The Egerton Arms on Lever Street isn’t a pub that
has lasted long in the memory of older drinkers. Plenty of people reminisce in
on-line forums about more recent closures such as the Tanners Arms or UncleTom’s Cabin or even the Recreation Tavern next to Bobby Heywood’s Park, but more than 50 years after the Egerton finally
closed its doors there is barely a memory of the place.
The pub was situated on the corner of Reservoir
Street, and like the Recreation it was close to Heywood Park, across from Lever
Street meets Rupert Street and some six doors up from Uncle Tom’s Cabin.
The pub dated back to the 1860s. The opening of
Heywood Park led to a development of the area and the 1871 directory gives
Jeremiah Aspin as the landlord. But by the time Mr Aspin’s daughter Elizabeth
married John Foster later that year he had moved to take charge of the Cotton
Tree opposite the Tanners Arms at the other end of Lever Street at its junction
with Nelson Street.
It is likely that the Egerton was taken over at the
time by Henry Heyes of the Fox and Goose pub on Deansgate and was supplied
directly by that pub’s brewery. Jeremiah Aspin’s occupation was put as a brewer
on his daughter’s marriage certificate and it seems that the Egerton’s own
brewery had closed as a result of the pub’s sale.
The Fox and Goose and its brewery closed in 1897 after
the pub’s licence was refused. The Egerton was sold to a Rossendale company,
Grant’s Tower Brewery of Ewood Bridge. In 1913, Grant’s sold out to John Kenyon
of Barrowford, near Nelson, but despite Kenyon’s falling into the hands of
Massey’s Brewery of Burnley in 1928, the Egerton ended up in the hands of a
more local concern, Cornbrook’s of Manchester, who already had a number of pubs
in the Bolton area.
In 1962, Cornbrook’s closed the Egerton. It was a double
blow for Lever Street as the Cotton Tree also closed in the same year.
