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.

Willows Hotel, 296 Willows Lane, Bolton

 

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

December 1975 lunchtime menu

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

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

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

Black Cow, Fernhill Gate, Bolton

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The Fernhill Gate area of Wigan Road looking towards the former Rumworth Hotel. The Black Cow is believed to have been situated in one of the houses immediately before the Rumworth. 

Fernhill Gate is the area of Deane that slopes down Wigan Road towards the junction with Beaumont Road. The name hasn't completely fallen out of use but any reference to the area is usually indicated by the Sutton Estate which was constructed in the area in the late fifties and early sixties.

A number of pubs came and went in this area of Deane and one of those was the Black Cow. The pub was run for the whole of its existence by a spinster, Ann Helme. 

Miss Helme was born around 1807 in the village of Longworth situated some five miles north of Bolton. The village was purchased by Bolton Council in 1907 and Delph Reservoir was constructed on its site. 

Little is known of Ann Helme's early life. However, by 1841 she was working as a servant at Grundy Fold, a small collection of buidlings situated not far from Fernhill Gate at the end of what is now Greenhill Lane (known at that time as Green Lane). 

By 1861, Ann Helme was living with a servant at the Black Cow beerhouse on the Bolton to Westhoughton road. This was sometimes referred to as the 'Old Road' and is now known as Wigan Road. Given that the beerhouse doesn't appear in the 1855 local directory we can only assume that it was set up in the late-1850s. 

 In 1863, Miss Helme was prosecuted for allowing her pub to be open before midday on a Sunday. Opening hours in those days were quite liberal the exception being on a Sunday morning when people were expected to be at church and pubs were forced to close. The 1830 Beerhouse Act enabled people to set up pubs on payment of 2 guineas (£2.10). Many pubs began in this fashion and were initially just a person's sitting room. There was no bar and because only beer was served there were no optics or bottles of spirits. Quite often there would be a beer barrel on a stillage. As a result, the cost of setting up a pub was minimal. 

This arrangement also made it easy to close down a pub and convert the premises back to a home residence. That's what appears to have happened in the case of the Black Cow. By 1881 Ann Helme was a retired beerseller living at 506 Fernhill Gate, which was how Wigan Road was known in those days. 

Number 506 still exists. It's one of a small row of houses near what used to be the Rumworth Hotel. 

The Black Cow was one of a number of pubs and beerhouses that have come and gone in the Fernhill Gate area over the years. James Heyes was running a beerhouse next door to the Black Cow in 1871. This was named the Wellington in 1881 but subsequently disappeared. There was also pubs in the area named the Colliers Arms that appears on maps from the 1890s. The most permanent pub in the area was the Rumworth Hotel which opened in 1893 and closed in 2011.

Woodmans Cottage, 2 Deane Road, Bolton

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Two views of the Woodmans Cottage. The 1950s shot at the top shows the pub on the left with Moor Lane bending away in the distance. The Old Three Tuns Hotel can just be seen on the right. The second view (below) is from August 2015 (copyright Google Street View) and shows roughly the same sport.

The Woodmans Cottage was situated at the junction of three thoroughfares: Deane Road, Moor Lane and Derby Street. Its address was variously given as Moor Lane, Blackburn Street and finally, 2 Deane Road. While that suggests it was the first building on the road it was actually part of a block that ran from Stanley Street South to Lupton Street. Its next door neighbour for many years was Kay's pawnbrokers (as can be seen in the image at the top of the page).

The area from where Deane Road meets Mayor Street right down to the junction of Moor Lane and Deansgate was one of the most densely-pubbed areas of Bolton in the middle of the nineteenth century. So much so that when local magistrates were given powers to close down beerhouses in 1869 they targeted that area – Moor Lane in particular.

However, the Woodmans Cottage was one of the first beerhouses in the area after an Act Of Parliament passed in 1830 made it easier to open licenced premises selling beer only. It was certainly in existence by the mid-1830s. Jonathan Haslam appears in the 1836 Bolton Directory as a beer seller on Moor Lane a few doors along from the junction with Stanley Street which ties in with the site of the Woodmans Cottage. At that time, his only competition came from the Britannia Hotel, just across the road, the Old Three Tuns, a little further down from the Britannia,  and the Dog and Partridge at the junction of Partridge Street next to the railway bridge.

