One Horseshoe, Manor Street

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Two images of the One Horseshoe from the Bolton Library and Museum collection (copyright Bolton Council). The image at the top dates back to the 1930s and shows Manor Street being widened at the bottom. The One Horseshoe can be seen on the left of the image. On the right, the building in 1975 when it was being used by Manor Carpets, a company that still exists at premises on Chorley Old Road. 

The One Horseshoe was situated on Manor Street and when it opened in the late-eighteenth century it was known simply as the Horse Shoe. It was a departure point for a number of stagecoaches. The 1824 Pigot Directory stated that the ‘Accommodation’ departed for Manchester every morning at 8, while the 1836 Directory listed coaches for Haslingden and Ramsbottom leaving every Monday afternoon at 4.

The One Horseshoe was to play a role in the development of two sizeable Bolton brewing concerns: Atkinson's and Magee, Marshall. In 1864 it was bought by William Atkinson. A native of Leeds, Atkinson was living in Water Street in 1861 where he worked as a common brewer. At that time it was common for pubs to brew their own ale but a common brewer brewed for outlets that didn't have their own breweries. Either Atkinson made enough from brewing to buy his own pub or he needed a guaranteed outlet for his products but he enjoyed a seven-year spell at the pub.

But the final year of Atkinson's tenure at the One Horseshoe was marked by a court case that resulted in its temporary closure. In May 1870 Atkinson was charged by PC John Hopkins with refusing to admit police to the pub at a quarter past one on a Tuesday morning. PC Hopkins claimed to have seen five or six men leave the pub after which a woman came to the door and looked out. After she went back inside PCs Hopkins and Bedford knocked on the door. “Who's there?” the woman shouted. “It's the police,” replied PC Hopkins. PC Bedford knocked loudly on the door with his stick but the two policemen waited outside for 15 minutes without the door being answered. In his defence William Atkinson claimed he was the last person up and that he went to bed at midnight but he insisted neither he nor Mrs Atkinson had heard the policemen knock. The bench considered that the case was proved and fined Atkinson 20 shillings (£1) with 14 days' imprisonment if he failed to pay the fine. [Bolton Chronicle, 4 June 1870]. Worse was to come. In August 1870 the annual licensing hearing suspended the pub's licence and it only re-opened at the end of September following an appeal. [Bolton Chronicle, 1 October 1870].

In March 1871 Atkinson left the One Horse Shoe and the licence was transferred to Samuel Smith. Smith before being taken over three months later by John Wardle, formerly of the nearby Dog and Partridge.  By then Atkinson had bought the Commission Street Congregational School which he converted into a wholesale brewery. He died in 1879 but his son John Atkinson had followed him into the brewing business. The firm was converted into a limited company, John Atkinson & Company Ltd, in 1882. By that time it had 27 beerhouses and eight off-licences. It was to last until 1896 when it was taken over by Boardman United Breweries Ltd of Manchester.

Wardle was a different type of landlord to Atkinson. For one thing he was a prominent Conservative. He was urged to become a candidate for the Church Ward at the 1871 local elections when he was put forward by another pub landlord, James Pitney Weston of the Star Inn on Churchgate although he refused the nomination.

John Wardle spent less than two years at the One Horseshoe but the next landlord, Ellis Marshall was there for 18 years from 1873 until his death in 1891. He had previously been at a nearby beer-house, the Same Place Again in Independent Street. Ellis Marshall's brother was a local brewer named Daniel Marshall who ran the Grapes Hotel and brewery on Brown Street as well the Horse Shoe Brewery on Water Street to the rear of the One Horseshoe. It is likely that he bought the One Horseshoe and installed Ellis as the licensee.

In 1885, Marshall merged his business with Magee's, a firm owned by the three sons of Daniel Magee. The One Horseshoe became one of the first Magee,  Marshall pubs when the limited company of Magee, Marshall and Co. Ltd was formed three years later in 1888 Daniel Marshall had a 27 percent stake in the new company.

In January 1879 Ellis Marshall put on a substantial supper for 150 of the poor and distressed people of the neighbourhood. The streets to the rear of the One Horseshoe were among the poorest in the town.

