leopards. One version claims that Barney didn’t take too kindly to Ferguson’s liberal use of the whip and attacked the keeper. Some 28 years later, on 4 January 1872, the Bolton Evening News made reference to the incident but put a different spin on the circumstances. It claimed Ferguson had had a drink and decided to play with Barney at which point the animal turned on him and mauled him to death. There was no-one else present at the time. Ferguson was discovered some time later with Barney standing over him and moaning. Thomas Sharples had Barney destroyed and the animal was stuffed before being put on display in the pub's museum.

Sharples was refused a licence to put on theatrical performances so the entertainment was of the kind that would typify music hall for the next 70 years or so. A programme from 1845 detailed F A Canfield, the American Samson and wonder of the world, the Southern Minstrels, and gymnastic pantomimists Nunn, Walker, Honey and Steward.

Such was the fame of the Star that Thomas Sharples put on a special train from Manchester in September 1845. Patrons could enjoy a trip to Bolton where they could take in the curiosities of the Star's museum followed by a concert in the saloon “and all for the small charge of a shilling,” he told the Bolton Chronicle.

In July 1852 three people were killed following the collapse of one of the walls in the Star’s concert room. A fire six days earlier had made the wall unsafe and it was in the process of being demolished when it collapsed on to some cottages in nearby Wigan Lane. The inhabitants of Wigan Lane were, as the Bolton Chronicle of 24 July 1852 put it: “Irish people of the lowest orders” and the buildings were inhabited almost to the point of overcrowding. Michael Larkin, whose age was given as between 40 and 50, Mary Curley aged 38, and a ten-year-old child, Nabby Kilgallen, all died having been buried by the collapsed wall, Michael Larkin had been eating his breakfast, Mary Curley had been outside in Wigan Lane and Nabby Kilgallen was in bed. The collapse happened at ten o'clock in the morning, a time when the vast majority of the inhabitants of Wigan Lane were out at work thereby avoiding a greater death toll. A verdict of accidental death was passed by the jury at an inquest the same evening. Most of the cottages in Wigan Lane were destroyed and the other inhabitants were rehoused by the authorities.

At that stage the Star had the reputation of being one of the most popular and attractive concert rooms in the country. It also contained a museum the wonders of which were famed far and wide – 262 items including paintings, wax figures and a piece of pressed iron from Hick’s foundry on Bridgeman Street. Most were destroyed along with the stuffed effigy of Barney the tiger.

William Sharples had by now taken over the business from his father. Thomas Sharples retired to a house on Chorley New Road where he died in 1853, aged 50.

A month after the collapse of the wall, in August 1852, William Sharples tried to sell the Star, but those efforts were affected by the decision of local magistrates to suspend the licences of both the Star and the Millstone. Without a licence the Star was much less of an attraction to would-be purchasers. When it came up for auction it failed to realise its reserve price of £1100 and was withdrawn from sale. The month after the auction, in October 1852, both the Star and the Millstone regained their licences.

The Star's vaults were still open but the site of the former music room was empty. William Sharples offered to build a room on site to be used by the council as a library, but the offer was rejected.

In 1861, William Sharples bought the axe that was reputedly  used in the beheading of the Earl of Derby outside the Man and Scythe in 1651. He died in July the following year aged 38. His widow Ruth Rigg Sharples died four months later aged just 30. More on the axe here.

William Sharples remained at the Star until his death. His estate of £6000 would be worth around £700,000 today so the pub game had been good to him. For the next seven years it was run by a relative, John Smith, but by 1870 it was in the hands of a man who did much to bring back the glory days of the Star: J. P. Weston.

James Pitney was born in Somerton, Somerset, in 1831. He got into the entertainment industry while still a teenager. Indeed, the 1851 Census has him living with his family at Shoreditch, Middlesex – occupation: “clown”. By 1857 he was using the name James Pitney Weston. That Christmas he played the clown in a comic pantomime at the Theatre Royal, Norwich, and was credited with arranging the comic scenes. Reviews of the time described him as "the Clown of all Nations".

By 1860, Weston was the manager of the Theatre Royal, Bolton, just a few doors along from the Star. That year he wrote a pantomime especially for his theatre entitled The Storm King's Dream, Or, Harlequin Rainbow and the Fairyof the Sunlit City of the Sea.  Initially he lodged at 19 Bath Street with his wife Mary Ann and sister-in-law Rose Blake, but by 1871 he was living on Churchgate.

From 1870 Weston was initially the lessee of the Star, but in 1872 he bought the pub, its concert hall, the nearby Angel Inn and the Theatre Royal for £4900.

Bolton's theatreland evokes images of something akin to London's West End but it was nothing of the sort. In 1871, a barman at the Star abducted Christine Masper, a girl under the age of 16. He was sentenced to three months imprisonment although as the Bolton Evening News pointed out in its issue of 14 March 1871, had she been the heiress to any money or property, he would have received between three and 14 years' penal servitude.

The attached Angel Inn was part of a betting scandal in 1873 which found the Star's manager Robert Blake in court. There was also an attempt to remove the licences of both the Star and the Angel in 1873 as part of a Victorian crackdown on anything that might be considered immoral. That included bawdy music hall songs. Fortunately, the police were on Weston's side and he escaped without censure.