Jonathan Haslam died in 1845 at the age of 65. By 1849 John Cooper was running the Woodmans Cottage though by 1851 he was at the White Hart on Pikes Lane. By 1861, his wife Jane was at Broom House on Deane Church Lane where she was described as a 'fundholder' – or living off her investments. Presumably, John Cooper had passed away.

William Parkinson was at the pub by 1853, but by 1861 it was run by Samuel Openshaw. He previously ran the Horse and Vulcan, a pub further along Blackburn Street, as the lower end of Deane Road was then known. However, by 1861 he was brewer and beerseller at the Woodmans Cottage where he lived with his wife Sarah. Sadly, Sarah died in 1866 aged just 32. Samuel married Ann Barnes in 1867 and by 1871 he was at the Gibraltar Rock further up Pikes Lane. He died in 1874. 

The future of the Woodmans Cottage came under threat at the licensing renewals of 1900. Three local inhabitants plus members of the local temperance party objected to the pub's licence being renewed. They claimed the pub's closure would be “for the good of the town”. [1] The licensee at the time was Ralph Hall. He had only been at the pub for a few years and no offences had been reported against the house for over 30 years. Quite what Mr Hall had done to raise the ire of the temperance party isn't reported, but the magistrates agreed to renew its licence only if he was dismissed. By 1901 he was living with his in-laws in nearby Shaw Street and was working as a carder in a local cotton mill.

Ralph Hall was succeeded by Walter Copple – or, more likely, by his wife Annie. Walter was a coach painter by trade and he was still painting coaches while he was at the pub. Annie Copple had been brought up in the pub trade – her father ran the Mill Hill Tavern  amongst others – so it's more likely that she ran the pub. The couple went on to run the Queen Anne on Junction Road (by 1911) and the Swiss Hotel on Southern Street in Halliwell (certainly by 1918 and he was still there in 1924).  Walter had retired to Osborne Grove, off Chorley Old Road, by the time he died in 1928 at the age of 64. 

Interestingly, in 1924, Walter Copple's nephew, Walter Tyrer Copple, ran a cabinet-making business from premises on Moor Lane just a few doors down and on the same row as the Woodmans Cottage.

By the early twentieth century, the Woodmans Cottage had become a rare tied house in Bolton for the Openshaw Brewery Company of West Gorton in Manchester. Openshaw was taken over by the Hope and Anchor Breweries Ltd of Sheffield in 1957. Hope and Anchor was later to become part of the Bass empire. However, the Woodmans Cottage didn't get that far. It closed in 1959. The property was demolished in the late-sixties and for many years the site formed part of the Stanley Street car park next to the fire station (opened 1971).

Construction of the Bolton Sixth Form College building began in 2009 on the site of the car park. It was completed in 2010 and the furthest extremity of the complex next to the fire station marks the site of Woodmans Cottage.

[1] Manchester Courier and Lancashire Advertiser, 28 September 1900.

Bar Tavern, Deane Lane (Wigan Road)

Another long-lost Deane pub, the Bar Tavern was situated on Deane Lane, now known as Wigan Road. It was another example of a shop that became a beerhouse and was quite short-lived, lasting not much more than about 20 years in the middle of the nineteenth century.

The pub took its name from the nearby toll bar and was located nor far from the tollkeeper’s house which itself was on a stretch of the main road close to Deane church.

The Bar Tavern was owned by the Silcock family. Peter Silcock (born 1781) ran a general provisions store on the main road through Deane village. He must have had the idea to broaden his scope by selling beer but inevitably takings from beer must have overtaken those from other items. By the time the 1848 Bolton Directory was published Peter’s wife, Ann Silcock, was in charge, Peter having died  in 1845. It also had a name – the Bar Tavern.

Ann Silcock died in 1858 leaving an estate valued at just under £200.  The Bar Tavern was taken over by her son, John Silcock (born c1815) and his wife Elizabeth (born c1820).

John Silcock died in 1865 and the pub was sold. It later reverted back to a shop. John’s widow Elizabeth went to live with relatives, also named Silcock, on Platt Hill Farm situated not far from what later became Hulton Hospital. Bolton’s first council estate was built on the site of the farm in the 1920s.

Elizabeth was living on Wigan Road by 1881 when she is described as a retired grocer. She died in 1889.

New Brook House Inn, Junction Road

Junction Road tails off the right and the Kings Head is on the let on this 2012 shot (copyright Google Street View). Two properties stood where the area of trees is in the centre of the image and it is believed the New Brook House Inn was one of those properties. 