Ellis Marshall committed suicide at the One Horseshoe in 1891. The Bolton Evening News of 28 May reported that his son was accustomed to being woken so he could go to work but as his father failed to do so this morning he went to see if he was ill. He found Ellis's body hanging “suspended by a hook by means of a riding rein”. He had been seen the previous evening going about his business as usual and nobody suspected anything strange in his behaviour. However, his wife had died several months previously and he had been low-spirited since then. Ellis's son, also called Ellis, took over the pub but he died in 1899.

In their book Looking Back: Photographs and Memories of Life in the Bolton Area 1890-1939, Anne Bromilow and Jim Power recount the tale of a landlord of the One Horseshoe who became known locally as ‘Elephant Man’ after he stored six elephants in the pub’s cellar after a circus arrived in Bolton. The landlord isn’t named, nor is the story dated and the elephants were obviously not fully grown as their heights are given as being between 5ft and 5ft 6. They only just fit into the pub’s cellar and were presumably there alongside vented barrels of beer. However, the landlord was worried about the authorities finding out about the elephants – hardly surprising – and he also stated that their arrival at his pub with hundreds of children in tow created something of a stir on Bank Street.

The One Horseshoe became a Greenall Whitley pub when that company bought out Magee, Marshall's in 1958. However, it continued to be supplied from Magee's brewery in Cricket Street.

When the One Horseshoe closed in 1966 the premises were bought by Gentleman John’s wallpapers. It was later occupied by Manor Carpets before becoming Bar Peru in the nineties. Later, it was known as Nicholas Bar. 

Article updated 15 November 2020 with added historical information.

Manor Street pictured in April 2012 with Bank Street just beyond the bridge over the River Croal. Bar Nicholas in the foreground was One Horseshoe from the late-eighteenth century until 1966. Image copyright Google Street View.

Monteraze, Manchester Road

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The site of Monteraze in April 2012 (copyright Google Street View). The former pub is now an orthodontist's surgery.

A relatively short-lived pub – it lasted 15 years – Monteraze was situated at 464 Manchester Road, about half a mile away from Burnden Park. The pub was run for a number of years by a former Bolton Wanderers player, Roy Greaves.

The stretch of Manchester Road from Burnden Park down to the former Greyhound near St Michael’s church never had a reputation for its pubs. The other main roads out of town – Bury Road, Derby Street, Deane Road and Blackburn Road – all benefited from the explosion of pubs following the 1830 Beerhouse Act. Tonge Moor Road didn’t, largely because various covenants forbade pubs to be built. 

Manchester Road didn’t have many pubs largely because it became sparsely populated once you got through Burnden. The King William IV was the last pub for almost a mile.

Of course, those that did live there – the middle- and upper-class mill-owners – weren’t likely to slum it with the hoi-polloi in the local boozer.

Have a look at this map of the area from the late-twenties. By then the pub boom of the nineteeth century was long gone and the urbanisation of the outskirts of Bolton was just beginning. The map shows Manchester Road lined with homes with names such as Woodlands, Mayfield and Summerfield. Mayfield Avenue and Bradford Avenue had been built on the site of another villa-type residence, Bradford House. Summerfield was next door to the building that became Monteraze and was home to the Baines family of cotton manfacturers.

That was the kind of person that lived on Manchester Road in the nineteenth century.

Monteraze opened in the autumn of 1989 with the local beer drinkers’ magazine reporting that cask beer from John Smith’s and Courage was being sold [1]. It became popular on Bolton Wanderers match days as offering something a little different to other pre-match pubs such as the Cattle Market or the King Bill.

But perhaps the Wanderers connection was to be its downfall. A few years after Monteraze opened for business the club announced it was moving to Horwich and while the move took a few years from inception to completion it meant a long, slow death for Monteraze.

The pub closed around 2004 and is now an orthodontist surgery. It still looks similar to its days as a pub with a reception area where the bar once was and the pub’s two rooms now waiting areas.

[1] What’s Doing, the Greater Manchester beer drinkers' monthly magazine. November 1989 issue.

Black Horse Hotel, Blackhorse Street

The Black Horse - and next-door neighbour - pictured in the 1920s.

The Black Horse Hotel was located on Blackhorse Street and dated back to the late-nineteenth century.

Blackhorse Street was initially known as Thweat Street and was named after James Thweat, whose surname was often spelt Thweats or Thwaites. He opened one of Bolton’s first cotton mills in nearby King Street.

