Royal Oak, Churchgate

Churchgate House pictured in April 2012 (copyright Google Street View). The Royal Oak once stood on this site. A pub with the same name was later situated on Paley Street, which can be seen running by the side of Churchgate House.

The Royal Oak stood on Churchgate from at least the 1770s until it was destroyed by fire on 30 June 1848 killing George Radcliffe, a Breightmet man sleeping there for the night. [1]

Gordon Readyhough [2] claims that the location of the pub is unknown but that it was not to be confused with a pub on nearby Paley Street that took the Royal Oak name some time after the original pub burned down. However, in a report for the town’s mayor on Bolton’s sanitation in 1848 - the year the Royal Oak was destroyed  - John Entwisle puts the pub in the vicinity of Molyneux’s Yard, the Flaggs and Oliver Lane, all of which stood roughly in front of the site of the current Churchgate House, opposite what is now Hogarth’s, the former Capitol and Boars’s Head pub. [3] 

Bolton’s population stood at around 17,000 in 1801. By 1841 it had grown to almost 50,000 as people moved to the centre of town during the Industrial Revolution to look for work. [4] Entwisle goes on to describe the sanitary conditions at that time in the dirtiest part of what he had already ascertained was a filthy town.

“In immediate contiguity [to Molyneux’s Yard]…is the Flaggs and Oliver Lane; here fever had infested the whole neighbourhood. In the houses behind the Royal Oak there were several cases; in one the husband had an attack six weeks in duration. In the next house a family of seven, four of whom had fever, and one died. Immediately opposite the houses is a necessary in a broken condition, the privy full, and heaps of ashes and night soil occupied a considerable portion of the yard. Beyond this heap of refuse is the cesspool of Molyneux’s Yard, only separated by a wall which is part falling down.”

To give another aspect of life in Bolton in the 1840s Entwisle analysed all the deaths in the town in the five years to 1847 and calculated the average age of death. But in an interesting twist he also calculated the average age of death by social class.

According to Entwisle, 116 “gentlemen and persons engaged in professions, and their families” died at an average age of 51 years. In addition, 614 people he described as “tradesmen and their families” died at an average age of 27 years and 2 months. But “Operatives and their families” died at an average of just 19 years and 6 months.

The outstanding point about this last social grouping – the lowest of the three social classes – was their sheer number: 8142 of them. In other words, over 90percent of the people in the town died before their 20^th birthday between the beginning of 1843 and the end of 1847. Of course a lot of them were children – over 50percent of the children of the lower orders died by the age of five – but with an average at death of 19, pubs like the Royal Oak were probably losing almost all of their custom every two years simply due to them dying off.

Fortunately, that part of town was cleaned up and Entwisle’s report perhaps had an impact. It’s available to borrow at Bolton Central Library and makes for grim reading. Running water was laid on in that part of Churchgate. Molyneux’s Yard was swept away although Flaggs and Oliver Lane remained into the 20^th-century.

Entwisle couched his arguments in language the mayor and rest of the businessmen that ran Bolton could understand: it was counter-productive maintaining a situation where 90 percent of your workforce failed to reach the age of 20. But this was 1848, a year when revolution was taking hold in Europe and the monied classes in Bolton couldn’t help but look over their shoulder at the potential for social unrest.

Churchgate later became the theatre centre of Bolton with the Grand and the Theatre Royal built on the site of the slum dwellings in the area where the Royal Oak once stood. The theatres made way for offices in the sixties and Churchgate House was built in their place.

[1] Annals Of Bolton, James Clegg, 1888.

[2] Bolton Pubs 1800 to 2000, Gordon Readyhough, 2000.

[3] A Report On The Sanatory Condition Of The Borough Of Bolton, John Entwisle, 1848.

[4] Wikipedia entry on Bolton, retrieved 12 October 2014. Figures combined for Great Bolton and Little Bolton. 

Beaumont Club, Deane Church Lane

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The Beaumont Club in 1929.

Not a lost pub but an interesting one, nonetheless. This is a picture of the Beaumont Club, a private-members’ bowling club that existed just off Deane Church Lane until some time in the 1960s.  The image is from the Bolton Library and Museum Services collection and is copyright Bolton Council.

The occasion is the visit of the recently-victorious Bolton Wanderers side which had carried off the FA Cup for the third time in seven seasons with a 2-0 victory over Portsmouth in April 1929. That looks like team captain Joe Smith behind the cup. The man sat next to him wearing a splendid pair of breeches could be goalkeeper Dick Pym who played in all three Wembley finals.