Like the rest of Bolton, the Deane area has suffered from pub closures in recent years. Two of the five pubs in the ‘village’ itself – the Church and the Stag’s Head – have both closed, but there are a couple of long lost pubs worth giving a mention to. The New Brook House Inn, was one of them. Long lost, indeed, as it appears on very few historical records.

The New Brook is numbered 52, Junction Road on old directories.  The Kings Head is today numbered 52-54 Junction Road. However, we believe the New Brook is likely to have been one of two now-demolished properties on the front of Junction Road just before the entrance to the Kings Head. Certainly, the 1911 Census enumerator surveyed Sunny Bank, the New Brook Inn and the Kings Head, in that order. Any information that proves us right or wrong on that would be gratefully received.

The first definitive record we have of the New Brook Inn is with Betsy Pasquill running a shop and beerhouse on Junction Road according to the Worralls Directory of 1871. That suggests the pub dates back to at least the late-1860s.

In 1891, the vicar of Deane church, the Reverend HS Patterson proposed the establishment of the Deane Village Club, a temperance and educational institution. The club was to incorporate a café, a gymnasium, meeting rooms and a bowling green and in a pamphlet detailing his plans, the Reverend Patterson gave notice of where he saw the club’s custom coming from: 

“This building will be situated on Junction road, opposite the Church, which is a street of 300 yards and has the following public-houses:- The Vulcan, Queen Anne, New Brook Inn, and King's Head. Here the forces are against thrift and social progress.” [1]

But the Reverend Patterson’s grand plans didn’t quite come to fruition on the scale he intended and in the end only a small corrugated building was constructed. Of the four pubs in the good reverend’s sights, the New Brook was to continue for another quarter-century or so, the rest a good deal longer with three still in existence.

Another member of the Pasquill family, Robert Pasquill, was running the New Brook by the early-1890s. Prior to taking over the pub he was living in Fernhill Gate and working as a coal miner, presumably at the Victoria Pit where the garden centre now stands.

Robert’s tenure didn’t last long and by 1894 the beerhouse was in the hands of the Workman family who ran it for the rest of its time that it was open to the public.

Landlord Thomas Workman was hauled before the magistrates in 1895 on a charge of having permitted betting at the pub. Then, as now, gambling in pubs was illegal, but the charge was of an extremely petty nature. Plain-clothes policemen entered the pub on 15 November 1895. There were nine men in the tap room, four of whom were sitting round a table playing dominoes.  The officers watched the four men play three games. At the conclusion of each game the losers paid for half-pints of beer for the winners. Despite a string of witnesses testifying that no gambling for booze took place the magistrates found Mr Workman guilty of allowing gambling on his premises. He was fined £2 with one guinea (£1.05) as an advocate’s fee - £3.05 in total or the equivalent of over £330 today. [2]

Fortunately, Mr Workman didn’t have his licence endorsed which may have affected his chances of renewal at the annual Brewster sessions.

The officers went straight from the New Brook to the nearby Church Inn on Wigan Road where they found ten men playing dominoes for cash stakes of two old pence (or 1p) per corner. The licensee, William Gaskell, was fined £5 plus a one guinea advocate’s fee.   

The New Brook continued as a pub until 1915. A few years before, in 1906, Deane Golf Club was formed. But in May 1915 their clubhouse was destroyed by fire. They were offered the New Brook Inn as alternative premises and occupied the former pub until their new club house was completed in 1920. [3] They continued to use the New Brook for some years after. It was probably demolished in the 1940s.

An aerial shot - date unknown - of the Kings Head in the top left of the photo with the building that was formerly the Newbrook Inn in front of it.

[1] Deane Church website. Accessed 5 June 2015.

[2] Manchester Courier, 30 November 1895.

[3] Deane Golf Club website. Accessed 5 June 2015.          

Britannia Hotel, 2-4 Derby Street

Two views of the same area of Bolton. In the top image the Britannia Hotel can be seen on the left of the picture. The cars in front of the pub are coming from the bottom end of Derby Street. The start of Deane Road is in the distance while Crook Street - which met both Derby Street and Deane Road - can be seen  running to the bottom of the picture. It was a tricky junction to negotiate right up until the road layout was changed in 1979 with the closure of that part of Derby Street and Crook Street when the Trinity Street by-pass was built.

The image above comes from the University of Bolton. The same area is pictured in the bottom image, taken by Google Street View in September 2014. Apart from the fire station (centre right) which  was built in 1971 all the buildings in this image were built in 2009-10. On the left is Bolton One, which now occupies the space where the Britannia once stood. On Deane Road is Bolton Sixth Form College in the foreground with Bolton College a little further along the road.