The Black Horse pub dated back to the late-eighteenth century and it first appeared in the local licensing records of 1801. [1] Isaac Dobson lived at the pub shortly after he arrived in Bolton in 1789, while Lane’s Masonic Records suggests that the Lodge Of Antiquity, which was formed in Leigh in 1776, met at the Black Horse from 1793 to 1802.

In the early part of the nineteenth century Thweat Street was lined with houses, but it became a heavily-industrialised area as the century went on.

Dobson went into business with Peter Rothwell, the owner of a timber yard on Thweat Street and the firm that eventually became Dobson and Barlow was born.

With Isaac Dobson still resident at the Black Horse the pub eventually became a meeting point form some of the town’s most prominent business people and during the first decade of the nineteenth century the street took on the name of Blackhorse Street – after the pub - which it retains to this day.

These same prominent businessmen, Isaac and Benjamin Dobson, Peter Rothwell and Benjamin Hick, formed ‘the Black Horse Club,’ an informal business club which secured an annuity of £63 15s for the inventor Samuel Crompton, who often drank at the pub and attending meetings of the club. Crompton, who lived in nearby King Street, was famed at the Black Horse for sitting with his one glass of ale and “seldom speaking, except when directly addressed, and then always briefly and to the point.”

Dobson’s business prospered as did Rothwell’s nearby Union Foundry and, presumably, the Black Horse. Dobson's had moved to Kay Street by 1860, by which time the firm was employing 1600 workers.

The Black Horse Inn lasted until 1937. It was a Tong’s house in the early years of the twentieth century and was transferred to Walker Cain Ltd of Warrington when they bought out Tong’s in 1923. As Bolton Council further developed the Civic Centre around the back of the Town Hall they knocked down the Black Horse and landscaped the area. In the late-sixties Black Horse Street was widened to accommodate the increase in bus traffic going into Moor Lane bus station.

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

Blackhorse Street pictured in April 2012 (copyright Google Street View) looking towards Moor Lane bus station. The Black Horse Hotel was situated on the left-hand side of this view. When Howell Croft bus station was closed in 1969 and bus traffic transferred to Moor Lane, Blackhorse Strreet was widened. The Black Horse Hotel was situated where the pavement now stands, roughly just past the lamp post on the left.

Wheatsheaf/Serendipity's, Great Moor Street

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Newport Street with Great Moor Street running across pictured in the late-nineteenth century. The 1835 version of the Wheatsheaf can be seen on the left-hand corner.

The story of the Wheatsheaf Hotel is one of three buildings in two locations on opposite sides of the town centre.

While many people will associate the Wheatsheaf with the round building on the corner of Great Moor Street and Newport Street, the original Wheatsheaf stood on Bank Street – ‘Windy Bank’ as it was known to Bolton residents at the end of the 18^th century.

In his book Pubs Of Bolton 1800-2000, [1] Gordon Readyhough claims the original Wheatsheaf opened in 1810. However, the list of Bolton pubs from 1778 shows that there was already a Wheatsheaf Hotel with Thomas Haslam as landlord.

The pub stood close to the entrance to the Unitarian chapel on Bank Street and the chapel’s bicentenary book from 1896 makes reference to the Wheatsheaf and its proximity to the chapel’s Sunday School, which was built in 1796:

“It [the Sunday School] stood between the passage to the old chapel and the old Wheatsheaf Inn. On the removal of this inn, with the inn-keeper and the name of the hotel, to the new Wheatsheaf in Newport Street, the school building, along with the inn, was pulled down, and shops built on the site.”

In those days Bank Street was a narrow passage, in fact it was “so very narrow that it was necessary for foot-passengers to step into some shop or doorway to avoid being crushed by a passing cart.” [Sayings and Doings of Parson Folds. Bolton : Geo. Winterburn, 1879, page 34]

In 1818 the landlord of the Wheatsheaf was Samuel Henry and he appears to have run the pub until shortly before it was removed to Newport Street in 1835. In the 1836 Bolton Directory [2], John Platt was the landlord of the Wheatsheaf while Samuel Henry was running a beerhouse on Bridgeman Place. [3] Samuel Henry’s departure may well have been the catalyst for the removal of the Wheatsheaf to its new location.