The Beaumont Club was at the St Helens Road end of Deane Church Lane on land which has only recently been redeveloped as housing. The Bolton Wanderers manager of the time, Charles Foweraker, lived not far from the Beaumont Club in a terraced house on St Helens Road. It is entirely possible that he was either associated with the club in some capacity or that he was friendly with some of its members.

But it is the Beaumont Club itself that interests us as very little is known about this establishment. It came about following a growth in the popularity of bowls in the mid-to-late 19^th century. Several pubs had their own greens, principally the Gibraltar Rock on Deane Road. At the Howcroft on Pool Street the bowling green pre-dated the pub, while the King’s Head at Deane was advertising two bowling greens in 1873. [1]

In his book about leisure in Bolton in the nineteenth century Robert Poole informs us that a bowling green was set up at the Stag’s Head on St Helens Road in 1865. [1] He suggests that this was perhaps the Rumworth Bowling Green Company Ltd, which was set up in 1880, though that assertion appears to be incorrect.

An 1893 map of the area shows two bowling greens in the area: one at the Stag’s Head, situated on St Helens Road, and one just off Deane Church Lane. The Stag’s Head bowling green was actually situated behind the pub but on the other side of the tracks of the Bolton to Leigh Railway. Access was via Wilton Street or via Bertwine Street, which ran down the side of some early-nineteenth century cottages that stood raised up from St Helens Road until they were demolished around 1969.

The Stag’s Head green lasted until at least the fifties. Warburton’s Soreen bakery and, later, Park Cakes was built on the site of both the green and the cottages on St Helens Road. The Bakewell Tin and Metal works were right next to this green with the Daubhill Brick Works not far away.

But an event in 1906 suggests that the Rumworth Bowling Green Company wasn’t at the Stag’s Head. While it was established as a limited company in 1880, the London Gazette for 16 February 1906 suggests the company had collapsed. More crucially, it gave its address as Deane Church Lane, so it wasn’t at the Stag’s Head.

After the Rumworth Bowling Green Company failed the premises became the Beaumont Club. By September 1906 the liquidator, Mr S.H. Horrocks, was able to distribute proceeds from the sale of the old company’s assets to its creditors. So the green was obviously sold on and it seems to have become the Beaumont Club at that time.

The splendid clubhouse in the image above was a much more modest affair up to around the time of the First World War. By the time this photograph had been taken the Beaumont Club had added tennis courts at the side of the bowling green but these had disappeared by the time of the 1954 map of the area. Entrance to the club and its grounds were via Hudson Road, just off Deane Church Lane.

Unfortunately, old maps are really all we have to go off as there is very little evidence – either anecdotally or otherwise – that the club ever existed. The bowling green itself last appears on a 1967 map. The Beaumont Bowling Green Company's final appearance in a local phone directory was in 1952. It must have closed around that time and abandoned. Certainly the company was struck off in 1957 its officers having resigned and the firm - like the bowling green - abandoned.

It was used as industrial premises after that until a housing development began to be built on the site around 2007.

Any information on the Beaumont Club would be gratefully received in the comments below.

The outline of the Beaumont Club’s bowling green can be seen on the left of this January 2005 satellite image (copyright Google). The club’s tennis courts were situated in the five-sides enclosure to the right of the former green. Deane Church Lane runs from top to bottom of the picture. The large, light-coloured building on the right is Park Cakes. The row of houses that juts into the bakery is Jubilee Street and it is at this end of that street on land now occupied by Park Cakes that the original Stag’s Head bowling green was situated. The Daubhill branch of Asda, St Helens Road and the former Stag’s Head are in the bottom right of the picture.

Hudson Close (formerly Hudson Road). This housing development was built on the site of the former Beaumont Club and the shot is taken from roughly the same point as was the photograph of the victorious Bolton Wanderers side at the top of the page. Image taken in April 2012. Copyright Google Street View.

[1] Popular Leisure and the Music Hall in Nineteenth-Century Bolton, by Robert Poole. Published by the University Of Lancaster (1982).
[2] London Gazette, 16 February 1906. Retrieved 11 October 2014.
[3] London Gazette, 7 September 1906. Retrieved 11 October 2014. 