Weston only ran the Star for seven years, from 1870 to 1877. However, he over-stretched himself financially not so much in Bolton but elsewhere. He also owned a number of other theatres in the north-west including the Liverpool Palace Of Varieties which he renamed the New Albert Theatre and where he appeared himself as Hamlet in 1874. He also bought the rights to London dramas and adapted them for his own theatres. (See An Illustrated History of British Theatre and Performance: Volume Two - From the Industrial Revolution to the Digital Age by Robert Leach, published by Routledge, 2018).

In 1877 Weston decided to sell his Bolton properties. He moved to Dawes Street where he oversaw the conversion of the former Temple Mill to the Temple Opera House. He was forced to deny claims he was going to America but in May 1878 James Pitney Weston was declared bankrupt. The order was later annulled but it was the end of his time as an impressario. Weston moved to the Rochdale area and he was lodging with the Swindells family by 1881. His wife Mary Ann died in 1884 but Weston remarried in 1890. He married 23-year-old Rose Emily Pannett in Salford declaring his own age to be 55. In reality he was at least four years older. He described himself at that time as a caterer.

The Bolton Evening News of 29 October 1902 announced the death of James Pitney Weston in Leeds the previous night. The paper admitted he'd had “a chequered career” since he left Bolton. Weston would have been 71 years old at the time of his death and he was employed by Messrs Dotteridge and Longton, theatrical proprietors, in Leeds.

The Star remained as lively as ever. In October 1882, William Smethurst was sentenced to three months' hard labour after attempting to bite off the ear of Thomas Almond following an argument in the music room.

One Saturday night in August 1891 the pub's landlady called the police to remove from the lobby a group of men who were refusing to leave. Police forcibly removed 22-year-old William Henry Lyons of Waterloo Street but he began a disturbance on the corner of Bradshawgate and the police went to take him into custody. A crowd gathered and were called upon by Lyons to help free him. This they tried to do and blows rained down on the police officers. They got Lyons as far as Mealhouse Lane where the crowd began throwing bottles and other missiles. Thomas Chisnall of Lorne Street, Moses Gate, called for the crowd to “kick the officers' heads off” [Bolton Evening News, 3 August 1891]. Police eventually got Lyons to the town hall and they also arrested Chisnall and another man, James Walkden. In defence, Lyons' solicitor “pleaded for mitigation on account of having had some drink, and also having lost his hat.” Lyons was fined a total of 40 shillings. The two other men were also fined.

In 1895, the Star lost its music licence. Magistrates heard from police that the pub was the scene of frequent disorder. Detective Bootham stated that on 14 April 1894 he visited the Star. There were two music rooms in the pub. Downstairs there were 70-80 people, mostly elderly and listening to a singer. There was good order. Upstairs there were about 200 people aged between 22 and 55 one-third of whom were female. About four or five young men were creating a disturbance, several rows were in progress, there was a good deal of cursing and shouting and nobody was listening to the music. It was also stiflingly hot. The ceiling of the Star was only eight feet five inches high “where professional evidence would ought to tell them it should be 12ft high.” [Bolton Evening News, 31 January 1895]. Council regulations for the minimum height of rooms in houses constructed at that time recommended rooms should be 9ft high. The pub's owners, local brewer John Atkinson and Co, stated they would take off the pub's roof and raise the height of the ceiling. However, the magistrates declined the licence and music at the Star came to an end. The following year, landlord John Parkinson was up in court for flouting the ban. Police had visited the Star 23 times and found a piano being played by what turned out to be Mr Parkinson's son. There was also singing and police claimed on one occasion a couple were seen dancing. Parkinson claimed the room wasn't a music room but one where refreshments were consumed and magistrates dismissed the case. The Star applied for a music licence in 1897 and twice in 1902, but the applications failed on both occasions.

The Star was renamed the Bush Hotel in 1903. A successful application was made for a billiards licence. By now the pub was owned by Cornbrook's, a Manchester brewery. Atkinson's had sold out to Boardman's United Breweries in 1895 and three years later Boardman's were taken over by Cornbrook's.

The Bush Hotel ended its days as a Bass Charrington pub. Bass bought Cornbrook’s in 1961 and perhaps it is telling that just two years after they took over the Bush, the nearby Derby Hotel and the Theatre Royal all three were closed and demolished to make way for the redevelopment of Churchgate.

The site of the Bush and the Theatre Royal was converted into a supermarket, first known as Lennon’s, then Kwik Save and finally Foodsave, but in 1996 the premises were converted into a pub, The Brasshouse. This in turn became Number 15, a live music venue, and then Club Kiss before closing again in 2008. In September 2014 it reopened as The Venue, described as an over-25s cabaret bar. 