The Britannia Hotel was situated at the junction of four streets: Derby Street, on which the pub stood, Deane Road, Moor Lane and Crook Street.

The pub dated back to the late-eighteenth century. It was certainly in existence by 1800, but it didn’t appear on the licensing records for 1778.

Anyone with an interest in the history of Bolton Wanderers will know that the Britannia was the club’s headquarters for many years in the nineteenth century.The club was formed at the Christ Church school just a few yards away on Deane Road on a site that was empty for many years before Bolton College was built in 2009-10. But the club’s founder, Reverend Thomas Ogden objected to meetings being held without him being present so the team broke away from the school to become Bolton Wanderers. Its first headquarters was the Gladstone Hotel but it soon moved to the Britannia where it remained until the building of Burnden Park in 1895.

For some years the Britannia was owned by Atkinson’s brewery situated not far away from the pub on Commission Street. The actual site of the brewery is roughly as you drive down Mayor Street from Deane Road. The streets in that area were remodelled in the sixties and Mayor Street was effectively moved from the side of the Duke on Deane Road to its current traverse.

Atkinson’s were taken over by Boardman’s United Breweries of Manchester in 1895, The Cornbrook brewery, also of Manchester, bought out Boardman’s in 1898 and although the Britannia carried Cornbrook’s livery and sold their beers until it was closed, for the final few years the pub was owned by Bass Charrington, who bought  Cornbrook in 1961.

The Britannia closed in 1965. The area bounded by Deane Road, Derby Street and John Street – now University Way – was needed for the construction of the Bolton Institute Of Technology. The BIT was founded at Bolton Technical College on Manchester Road in 1963 but it was immediately decided that it would need an extensive site of its own. The site at the bottom of Deane Road was identified and it was cleared in 1965. The BIT began to move into its new buildings in 1967-68.

For many years the site of the Britannia formed a green sward of grass in front of the BIT. The junction of Derby Street and Deane Road was closed off in 1979 when the southern limb of Bolton’s inner relief road was opened. The BIT became the Bolton Institute Of Higher Education when it merged with the Bolton College Of Education (Technical). In 2004 it became the University Of Bolton.

In 2009 construction began of the Bolton One complex which now occupies the site of the Britannia as well as the Derby Street Secondary School that once stood opposite.

   

Jolly Waggoner, Deane Road

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The Jolly Waggoner, pictured around 1975. Image from the Bolton Library and Museum Services collection. Copyright Bolton Council.

The Jolly Waggoner was originally a shop at the gable end of Balshaw Street, which ran down the side of the pub.

In the early-1840s a local character named Joseph Atherton owned a donkey and cart and had a business selling cockles and mussels on the streets of Gate Pike, as the area at the bottom of Deane Brow was known. ‘Cockle Joe,’ as he was known, eventually moved to the top of Balshaw Street where he opened a shop and traded as a greengrocer and fishmonger. He was still known as ‘Cockle Joe’ even after expanding his product range and he was later joined in the business by his son Amos, nicknamed ‘Yam Cockle’.

An un-named beerhouse had previously been run by Richard Marsh in the 1840s from his small house in Balshaw Lane, but that had closed by 1853. The Farmers Arms closed in 1869 while the Split Crow beerhouse had also closed. In the early-1870s Cockle Joe sold his shop and on the addition of an extension the premises were converted into two separate businesses. These fronted the main road, then known as Pikes Lane but later re-named Deane Road. One of the businesses was a butcher’s shop while the rest of the premises, on the Balshaw Street side, became a beerhouse.

The licensed premises were originally known as the Red Herring Inn, perhaps as a nod to Cockle Joe, who by now had moved to the top of Gilnow Lane. 

In 1875, John Bennett became licensee. Bennett was a popular local figure, a jovial character who drove his lorry and three horses around Gate Pike and it was from Bennett that the pub took its new name – the Jolly Waggoner.

The pub was an early Magees outlet. Hazel Morgan was born at the pub in 1934 – her parents were managers there for 38 years. Her recollections of the pub are contained here on the Bolton Revisited site. 