Globe, Bridgeman Street

We dealt recently with the Globe Inn on Higher Bridge Street, but there was another pub by that name over on Bridgeman Street.

Nobody will remember the Globe on Bridgeman Street as it closed in 1869 and the licensing records don’t even report where on the street it actually was.

The Globe was a beerhouse, one of many that sprang up in the town as a result of the 1830 Beer House Act. Anyone could convert part of their home into a beer house on payment of £2. That was still a decent wedge of money in the middle of the 19^th century, but it wasn’t enough to deter many people. By 1854 there were 208 beer houses in Bolton along with 118 fully-licensed pubs. In the following 15 years a further 121 beer houses opened up and it seems the Globe on Bridgeman Street was one of those. [1]

However, a change in the law in 1869 made it much easier for local magistrates to close down beer houses. They certainly went at it. A total of 69 beer houses were immediately closed and the Globe was one of the pubs that came to an end.

Magistrates used any pretext to refuse licenses and pubs such as the Unicorn on Deansgate, the Railway Bridge Inn on Dawes Street and the Pen Street Arms on Pen Street disappeared almost at a whim. On the other hand, the Music Hall Tavern on Gaskell’s Court – a short thoroughfare off Churchgate the entrance to which can still be seen next to the Brass Cat – saw its licence refused because four ‘loose girls’ lived there, according to the police.

But if the magistrates were looking for a reason to close the Globe on Bridgeman Street then they didn’t have to look far. The magistrates threw the book at the pub. The landlord allowed gambling on the premises, the clientele included prostitutes and there was a ‘low singing room and dancing class’ frequented by thieves and what are described as ‘loose characters’.  To add to all that there was what was described as a ‘minor public health objection’ in that the landlord kept pigs at the back of the pub.

The pub shut in 1869. 

[1] Shut Up About Barclay Perkins blog post dated 24 July 2011 and entitled Bolton In 1854. Retrieved 11 October 2014. 

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

Swiss Hotel, Southern Street

The Swiss Hotel on Southern Street taken by Humphrey Spender around 1937. Center Street runs to the right of the pub, Back Center Street to its left. This image at the top of the page comes from the Bolton Worktown website  (copyright Bolton Council). 

David James Morris writes on the website that he lived at the pub from 1945 until 1961 as his grandfather, William Morris, was the landlord. David says that the front pillars and the outside cover were taken down during World War II as they were considered to be a blackout hazard.

The Swiss Hotel was one of a number of pubs situated within a few yards of each other in the Southern Street, Darley Street and Carlyle Street area. The others were the Queens and the Woodman.

The pub was part of an ambitious project to build a Swiss-type pleasure grounds in Brownlow Fold, still a rural area that was only just beginning to be developed in the 1860s.

In September 1865, a meeting was held at the St George's Tavern on St George's Road to discuss the feasibility of establishing such pleasure grounds. Around 30 local tradesmen attended the meeting which was chaired by Mr Gardner, a newsagent from Bradshawgate. Charles Seddon, the landlord of the St George's Tavern said that Bolton was notorious for not having a place of recreation sufficiently attractive to people to keep them more at home. The attendees at that meeting sought to form the Swiss Gardens And Hotel Company and Mr John Atkin (1832-1882), a beerseller of Brownlow Fold, identified a plot of land in that area which he felt would be suitable.

However, by the end of that year the plan had begun to unravel. A further meeting in December 1865 pointed to a lack of suitable approach roads for carriages as a major problem that might end up costing a considerable amount of money should the company undertake construction itself. But the council's decision in 1866 to open Heywood Park on High Street and Bolton Park – which became Queens Park in 1897 – must have had an affect on the company's thinking. The reason for its existence, which was to provide a recreation area in Bolton, had been largely superseded.

Instead of building Swiss gardens leisure grounds all that was left was John Atkin's pub – although one that now had a full licence that enabled it to sell wine and spirits as well as beer. Swansea-born John Atkin was in Brownlow Fold by 1864 and it seems that his establishment – or a rebuilt version of it – was all that remained of the ambitious garden project.

But if the development of Brownlow Fold as a Swiss-style recreation ground failed to happen, the area began to develop as a residential area. By October 1871 John Atkin – who had been elected to the Halliwell local board the previous year - was advertising the sale of eight new cottages in the area.

