Quiet Woman, Bury New Road (Bradford Street), The Haulgh

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The site of the Quiet Woman/Bradford Hotel in 2014

The Quiet Woman existed as a beerhouse from 1836 to 1871. It was the predecessor to the Bradford Hotel. 

Little is known of the pub's early days although Richard Fogg (1783-1858) appears to have been a pivotal figure. Fogg was a bleacher living at Top O'Th Haulgh according to the 1841 census. However, the Bolton directory for 1843 has him down as a beerseller at The Haulgh and it seems likely that it was at the Quiet Woman.

By 1851, Fogg was still a beerseller but his address was given as Fogg's Houses in The Haulgh. The appendix of 'Houses' to a name suggested the whole of a row was owned by the same person. That was perhaps stretching the point a little as there appears to have been just the pub and an adjoining cottage that made up Fogg's Buildings.

Fogg died in 1851. The Bolton Chronicle of 3 July 1858 reported that on the day of his death the 75-year-old Fogg had brewed as usual at the brewery attached to the pub. At around eight o'clock that night he began to complain of a pain in his bowels. He went to bed at ten o'clock and died at midnight.

Fogg's wife Betty remained at the pub until 1868 when she decided to sell up. The premises were sold along with an adjoining cottage for £270 to a farmer at The Haulgh named John Marsh. The transaction was the subject of a court case in 1869 when Marsh was successfully sued by an estate agent named George Ferguson for outstanding legal fees worth £12 2 shillings. [1]

It seems that Marsh didn't run the pub himself. Rather he installed Robert Bowcock as licensee. In April 1870, Boocock was accused of permitting drunkenness at his house. PC Mosely claims to have seen six men in the front room of the Quiet Woman. All were drunk, some more than others. Three women were in the kitchen and a man named Brennan had blood flowing from his mouth. Brennan claimed that the men had come in to the house already drunk but that the three women were powerless to throw them out. However, evidence was also given that there was not enough drink in the house for the men to be drunk and that Brennan had entered the house with the intention of fighting its occupants. Even so, the court, presided over by Mayor Joseph Musgrave found that the case was proven and he fined Bowcock 20 shillings (£1) plus costs. [2]

Bowcock left soon afterwards and George Holden took over. But in January 1871 the pub was up for sale once again. It closed down shortly after it was was sold and was soon demolished. The Bradford Hotel was erected in its place and opened later that year.

[1] Bolton Evening News, 8 May 1869.

[2] Bolton Evening News, 21 April 1870.

Bradford Arms, 23 Bridgeman Place, Bolton

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The Bradford Arms pictured around 1930 just a few years before it closed

The Earl of Bradford owned land around Great Lever, Farnworth and part of the area to the south-western part of Bolton town centre, so it’s no surprise that the name ‘Bradford’ features prominently in the town. The earldom itself refers not to the conurbation in West Yorkshire as one might assume, but to the area of Bradford in Shropshire. That’s where the Bridgeman family, who hold the earldom, originated. A baronetcy was created for the Bridgemans of Great Lever in 1660. The fourth baronet was named Sir Orlando Bridgeman while the fifth baronet, Sir Henry Bridgeman became Baron Bridgeman in 1794.

A number of street and pub names make reference to the Earls of Bradford: Bradford Street, Bradford Road, Bridgeman Street, Bridgeman Place and no fewer than four pubs in the area named the Bradford: three pubs in Bolton while a fourth, in Farnworth, is the only one to survive.

The Bradford Hotel (later the Bradford Arms) was situated on Bradford Street; there was a Bradford Arms on Foundry Street, off Thynne Street, and somewhere between the two, on Bridgeman Place, was another Bradford Arms which was possibly the earliest of the four.

The pub began in the late-1850s when it was opened by a man named James Seddon Hulme. James was born in Little Lever in 1819 to a single mother, Alice Hulme. He was brought up by his grandparents but he appears to have had at least one child – and perhaps as many as six - with a woman named Margaret Barlow although the couple weren't married until much later. Certainly, the eldest child, Harriet Barlow was living with James Hulme and his grandparents at Grundy Fold in Little Lever by 1851. By then, Margaret Barlow was living in lodgings at Taylors Lane, Ainsworth.