One of Hazel’s anecdotes worth repeating concerned her bridesmaid, Midge, a chimpanzee belonging to Edgar and Phyllis Charlton who owned the pet shop at 148 Derby Street. Hazel’s husband, David Harrison, worked for the Charltons. One night, as Hazel and David slept at the Jolly Waggoner there was a screech of brakes from the street outside. Midge had escaped from the shop on Derby Street and had run down to Deane Road where she narrowly escaped being run over by a lorry. More recollections of Midge can be seen here and here. 

The Jolly Waggoner was among the first of a huge raft of Bolton beer houses to obtain full public house licenses at the start of the sixties. A large number of pubs successfully applied in 1961, but the year before, in 1960, the Jolly Waggoner was one of a small number that tested the water with an application.

By then it was a Greenall Whitley pub. The image at the top of the page was taken around 1975, according to the Bolton archive records. That would have been five years after Greenall’s had closed Magee’s brewery on Derby Street though it is possible that the photo was taken earlier than 1975.  An earlier image can be seen here in the Bolton News archives.The pub had long since expanded into the adjoining retail premises.

Greenall’s eventually got out of brewing and the licensed trade. Its tied estate was split up and by the time the Jolly Waggoner closed in 2006 it was owned by Hyperhold Ltd, a small operator of pubs and bars that has since gone out of business. 

The Jolly Waggoner was sold de-licensed. It initially became a cybercafé and business centre but is now in use as a restaurant.

The Jolly Waggoners pictured in 2012

Split Crow, Pikes Lane

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Fern Street runs off to the right on this April 2012 image (copyright Google Street View), Deane Road runs to the left. The boarded-up Jolly Waggoner can be seen in the distance, the Lilian Hamer home is in the foreground. The Split Crow was close to the corner with Fern  Street, roughly where the patch of grass is.

The Split Crow is one of those long-lost pubs that even failed to make it into any of Gordon Readyhough’s books, so brief was its existence. We have the early-twentieth century Methodist historian Hannah Cottrell to remind us that it ever existed.

In the early-twenties Mrs Cottrell set out to write a history of the Methodist church on Fern Street, off Deane Road. As an illustration  she sets out a vision of the area of Deane known as Gate Pike in the early-1840s immediately prior to the arrival of Methodism.

Gate Pike was a hamlet situated roughly halfway between the outskirts of Bolton and Deane church, at the foot of Deane Brow. It consisted of just three streets: Balshaw Street, Markland Street (later Gate Street) and Moss Street (later Fern Street). The area still exists around by the former Jolly Waggoners pub and the Lilian Hamer old people’s home.

Mrs Cottrell describes some of the characters who lived in the area at the time and the nicknames they were given. There was ‘Owd Woof’ who ran the corner shop at the top of Balshaw Street; Joseph Atherton – ‘Cockle Joe’ – who sold cockles and mussels from a wheelbarrow. ‘Cockle Joe’ was succeeded in the business by his son Amos, nicknamed ‘Yam Cockle’. A clogger named Aspinall was known as ‘Old Sootum’, the Heaton family were known as the ‘Yettons,’ ‘Saut Bob’ was the rag-and-bone man and ‘Owd Hardneck’ the army pensioner.

But as a Methodist it was the plethora of drinking establishments that Mrs Cottrell took aim at. Owd Woof sold beer at his shop; a man named Dick Marsh sold beer at his cottage at the top of Balshaw Street; there was the Farmer’s Arms, the Gibraltar Rock, the Cross Guns and the Split Crow, all within a short walk from each other.

For a small community of perhaps a few hundred people that is a lot of places to sell beer. The Methodists’ promotion of the abstinence from alcohol meant that as they expanded from their chapel at Ridgway Gates in the centre of Bolton, a small self-contained community such as Gate Pike where beer was widely available meant it was a target for the establishment of a Methodist presence. Indeed, the place was known to them as ‘Hell’s Mouth’.

“Swearing, drinking and gambling were excessively indulged in by many of the men whose wives and families were miserably neglected. Their running dogs, fighting cocks and pigeons received far more attention and consideration than did their little children.” [1]

The Split Crow was situated on land now occupied by the Lilian Hamer home. It was in the middle of a row of three houses on Pikes Lane, which later became Deane Road. Next door, on the corner of Moss Street (was William Worthington’s butchers shop where calves and sheep were slaughtered in the cellar.

The Methodists arrived in the area in the spring of 1843 when they rented a cottage, 34 Balshaw Street. The Split Crow was already in operation by then having sprung up in the aftermath of the 1830 Beerhouses Act.