The Wheatsheaf was sold by auction for £8400 on 3 April 1878 [4] and was run in the 1880s and 1890s by George Walker, the proprietor of the Bolton Brewery Company Ltd. The premises were much larger than the building that still stands today and was run as a hotel, as this old photograph from the late-fifties shows. Here's another shot of the old building, this time from the Bolton Evening News taken in 1961 shortly before it was demolished.

Indeed, there appears to have been a Wheatsheaf Hotel Company that was taken over by the local brewery of Magee, Marshall and Co around 1909. Magee’s ran the pub until they were taken over by Greenall Whitley in 1958.

A few years later, Greenall’s took the decision to knock down the 1835 building and rebuild the Wheatsheaf in a modern style – complete with revolving doors. The new building was set further back than the old Wheatsheaf, but the pub had new neighbours: the western side of Newport Street had been demolished and rebuilt in 1957 and when the new Wheatsheaf was completed in 1962 it was more in keeping with the buildings that had sprung up around it. A new row of shops was later built next to the pub– including a branch of Hanbury’s and Shaw’s outfitters – so that corner of Newport Street and Great Moor Street had architecture which, while perhaps not entirely aesthetically pleasing, at least complemented each other and were much more of their time. Here's a photo from 1963.

The new Wheatsheaf had a much smaller bar area than the old building, though it did have an upstairs function room, used for weddings, engagements and the like, and also heavy rock discos for a few months around 1984.

In 1986, Greenall’s decided to refurbish the Wheatsheaf. The result was £100,000 spent on an “exciting and cosmopolitan” town centre venue known as Serendipity’s. The idea was that instead of being just a pub, Serendipity’s would also serve tea and coffee for passing shoppers.[5]

But for “exciting and cosmopolitan” read ‘one last throw of the dice’. Some of the rougher pubs were at that end of town and with the clientele to match. Serendipity’s did well at first, but towards the end it had become a pub to avoid. It closed around 1994 and after lying empty for a few years it was converted into a branch of cut-price retailer Home Bargains, which opened in 1997.

The former Wheatsheaf, pictured in April 2012. Copyright Google Street View.

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

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

[3] The beerhouse on Bridgeman Place that Samuel Henry was running may well have become the Bradford, though not the pub of the same name a few hundred yards from Bridgeman Place, on Bradford Street. This one was where the petrol station now stands.

[4] Annals Of Bolton, James Clegg, 1888

[5] Bolton Beer Break, the magazine of the Bolton branch of the Campaign for Real Ale. Summer 1986 issue.

Wellington/Welcome Traveller, Union Buildings

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While a waste disposal skip may seem an odd choice to illustrate a point, this skip, and the fenced-off area next to it, mark the approximate site of the Wellington (formerly the Welcome Traveller) on Union Buildings. On the other side of the wall is the Bolton-Blackburn railway line. Right behind us is the now-closed Anchor. To the right is Bradshawgate and in the distance are the flats in the former Bolton County Grammar School on Great Moor Street.

We dealt with one of the pubs on Union Buildings, a small street some 40-50 yards in length that still exists just off Bradshawgate, when we looked at the Anchor, a building that still stands and which only ceased to be a pub a few years ago. Now let’s look at the other pub.

It’s hard to believe but there were initially two pubs along that short stretch. The  first pub to be opened on Union Buildings was the Welcome Traveller situated just across the street from the Anchor at number 11.

Nicholas Heyes was listed on the 1849 list of the Great Bolton beerhouses as the landlord of the Welcome Traveller. The pub isn’t listed in the 1843 Bolton Directory although Mr Heyes (or Heys as his surname was spelt) is listed on the 1841 Census as residing in Union Buildings, most likely at the same address. At that time he was 27 years old, employed as a cotton spinner and lived at the address with his wife, Margaret, his two children and 20-year-old John Heys, presumably another relative.

Mr Heyes obviously decided in the mid-1840s to take advantage of the 1830 Beer House Act which enabled common householders to open a room in their house for the sale and consumption of beer – a public house – so he opened the Welcome Traveller at number 11 Union Buildings.