James Hulme married in June 1854 – not Margaret Barlow but a widow named Mary Seddon (nee Henry). Oddly, he took her previous married name as part of his own name and became known as James Seddon Hulme.

Mary had previously run a pub on Churchgate and shortly after they married the couple moved to premises at 23 Bridgeman Place and opened it up as a beerhouse. The Bradford Arms, as it became known, would be run by members of James Seddon Hulme's family for the next 80 years.

Mary Hulme died in January 1876. James remarried in December of that year. He turned to his old flame and married Margaret Barlow at Holy Trinity church.

James and Margaret Hulme died within weeks of each other in 1892. James died on 24 May and Margaret on 13 July. The pub business had been good to him and he left an estate worth £871 – around £105,000 in today's money.

The Bradford Arms was taken over by the family of James and Margaret's daughter Hannah. She had moved to Radcliffe with her mother in the 1860s and in 1881 she married a neighbour, Philip Eastwood. The couple moved in to the Bradford Arms on their marriage and they took over the running of the pub after Hannah's parents died.

The Eastwoods were to remain at the Bradford for the rest of its time as a pub with Philip taking over as landlord.

Hannah died at the Bradford Arms in November 1918. Philip Eastwood died in December 1935 at the age of 83. By then the Bradford was owned by Walker Cain's having previously been sold by the Eastwoods to a Bolton brewer Joseph Sharman's. Sharman's was taken over by the Leigh firm of George Shaw in 1926 and they were in turn taken over by Walker Cain Ltd of Liverpool and Warrington in 1930.

The Bradford closed in 1936 although it is likely to have shut on Philip Eastwood's death with the licence formally rescinded weeks later. On closure, the pub was converted to a private residence but it was to remain standing for over 20 years after it ceased to be a pub. It was demolished in the early-1960s and a service station and bus lay-by was built on the site.

An intriguing set of photographs from the Bolton Museum collection shows the building in 1957 just a few years before the building and the rest of the row were demolished. The pub signs have been removed but it's unmistakably the former Bradford Arms.

Two of the photos are reproduced here with permission of Bolton Library and Museum Services (copyright Bolton Council).

Note Carlton Street - which still exists - where the car is standing

Philip Eastwood (seated left) pictured in 1910 along with the rest of his family. Mr Eastwood ran the Bradford Arms from 1892 until his death in 1936. The pub was opened by the father of his wife Hannah (seated right). 

Bank View Inn, 66-68 Kestor Street

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Kestor Street still runs from Radcliffe Road down to Mill Hill Street. It dated back to the early part of the nineteenth century at a time when the area became utilised for both industrial and residential use.

There was a beerhouse on Kestors, as the street was then known, in 1836 but that only lasted for a few years and  is thought not to have any connection to the Bank View Inn.

The Bank View Inn was so called because the banks of the River Tonge were visible from the pub. While there were houses on the opposite side of Kestor Street a little further down the area directly in front  of the club was never developed.

An early landlord - possibly even the pub’s founder - was John Howson. He was a native of Preston who married Alice Drinnan at St John’s church in Little Bolton in 1860. By 1869 the couple were at the Bank View Inn, 66 Kestor Street. John was a mechanic by trade and he kept up that trade while running the pub.

Alice died in the early part of 1873 leaving John with two children. But in July of that year he remarried, this time to Mariane Heaton. Mariane was a spinster who lived on Bury Old Road, but her father was an architect named Rowland Hall Heaton. He built the Clarence Hotel on Bradshawgate  as well as a cotton factory, Parkfield Mill, which also known as Solomon’s Temple.  The mill was situated in Dawes Street on what is now the site of Morrison’s car park and Heaton built three streets of housing next to the mill, presumably for to house his employees. The street’s names were Rowland Street, Hall Street and Heaton Street.