Isaac Clowes, an odd looking fellow, complained of a waiter at the Star Inn taking his hat on Tuesday night. He took his seat in the front of the gallery at the Star Concert Room, when several persons called out “turn that felly eaut wi' th' grey hat on.” When requested by the waiter to take off his hat he refused upon which she took it off and carried it to the bar and detained it. Mr Taylor: “It was a shocking bad hat, I believe; people laughed so hard at your beaver that they could not go on with the performance.” Complainant - “It was ta'en off my head; it was a hat I thought a deal about; the waiter took my hat off forcibly; I didn't ask for it on my way out.” Mr Taylor exhibited the beaver placing it on his head in court amidst universal laughter. Complainant: “I think it looks a very tidy hat. They had no right taking my hat off.”....Mr E. Ashworth: The complainant says there are no rules up in the room that persons are not to go there with white hats on. Mr Taylor: “It's charged as a wilful trespass and there is no damage done to the hat.” The case was dismissed. – Bolton Chronicle, 25 January 1845.

Stealing Wearing Apparel – A woman named Mary Taylor, who for a long time past has been representing herself as “Miss Gleaves” sister to Mrs Sharples of the Star Inn, and thereby succeeded getting board and lodgings for which she has never paid, was charged with stealing wearing apparel from two places at which she had been lodging. A short time back she stole several articles from the house of Mrs Bleakley, from whom she had been lodging in Bark-street; and she succeeded in practising a similar trick soon afterwards from the house of Mrs Heywood, Churchbank. She was committed to the New Bailey for two months. – Bolton Chronicle, 29 December 1855.

Royal Oak, Churchgate

Churchgate House pictured in April 2012 (copyright Google Street View). The Royal Oak once stood on this site. A pub with the same name was later situated on Paley Street, which can be seen running by the side of Churchgate House.

The Royal Oak stood on Churchgate from at least the 1770s until it was destroyed by fire on 30 June 1848 killing George Radcliffe, a Breightmet man sleeping there for the night. [1]

Gordon Readyhough [2] claims that the location of the pub is unknown but that it was not to be confused with a pub on nearby Paley Street that took the Royal Oak name some time after the original pub burned down. However, in a report for the town’s mayor on Bolton’s sanitation in 1848 - the year the Royal Oak was destroyed  - John Entwisle puts the pub in the vicinity of Molyneux’s Yard, the Flaggs and Oliver Lane, all of which stood roughly in front of the site of the current Churchgate House, opposite what is now Hogarth’s, the former Capitol and Boars’s Head pub. [3] 

Bolton’s population stood at around 17,000 in 1801. By 1841 it had grown to almost 50,000 as people moved to the centre of town during the Industrial Revolution to look for work. [4] Entwisle goes on to describe the sanitary conditions at that time in the dirtiest part of what he had already ascertained was a filthy town.

“In immediate contiguity [to Molyneux’s Yard]…is the Flaggs and Oliver Lane; here fever had infested the whole neighbourhood. In the houses behind the Royal Oak there were several cases; in one the husband had an attack six weeks in duration. In the next house a family of seven, four of whom had fever, and one died. Immediately opposite the houses is a necessary in a broken condition, the privy full, and heaps of ashes and night soil occupied a considerable portion of the yard. Beyond this heap of refuse is the cesspool of Molyneux’s Yard, only separated by a wall which is part falling down.”

To give another aspect of life in Bolton in the 1840s Entwisle analysed all the deaths in the town in the five years to 1847 and calculated the average age of death. But in an interesting twist he also calculated the average age of death by social class.

According to Entwisle, 116 “gentlemen and persons engaged in professions, and their families” died at an average age of 51 years. In addition, 614 people he described as “tradesmen and their families” died at an average age of 27 years and 2 months. But “Operatives and their families” died at an average of just 19 years and 6 months.

The outstanding point about this last social grouping – the lowest of the three social classes – was their sheer number: 8142 of them. In other words, over 90percent of the people in the town died before their 20^th birthday between the beginning of 1843 and the end of 1847. Of course a lot of them were children – over 50percent of the children of the lower orders died by the age of five – but with an average at death of 19, pubs like the Royal Oak were probably losing almost all of their custom every two years simply due to them dying off.

Fortunately, that part of town was cleaned up and Entwisle’s report perhaps had an impact. It’s available to borrow at Bolton Central Library and makes for grim reading. Running water was laid on in that part of Churchgate. Molyneux’s Yard was swept away although Flaggs and Oliver Lane remained into the 20^th-century.

Entwisle couched his arguments in language the mayor and rest of the businessmen that ran Bolton could understand: it was counter-productive maintaining a situation where 90 percent of your workforce failed to reach the age of 20. But this was 1848, a year when revolution was taking hold in Europe and the monied classes in Bolton couldn’t help but look over their shoulder at the potential for social unrest.

Churchgate later became the theatre centre of Bolton with the Grand and the Theatre Royal built on the site of the slum dwellings in the area where the Royal Oak once stood. The theatres made way for offices in the sixties and Churchgate House was built in their place.

[1] Annals Of Bolton, James Clegg, 1888.

[2] Bolton Pubs 1800 to 2000, Gordon Readyhough, 2000.

[3] A Report On The Sanatory Condition Of The Borough Of Bolton, John Entwisle, 1848.

[4] Wikipedia entry on Bolton, retrieved 12 October 2014. Figures combined for Great Bolton and Little Bolton.