The Welcome Traveller was re-named the Wellington later in the 1850s, according to Gordon Readyhough [1]. A clue as to why it chose that name can be found at the National Archives in Kew, which holds records for the Wellington Benefit Building Society, which was listed as being at the Welcome Traveller on  Union Buildings. It is entirely possible that it became a branch of a building society after it ceased to be a pub, but it is also likely that the Welcome Traveller housed a branch of a building society and changed its name to that of the financial institution.  Certainly, there were branches of the Wellington Benefit Building Society in Manchester and Liverpool, as well as in Bolton, although it had been struck off the Register of Friendly Societies by1 January 1913. [2]

The pub remained in the Heyes family for some years. Nicholas Heyes died in 1873 and his wife, Margaret, took over. In 1883, another of Nicholas Heyes’ children, also named Nicholas, married Mary Ann Garrity at Holy Trinity Church. The 23-year-old Nicholas was described as a ‘beerseller’ residing at 11 Union Buildings – the Wellington. His father, the late Nicholas Heyes, was described as a ‘common brewer’ which suggests the pub brewed its own beer at one time as well as for other pubs . Deposits were taken from small savers and mortgages arranged. Heyes was known to own a number of properties in the town centre.  

After Mary’s death, the younger Nicholas Heyes managed a number of pubs, including the Bridge Inn on Bridge Street and the Falcon on Kay Street. By 1911, he was living on Huntroyde Avenue and working as a brewer.

The Wellington closed in 1906 by which time it was owned by John Hamer’s brewery based at the Volunteer Inn at Bromley Cross. The building no longer exists and it seems the Wellington closed because of the needs of the railway. Additional sidings were constructed next to the Bolton to Blackburn line and that necessitated the demolition of a number of the buildings at the top of Union Buildings. An 1891 map of the town centre shows the buildings at the top end of the street clearly visible along with  Heyes Court directly behind the Wellington. In the 1910 map the area has been swept away.

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

[2] National Archives. Accessed 29 May 2014. 

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Clifton Arms/Gateway, Newport Street

A rather forlorn-looking Gateway (formerly the Clifton Arms) pictured in April 2012 (copyright Google Street View). By then the pub had already been closed for two years.

It’s always a shame to see a pub closed and boarded up. Sometimes the pubs that have gone are ones that only ever sold keg or smooth beer and while one feels they aren’t much of a loss even that is never the case. Some of these pubs have stood for a hundred years or more and served thousands of customers. But in the case of the Gateway – or the Clifton as most people will remember it – the fact that it closed is nothing more than a crying shame.

Twenty years ago there was a good little crawl from the Clifton to the York to the Sweet Green – or the other way round before carrying on to town.

Under the stewardship of landlord Pete Morris the Clifton began selling guest beers a full three or four years before the 1990 Beer orders chipped away at the brewery tie. Jennings Bitter was a regular on his bar alongside cask Tetley Mild and Bitter long before independent brewers from outside the area got space in a tied house.

By the time Pete retired in the early 2000s he regularly had about five real ales on the bar.

But it was never the same after he left. Many regulars left. The hand pumps soon fell into disuse and although the pub began to do food at lunchtime it simply wasn’t the same any more.

Licensees came and went and nobody seemed to be able to make a go of this once-thriving pub and it closed in early 2010.

The Clifton dated back to the 19^th century and in the 1870s it was a beerhouse known as the Newport Arms. In those days that part of Bolton now bounded by Newport Street, Great Moor Street, Trinity Street and Blackhorse Street was known as Newtown and was inhabited mainly by Irish immigrants who moved to Bolton after the famine.

Despite that, the Clifton claimed to be celebrating its centenary in April 1987 although presumably it was the centenary of being renamed the Clifton. Anyone buying a pint with an old penny would get it at 1887 prices (1d, or 1/2p in new money). [1]

In the early part of the twentieth-century it was one of the few tied houses belonging to Leach’s Brewery based at the Albert Arms on Derby Street, a concern that went out of business in 1936 [see the entry for the Albert for more about Leach’s]. A member of the family, Wilbraham Leach, was the landlord of the Clifton in the 1890s and married another member of a pub-owning family, Emily Hilton, whose family owned the Uncle Tom’s Cabin pub and brewery on Lever Street. 

The Clifton was sold to the Empress Brewery of Manchester before becoming a Walkers pub in 1929. Walkers merged with Tetley of Leeds in 1961. [2]

The pub underwent a refurbishment in 1980 [3]. It was one of a number of Tetley pubs that were re-branded as Walker’s outlets and were given a new range of Walkers beers as well as a refurbishment in a more traditional style.  The bar was moved to the right-hand side of the pub and the premises were re-decorated throughout. Another refurbishment took place in 1986. [4]

The Clifton was renamed the Gateway around 2004 and after its closure it was up for sale for a few years before being converted into retail premises in 2013. The Post Office based across the road from the Clifton moved into the premises after being displaced due to the demolition of properties on that side of Newport Street for the construction of Bolton’s Bus/Rail Interchange.

