City Hotel, 37-39 Eskrick Street, Bolton

The former City Hotel pictured in 2009 (copyright Google Street View). The building was demolished a couple of years later. The front steps still remain.

The City Hotel was situated at 37-39 Eskrick Street in the Brownlow Fold area of Bolton.

A beerhouse named the Eskrick Arms existed at 33-35 Eskrick Street and was certainly in existence at the time of the 1871 Census. By 1881, John Farnworth is at 33-35 Eskrick Street.

So did 33-35 Eskrick Street change its name from the Eskrick Arms to the City Arms? Although streets often renumbered their buildings it is more likely that number 33-35 became the shop at the corner of Darley Street and Eskrick Street. 

Certainly the City Arms as shown on later maps was quite an imposing building – twice the size of those around it. By 1895 it was certainly known as such with an address of 39 Eskrick Street. Robert Bibby (1845-1900) was the landlord and Gordon Readyhough tells us that it was a home-brew pub at the end of the 19^th century. [1]

After Robert Bibby’s death in 1900, his widow Maria remained at the pub. She married Ellis Greenhalgh, at 42 some ten years younger than her, in the spring of 1905. The couple were in Wordsworth Street by 1911.

By 1924 Thomas Clowes was the landlord of the City. He was in his mid-fifties and was a shopkeeper/fruiterer in Darley St in 1911 – possibly the building on the site of the old Eskrick Arms. The shop premises had previously been run by his father-in-law and were  next door to the City. The greengrocers closed when Thomas Clowes left and was turned into a fish-and-chip shop.

Magees took over the City and it subsequently became a Greenalls pub following their takeover of Magees in 1958.

The original City Hotel was pulled down along with much of the surrounding area in 1968. However, Greenall’s were given planning permission to rebuild the pub. The new City Hotel opened later that year. It closed in 2008. There were plans for the premises to be converted into an Indian restaurant; however, those plans fell through and the building was demolished in 2011.

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

Union Arms, 56-58 Eskrick Street

By common consensus the most popular pub name in the country is ‘Red Lion’. Not in Bolton. So far we’ve found three different examples of the Bradford Arms [two of them are here and here] and that’s not counting the one still trading in Farnworth. There have been four Bowling Greens – one still exists, in Horwich. But surprisingly, there have been no fewer than five pubs named the Union Arms and all of them have gone.

The Union Arms we’re dealing with on this occasion stood in Halliwell at 56-58 Eskrick Street, on the corner of Mort Street and – perhaps handy for the pupils – right next to Brownlow Fold Secondary School. Halliwell Reform Club was just a few doors away down Mort Street. The pub was known locally as the Pincop, after a type of fabric used in local textile mills.

This part of Halliwell was developed in the 1870s and 1880s and the Union was a typical street-corner local which served the streets between Eskrick Street, Tennyson Street and Darley Street.

Towards the end of the 19^th century the Union fell into the hands of the Whitefield Brewery Company. This short-lived enterprise merged in 1899 with the Stamford Brewery of Ashton-under-Lyne and the Lee Home Brewing Company Ltd, to form Whitefield Breweries Ltd but within five years the company had gone bust.

All the Whitefield Brewery pubs, including its three in Bolton, were sold to J W Lees of Middleton Junction, which still exists today. Of the three, the Hare and Hounds on Bank Street was closed in 1911 for being ‘ill conducted’. It became a lodging house until 1963 when it opened as a nightclub (the Beachcomber, Placemate, Maxwell’s Plum, etc). The other two, the Union and the Victoria on Hotel Street, remained in Lees’ hands until 1929 when they were sold to Hamer’s brewery of Bromley Cross. They were the last Lees pubs in Bolton until the brewery bought the Lodge Bank Tavern in 1979. 

The Union remained in Hamer’s hands until the brewery sold out to Dutton’s of Blackburn in 1951. Dutton’s sold out to Whitbread in 1964 and it was as a Whitbread pub that the Union ended its days in 1979. Many of the properties in the area that were built at the same time as the pub were demolished at the same time as well. An area bordered by Eskrick Street, Tennyson Street, Carlyle Street and Darley Street – including the Union and the Brownlow Fold school - was cleared.

The site of the pub is now occupied by the Brownlow Fold Community Learning Centre.