John and Mariane used a similar unusual method of naming their children. Boys were often named after their father with a nod to her mother’s family as a middle name. The Howsons achieved both with two of their two sons. There was John Heaton Howson, born in 1874, and John Rowland Howson, born in 1883. Two other children were named, perhaps a little more conventionally, Mercy and Thomas.

The Bank View was originally numbered 66 Kestor Street. The property next door – number 68 – was a shop. Despite the street having just around 120 residential properties there were no fewer than four shops in the street and number 68 must have fallen by the wayside. John took on number 68 and for the rest of its time as a pub the Bank View occupied both properties.

But whether the extension caused financial problems or there were problems raising a young family in an environment where late-night opening was the norm, the Howsons left the Bank View soon afterwards. By 1879 John was running a grocer’s shop not too far away at 137 Bury Road, near the junction with Bury Old Road. William Street took over the pub and by 1881 it was in the hands of Wilson Bleakley, previous the landlord of the fully-licensed Spread Eagle on Hulme Street. 

For many years the Bank View brewed its own beer, but it was sold to Sharman’s brewery and was owned by the Liverpool company Walker Cain when it closed in 1937.

Leigh Paints have been on Kestor Street for many years and the factory covers a large chunk of the northern end of the street. The row of properties between Morton Street and Franklin Street contained the Bank View. What was once Franklin Street can be seen going up by the side of the car park. The Bank View was roughly in the middle of the row of cars in this image. (Image taken September 2014, copyright Google Street View).

Bradford Arms/Bradford Hotel, Bradford Street

Site of the Bradford Arms, now occupied by four townhouses. April 2014.

The Bradford Hotel – or the Bradford Arms as it later became known – was situated at 107 Bradford Street, The Haulgh.  

The pub was first licensed in 1880 after the transfer of the licence of the White Bear on Deansgate.  [1]

That part of The Haulgh had recently been built up.  An 1850 map of the area shows a sparsely populated Haulgh New Road, as Bradford Street was then known. Radcliffe Road was known as Haulgh Lane and the area further along the lane, heading back towards town near Castle Street on the right-hand side was a tree-lined area known as Top O’Th Haulgh.

By 1891 Haulgh Lane was named Bradford Street and the Bradford Hotel had been built and named after the street on which it stood.  A large saw mill stood next to the pub towards Bury Road with Highfield House and its gardens standing across the road.

By the 1920s the Bradford was owned by William Tong & Sons Ltd whose Diamond Brewery stood at the top of Blackshaw Lane at the junction with Deane Road.  Tong’s was taken over by Walker Cain Ltd of Warrington in 1923 before becoming a Tetley pub on their takeover of Walker’s in 1960.

The pub had lost the ‘Hotel’ suffix some years earlier and was now the Bradford Arms. There have been at least three other pubs in the area by that name: one less than half a mile away at the top of Bridgeman Place closed in 1936, while a pub of the same name on Foundry Street closed in 1960. There is still a Bradford Arms on Buckley Lane in Farnworth.

A contributor posted this picture of the Bradford Arms to the 70s Bolton Facebook group. [2] The group of men outside the pub are Bolton Wanderers fans waiting for some Burnley fans who were drinking inside. The photograph was taken on 4 April 1988 prior to a Division 4 match between the two sides at Burnden Park. Fighting broke out shortly after the picture was taken and continued all the way up Bradford Street to the town centre. 

The end for the Bradford came in 2004. The pub struggled on through the nineties and the first decade of the millennium and was undergoing a refurbishment in December of that year when a fire broke out in a first floor room. A workman on the site was alerted to the fire when his radio cut out and managed to escape. [3]

The pub remained empty for over three years before being demolished in 2008. Developers then submitted plans for four townhouses on the empty site which was sold with planning permission the following year. The townhouses were completed in 2012.

Here's a picture of the pub for sale in 2008.

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

[2] Facebook. 70s Bolton.

[3] Bolton News, 11 February 2008. Full report here.