The pub can be seen here in 2002  and  in the background in this picture from 2010.  But this is a great pic from 1989 Note the etched windows.

The Clifton Arms pictured around 1930.

[1] Bolton Beer Break, published by the Bolton Branch of the Campaign for Real Ale, Summer 1987 edition.

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

[3] What’s Doing, the Greater Manchester Beer Drinkers monthly magazine, January 1981 edition

[4] What’s Doing, September 1986

New Globe/Rock House Hotel, corner of Kent Street and Duke Street

The New Globe pictured in May 2014. The pub had been shuttered earlier in the year but it appears that the new owners had taken up residency by the time the photo was taken. Kent Street runs to the right of the pub,  Duke Street to the left.

The New Globe closed at the end of 2013 and its days as a pub appear to have come to an end.

The pub was in existence as a beerhouse certainly as early as 1871 when Christopher Briggs was the licensee. It was known for all but the last few years of its life as the Rock House Hotel, perhaps due to its stone structure.

Although it was built a residential hotel, at first it had only a beer licence, but the Shakespeare on Bradshawgate had closed around 1875 and its full licence had simply been surrendered to the council. James Drinnan saw an opportunity and applied to have the Shakespeare’s licence transferred to the Rock. [1] He was successful and in 1883 the Rock House Hotel became a fully licensed inn.

The Drinnans had moved around the corner to a shop at 103 School Hill by the early part of the twentieth century and the Rock House was bought by Chadwick’s Walmersley Brewery in Bury. Chadwick’s remained in control until 1927 when they sold their brewery and 43 pubs to Walker & Homfray Ltd of Salford. Walker & Homfray merged with Wilson’s of Newton Heath, Manchester in 1949.

Wilson’s were in control of the Rock House for almost 40 years. In 1988 it was one of 210 pubs sold by the brewery to a property company named Heron International, but within weeks it had been sold again, one of 60 pubs bought by the Wolverhampton brewery, Banks’s. [2]

The layout of the Rock was similar to many nineteenth-century suburban pubs until a refurbishment in the nineties brought in an open-plan scheme.  There were two entrances: a main door on Kent Street and a side entrance on Duke Street. Before the refurb there was a ‘vault’ to the left of the Kent Street entrance with a lounge bar to the right that included a dart board at the far end. The Duke Street entrance led to a small side room which was used as a pool room and was still in situ after the refurb.

The area around the Rock changed over the final 30 years or so of its life. In the late-seventies and early-eighties the old terraces on Davenport Street, Duke Street, Clarence Street and School Hill were all swept away and were replaced by new housing. While there were pubs in the past on School Hill they had gone by the early-eighties, while the United Veterans Club on Duke Street went out of business in the nineties. If anything, the Vets was much busier than the Rock, especially at weekends when the club would put on cabaret singers.

Around 2002 the Globe on Higher Bridge Street closed its doors for the final time. The locals decamped almost en masse to the Rock and the pub was renamed the New Globe.

The pub carried on until 2012 when it closed for a while and in January 2013 planning application was put in for the New Globe’s conversion into a house. At the time it was stated that the pub had been closed for over a year – news to its regulars. In March 2013 planning application was granted but the pub remained open until just before Christmas 2013.

Although it was boarded up around the time of closure the sheet metal boarding was taken down by the time the above picture was taken in May 2014. Inscriptions on the windows were still visible publicising karaoke, singers and cheap booze offers and the words “The New Globe is here to stay.” It gave the impression of a pub doing its best to justify its existence, but licensed premises to a pubco are just pieces of property to squeeze income out of. The New Globe was obviously more valuable as piece of real estate than as licensed premises and the pub was closed and sold.

The Rock House in 1952.  Note the door on the corner leading to the vault. This was long gone even by the time this writer would visit the pub in the late seventies. 

The Rock House pictured in 1982 when it was a Wilson's pub.

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

[2] Bolton Beer Break, the magazine of the Bolton branch of the Campaign for Real Ale. Summer 1988 issue.