The pub closed some time in the 1850s. By then the Methodists had moved from Balshaw Street to Moss Street (renamed Fern Street around 1869) where they built a small chapel in 1843. In a twist of irony they bought the Split Crow. It reverted back to a private residence and became the chapel-keeper’s house of the Wesleyan chapel.

In 1927 the Methodists moved to a new church a few yards away on Deane Road on land now occupied by Bolton Blinds. The old Fern Street Wesleyan church was converted into a cinema, the Plaza, and number 336 became part of the cinema complex. The Plaza became the Windsor in January 1937 and closed in 1962. [2]

The Lilian Hamer old people’s home was built on the site in 1973. That closed in 2009 and remains vacant. An attempt to sell the home for £325,000 failed in 2010.

[1] Gate Pike: The Story Of 80 Years’ Methodism, 1843-1923, by Hannah Cottrell (Mrs Albert Openshaw). Originally published by Tillotsons (Bolton) Ltd (1924). The book is a comprehensive history of the Wesleyan church up to that time and includes a history of the bottom part of Deane from Deane Brow and Gate Pike down to Chamber Hall closer to town.

[2] Cinema Treasures website. Retrieved 23 October 2014.

Beaumont Club, Deane Church Lane

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The Beaumont Club in 1929.

Not a lost pub but an interesting one, nonetheless. This is a picture of the Beaumont Club, a private-members’ bowling club that existed just off Deane Church Lane until some time in the 1960s.  The image is from the Bolton Library and Museum Services collection and is copyright Bolton Council.

The occasion is the visit of the recently-victorious Bolton Wanderers side which had carried off the FA Cup for the third time in seven seasons with a 2-0 victory over Portsmouth in April 1929. That looks like team captain Joe Smith behind the cup. The man sat next to him wearing a splendid pair of breeches could be goalkeeper Dick Pym who played in all three Wembley finals.

The Beaumont Club was at the St Helens Road end of Deane Church Lane on land which has only recently been redeveloped as housing. The Bolton Wanderers manager of the time, Charles Foweraker, lived not far from the Beaumont Club in a terraced house on St Helens Road. It is entirely possible that he was either associated with the club in some capacity or that he was friendly with some of its members.

But it is the Beaumont Club itself that interests us as very little is known about this establishment. It came about following a growth in the popularity of bowls in the mid-to-late 19^th century. Several pubs had their own greens, principally the Gibraltar Rock on Deane Road. At the Howcroft on Pool Street the bowling green pre-dated the pub, while the King’s Head at Deane was advertising two bowling greens in 1873. [1]

In his book about leisure in Bolton in the nineteenth century Robert Poole informs us that a bowling green was set up at the Stag’s Head on St Helens Road in 1865. [1] He suggests that this was perhaps the Rumworth Bowling Green Company Ltd, which was set up in 1880, though that assertion appears to be incorrect.

An 1893 map of the area shows two bowling greens in the area: one at the Stag’s Head, situated on St Helens Road, and one just off Deane Church Lane. The Stag’s Head bowling green was actually situated behind the pub but on the other side of the tracks of the Bolton to Leigh Railway. Access was via Wilton Street or via Bertwine Street, which ran down the side of some early-nineteenth century cottages that stood raised up from St Helens Road until they were demolished around 1969.

The Stag’s Head green lasted until at least the fifties. Warburton’s Soreen bakery and, later, Park Cakes was built on the site of both the green and the cottages on St Helens Road. The Bakewell Tin and Metal works were right next to this green with the Daubhill Brick Works not far away.

But an event in 1906 suggests that the Rumworth Bowling Green Company wasn’t at the Stag’s Head. While it was established as a limited company in 1880, the London Gazette for 16 February 1906 suggests the company had collapsed. More crucially, it gave its address as Deane Church Lane, so it wasn’t at the Stag’s Head.

After the Rumworth Bowling Green Company failed the premises became the Beaumont Club. By September 1906 the liquidator, Mr S.H. Horrocks, was able to distribute proceeds from the sale of the old company’s assets to its creditors. So the green was obviously sold on and it seems to have become the Beaumont Club at that time.

The splendid clubhouse in the image above was a much more modest affair up to around the time of the First World War. By the time this photograph had been taken the Beaumont Club had added tennis courts at the side of the bowling green but these had disappeared by the time of the 1954 map of the area. Entrance to the club and its grounds were via Hudson Road, just off Deane Church Lane.

