Standard Arms, 50-52 Hulme Street, Bolton

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What was once Hulme Street is now a continuation of Cross Street. The Standard Arms would have been situated on the  left of the photo. Photo taken 2014. Copyright Google.

There were two pubs in Bolton called the Standard. The Standard Hotel stood on Gray Street, just off Prince Street. We're interested in the Standard Arms which was situated on Hulme Street, close to its junction with Dean Street.

The area bounded by Folds Road, Prince Street and Kay Street was built up in the middle of the nineteenth century and with new housing developments came the beerhouses. Like many beerhouses at the time, the Standard Arms only became licensed when a householder paid 2 guineas (£2.10) to allow himself to sell beer.

The first record we have of the Standard Arms is in the 1869 Bolton Directory when David Hilton was the licensee. Hilton actually stepped down from the pub for a short while and the 1871 directory has a Solomon Hilton – presumably a relative – as the licensee. Local directories were often compiled the previous year and in January 1871 David Hilton was back as the licensee. The Bolton Beer And Wine Sellers Association held their quarterly meeting at the Standard Arms that month. [Bolton Evening News, 12 January 1871].

Solomon Hilton went off to be a clogger working from shop premises in Folds Road. By 1881 he was living in Chew Moor. David Hilton later moved to the Middleton Arms, not far away from the Standard Arms, on Charles Street. He died in 1882. 

By 1882 the pub was owned by the Spread Eagle Brewery based at the Spread Eagle pub on Hough Lane in Eagley.

In 1901, landlord John Murphy was brought up in front of the magistrates on the charge of serving alcohol to a drunk. Two police officers went into the pub one night and saw a man named John McCormick who was seated in the vault in a drunken condition. In those days not all vaults had tables and it was common for customers to sit on benches and leave their drinks on the bar counter. McCormick went to the counter and picked up a pint pot containing beer and when challenged by the landlord insisted he had paid for it. One of the police officers suggested to Murphy that McCormick was drunk, something Murphy denied. McCormick was then asked to go outside. He staggered out and created such a commotion with the two policemen that he had to be taken to the town hall to be locked up. He was later fined for being drunk and disorderly. Both Murphy and his wife denied serving McCormick claiming that neither of them had even seen him enter the pub. The magistrates were having none of it and fined Murphy 10 shillings although they decided not to endorse his licence. [Bolton Evening News, 18 April 1901]

In 1908, landlady Mary Ann Walsh was the victim of a scam involving a 54-year-old man named Thomas Harvey Williams who entered the pub one day and asked to cash a cheque. He claimed to be a local councillor and that as he wasn't well enough to go to a bank he would like to cash a cheque for £2 and 5 shillings (£2.25) – the equivalent now of about £270. When Mrs Walsh came to cash the cheque it in her bank account it bounced. Williams was also charged with carrying out a similar fraud against the landlord of the Waggon and Horses, Bury Old Road, Heywood and against shopkeepers Mr Alston of Bridge Street and Mr Hornby of Higher Bridge Street. Williams was sentenced to four months in prison with hard labour. Since the offences had been committed he had spent three months in jail for another matter. He had been in and out of jail for much of his life albeit on minor offences. [Bolton Evening News, 13 January 1909].

The Standard Arms closed in 1911.The area around Hulme Street was knocked down in the sixties and new housing built on the site of the Standard Arms in the nineties. The stretch of Hulme Street where the pub once stood still exists but is completely unrecognisable from the early part of the twentieth century. It is now a continuation of Cross Street.

Premier Arms, 38-40 Hulme Street, Bolton

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The Premier Arms was another example of a corner shop making the transition into a beerhouse. The first mention of the pub is in the 1871 Bolton Directory. By then it had just become licensed premises, though in the census return of that year landlord James Richardson is described as a provision dealer. Presumably that was his  main line of business. James Richardson remained at the Premier Arms until his death in 1886.

The Premier was bought by the Bromley Cross brewery Hamers. But it was in the tough district of Little Bolton bounded by Folds Road, Kay Street and Turton Street – a particularly well-pubbed area of the town.

Hamer’s closed the Premier Arms in 1920 and by 1924 it was back in use as retail premises of sorts. Instead of being a shop it was a fish and chip shop with John Millington the proprietor. It remained as such until its demolition in the 1960s.

Hulme Street is no more – at least not in name – but a part of Charles Street occupies the former Hulme Street and these 1990s flats occupy the corner that was once the home to the Premier Arms (image copyright Google Street View, August 2014).

Jolly Angler, Hulme Street

The site of the former Hulme Street. Nowadays it is confusingly called Cross Street on this stretch although Cross Street still goes along the top of the street. Hulme Street used to go all the way down to Folds Road and at one time it contained five pubs or beerhouses of which the Jolly Angler was one (the others were the Premier, the Standard, the Hulme Street Tavern and the Spread Eagle). The Jolly Angler was at 74-76 Hulme Street at the Cross Street end, roughly where the houses are on the left-hand side of this image.

When we looked at the General Havelock on Sidney Street we came across the formidable Mrs Mahalah Harcastle. Now we encounter Mrs Hardcastle once again as the owner of the Jolly Angler on Hulme Street in the nineteenth century.

The Jolly Angler was constructed in the early part of that century as the whole ‘hinterland’ beyond Folds Road up towards Turton Street was built up.  However, number 74-76 Hulme Street appears not to have become a beer house until the second half of the century.  It was taken over by Mahalah Hardcastle although it isn’t known whether or not ownership ran concurrently with her ownership of two other pubs: the York and the General Havelock.

Mrs Hardcastle was perhaps best-known in the latter part of that century as the landlady and owner of the York Hotel on Newport Street which she ran from the 1860s until her death in 1881 and the age of 72. However, along with her husband John she also ran the George Hotel in the 1830s. After John Hardcastle’s death she was described on the 1851 census as a laundress and a brickmaker at number 13 Deansgate. The brickmaking business did well enough to employ eight men. However, the Bolton Directory of 1853 describes Mrs Hardcastle as the landlady of a pub at 13, Deansgate, the Old Woolpack, before moving to the York a few years later. [1]

The Jolly Angler remained outside the tied house system of pub ownership that developed in the late-nineteenth and early-twentieth century. However, it closed in 1919 having remained in private hands for the whole of the 50 or 60 years it was in existence. By the following year it was back as a private residence.

[1] Four Bolton Directories: 1821/2, 1836, 1843, 1853. Published by Neil Richardson (1982).