Unfortunately, old maps are really all we have to go off as there is very little evidence – either anecdotally or otherwise – that the club ever existed. The bowling green itself last appears on a 1967 map. The Beaumont Bowling Green Company's final appearance in a local phone directory was in 1952. It must have closed around that time and abandoned. Certainly the company was struck off in 1957 its officers having resigned and the firm - like the bowling green - abandoned.

It was used as industrial premises after that until a housing development began to be built on the site around 2007.

Any information on the Beaumont Club would be gratefully received in the comments below.

The outline of the Beaumont Club’s bowling green can be seen on the left of this January 2005 satellite image (copyright Google). The club’s tennis courts were situated in the five-sides enclosure to the right of the former green. Deane Church Lane runs from top to bottom of the picture. The large, light-coloured building on the right is Park Cakes. The row of houses that juts into the bakery is Jubilee Street and it is at this end of that street on land now occupied by Park Cakes that the original Stag’s Head bowling green was situated. The Daubhill branch of Asda, St Helens Road and the former Stag’s Head are in the bottom right of the picture.

Hudson Close (formerly Hudson Road). This housing development was built on the site of the former Beaumont Club and the shot is taken from roughly the same point as was the photograph of the victorious Bolton Wanderers side at the top of the page. Image taken in April 2012. Copyright Google Street View.

[1] Popular Leisure and the Music Hall in Nineteenth-Century Bolton, by Robert Poole. Published by the University Of Lancaster (1982).
[2] London Gazette, 16 February 1906. Retrieved 11 October 2014.
[3] London Gazette, 7 September 1906. Retrieved 11 October 2014. 

Alfred The Great, 44 Noble Street

The remains of Noble Street, now a fraction of its former size, pictured in April 2012 (copyright  Google Street View). At one time there were three beer houses on this street, which linked Derby Street with Noble Road. Now it is a hotbed of religious activity with the Noble Street Independent Methodist Church clearly visible on the right and the Jehovah’s Witnesses Kingdom Hall at the bottom of the street.

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Updated 12 June 2019 with details of the pub's early history.

The area around Derby Street became industrialised in the middle of the 19^th century and with it came housing and then the beer houses.

Noble Street was built in the early part of the nineteenth century and an 1849 map of Bolton shows the street in much the same shape as it would be until the 1960s. Looking down from Derby Street, there was a long row of terraced houses down the left-hand side of the street. The right-hand side was also developed, though some of those buildings were later demolished to facilitate the development of a number of side streets such as Bristol Street and Claughton Street.

The Derby Ironworks backed on to the houses on the west side of Noble Street. It was built in 1854 under the name Brown, Altham and Co. later becoming Hiton and Brown. It later became a more substantial concern after it was bought by a former employee, William Crumblehulme,  but even by the 1860s it still only employed 12 men and eight boys. But the iron works was one of a number of thriving small businesses that began in the area as the nineteenth century progressed.

Although the 1855 Bolton Directory shows no beerhouses on Noble Street it is believed that the Alfred The Great was in existence from around 1851 or 1852. Certainly, by 1871 there were three licensed premises with the Alfred The Great situated at number 44 and owned by Joseph Atkinson.

Born in Sharples in 1826 Atkinson was a collier by trade and only moved into the pub business when he took over the Alfred The Great. Although Noble Street was only four miles or so from Sharples it is likely that he moved to the south side of Bolton to look for work. Atkinson’s father, also named Joseph, was a ‘banksman’ – he operated the tipping gear at the top of the pit. Atkinson’s brother, Richard, was also a collier and the family were living in the Rumworth area when Richard was married at Deane Church in 1857.

Joseph Atkinson applied for a spirits licence at the annual Brewster sessions in 1865. One of 45 applicants he was among the 43 that were refused licences. To make matters worse, the Albert on Derby Street was awarded a licence at the sessions. That made at least three pubs in the vicinity to have full licences as the Lord Nelson and Pilkington Arms were long-established inns. Having pubs nearby licensed to sell wine and spirits had a bearing on other applications. Atkinson applied once again in 1874 when it was claimed the pub had been in existence for 22 or 23 years and Atkinson had occupied it for the past 19 years. At the hearing, he claimed the house was extensive in nature and certainly his description backed that up. Along with the brewery and malting room it consisted of a vault, bar parlour, club room, sitting room, scullery and stable. There were four bedrooms. A petition in support of the application was presented and Atkinson applied to sell wine only if the magistrates declined to allow the pub to sell wines and spirits. But having the Pilkington just 300 yards away didn't help matters. The application failed once again and it was to be almost 90 years before the Alfred The Great finally received a full licence.

By the late-1860s, Joseph Atkinson added two more pubs. The Masons Arms was in Emblem Street, the next street along from Noble Street. The British Oak  was on Derby Street just a few hundred yards away. Both took their beer from the Alfred The Great. He was also the joint-owner, along with James Lees, of the Farmers Arms on Derby Street although the house had its own brewery and was never supplied. By 1880 he had added the Craven Heifer on Derby Street followed by the Nelson Hotel on Nelson Street. It wasn't bad going for a man whose illiteracy prevented him from signing his own marriage certificates with anything other than an ‘X’.

But Atkinson suffered tragedy. His first wife, Mary, died in 1858 at the tragically early age of 33. He married a widow, Alice Slater, the following year. Their son James was born in 1860 and later took over the running of the British Oak. Mary died in 1874. Finally, in 1881 and at the age of 55, Joseph married another widow, Jane Boardman.

Lost on Saturday afternoon in Emmanuel Street, a leather purse containing gold. Finder will be handsomely rewarded on restoring it to Joseph Atkinson, Alfred The Great, Noble Street, Bolton. - Bolton Evening News, 17 November 1873.

Not only were there two other beerhouses on Noble Street, as well as a whole host of hostelries on nearby Derby Street, Atkinson would have had the Methodists to deal with. In 1872, the Noble Street Independent Methodist church was built just yards away from the Alfred The Great. It was a time when there was a war on drinkers. Pub hours were curbed in 1872 – though they were still able to open for 17 hours a day - and teetotal candidates were put up for election in some council wards, though not with much success. The Independent Methodist Church, an imposing edifice compared to the tiny dwelling houses of Noble Street, made their message clear from the outset. In a move that suggested they at least had some clout within the council’s highways department, they managed to get the street running alongside the church to be named Temperance Street. That Atkinson also brewed his own beer under their noses would have further irked the teetotal Methodists.

But the Alfred The Great was involved in more wholesome pursuits. Joseph Atkinson formed a bowls club and although there was no green attached to the pub the team were members of the Bolton Bowling Association and played at greens throughout the town. Pubs that did have greens included the Bee Hive on Chorley New Road, the Gibraltar Rock on Deane Road, the Hulton Arms at Four Lane Ends and the Robin Hood on Lever Street.

Joseph Atkinson spent 44 years at the Alfred The Great. He left early in 1899 by which time he would have been around 73 years old. He moved to his son's house at the bottom of Cannon Street and he died there in January 1901.

The beer-house trade had been good to Joseph Atkinson. However, he was a very astute businessman. Shortly after his death the auction took place of the effects of one of his other businesses: a horse, two ponies and various gigs and traps which he ran from stables off Cannon Street. There was also an auction of his personal effects including four heavy Gold Albert chains. Finally, in November 1901 there was an auction of Atkinson's other interests. He had built up a portfolio of almost 50 properties. Most were situated in the area between Deane Road and Derby Street: in Defence Street, Royle Street, Cannon Street, Every Street, Punch Street and Noble Street. A little further afield there were houses on Rupert Street and Beechwood Street in Great Lever and on Wigan Road. There was also a portfolio of ground rents along with shares in local drinks companies. When the estate was liquidated it realised over £24,000 – just under £3million in today's money. The illiterate former coal miner from Sharples was one of Bolton's richest men when he died.

Both the Alfred The Great and the British Oak ended up in the hands of WT Settle, a small brewery based at the Rose and Crown,  just off Turton Street. Settle’s remained in control of the Alfred The Great until 1951 when the brewery and its seven pubs were sold to Dutton’s of Blackburn and it was as a Dutton’s house that the pub ended its days. Although the Alfred The Great was one of a number of Bolton pubs to receive full drinks licences in 1961, it was closed in 1964. Its neighbours on Noble Street, the Noble Street Tavern  and the Royal Tiger, were both long gone having closed in 1906 and 1911 respectively.

The pub building was later demolished along with much of the rest of Noble Street. The street, which at one time ran all the way down to Deane Road, was truncated to less than a quarter its size though it is still there, near the bottom end of Derby Street.

But while the pubs and brewery of Noble Street have all bitten the dust, the Independent Methodist survives after 140 years. So, too, does Temperance Street.

A recent picture of Noble Street Independent Methodist Church can be seen  here.