Atkin had left the area by 1877. By 1881 he was living at Walton-On-The-Hill in Liverpool – his wife was from that city – and was described as a retired innkeeper. He died two years later leaving a fortune worth over £6300 – the equivalent of almost £750,000 today. Most of that money appears to have come from the purchase of land in the Brownlow Fold area and the sale of properties built on that land.

In those days Halliwell was regarded as a township separate to Bolton although certain aspects – licensing being one of them – was carried out in Bolton. In 1877 a stormy meeting of ratepayers was held at the Swiss Hotel against the incorporation of Halliwell into the County Borough of Bolton. Most of the attendees were from the Brownlow Fold area and were set against incorporation, but the township was incorporated later that year largely on the wishes of the inhabitants of the Halliwell Road area.

By the 1880s and with much of Brownlow Fold now built upon the dream of a recreation ground and gardens were long gone. The area was much like any other district of Bolton – a mix of factories and housing. The Swiss Hotel was now a tied beerhouse having been bought by the local brewery of J. Atkinson and Co based at the Commission Street brewery off what is now Deane Road.

Atkinson's was taken over by Boardman’s United Breweries of Manchester in 1895. A full list of their pubs can be seen here.  Another Manchester brewery, Cornbrook’s, bought out Boardman’s in 1895 and they became part of the Bass Charrington empire in the 1960s. The Anchor, off Bradshawgate; the Griffin on Great Moor Street and the Dog and Partridge on Manor Street were also amongst Cornbrook’s tied estate.

Cornbrook's was the first brewery in the north-west to dispense tank beer. Large tanks were placed in pub cellars and beer was transported from the brewery in what looked like large petrol tankers. On arrival at the pub beer was then pumped from the vehicle to the tank. The system was manufactured by Porter Lancastrian, a company based for some time in Gaskell Street not far from the Swiss Hotel.

The Swiss became popular with sporting organisations. Like many pubs it had its own Angling Society as well as a bowling club. Bolton Cricket Club used to hold smoking concerts there and in December 1893 the local sports newspaper Cricket And Football Field (a Saturday sports paper in Bolton and the forerunner to The Buff) reported that the Blackburn Harriers were due to meet Bolton Harriers in a road race commencing from the Swiss Hotel.

The Swiss Hotel began its life as a beerhouse in the largely rural community of Johnson Fold. Its early years saw the area transformed from farmland to housing and industry. But by the 1960s a lot of those houses were coming up for a hundred years old. Plans were afoot to sweep away many of the streets from Brownlow Fold down as far as Higher Bridge Street – and with it the pubs.

The Swiss carried on until around 1970 when it was closed and demolished along with all the properties in the surrounding streets. New housing was built on the site and a number of the streets were re-named. Southern Street and Tyndall Street form what is now Kirkhope Drive, while Center Street became Centre Park Road.

The above image from 1964 above shows the final days of the old Brownlow Fold with the Swiss standing almost alone in the background while much of the surrounding housing has been demolished.

Kirkhope Drive (ex-Southern Street) on this image from May 2012 (copyright Google Street View). Centre Park Road runs off to the left.

Police and Public Notices – If the dog stolen from near the Swiss Hotel, Brownlow-fold last Thursday is not returned to 34 Derby Street immediately, legal proceedings will be taken – Bolton Evening News, 23 April 1872.

Derby Street, Brownlow Fold was renamed Darley Street when Halliwell was incorporated into the County Borough Of Bolton in 1877.

Salford Quarter Sessions – this day. John Walker of Little Bolton, for stealing a decanter from the Swiss Hotel, Brownlow Fold on 28 ult was sentenced to six months' imprisonment and two years' surveillance by the police. - Bolton Evening News, 9 July 1872.

Queens Hotel, Darley Street

The Queens Hotel pictured around 1964. Darley Street runs across the centre of this image from the Bolton Library and Museum collection (copyright Bolton Council). The photographer is standing at the top of Southern Street. On the other side of the junction, where the Ford Anglia car is parked in the distance, is Carlyle Street. The Woodman Inn can be seen almost directly behind the Queens. Behind the photographer would have been the Swiss Hotel – a nice little hat-trick of pubs in the space of around a hundred yards.

The Queens Hotel was situated on Darley Street at the corner of Carlyle Street. 

That part of Halliwell was built up in the 1870s and 1880s with the streets named after popular historical and contemporary literary figures such as George Darley, Thomas Carlyle, Homer and Virgil. Tennyson Street was added around the turn of the 20^th century. 

Croft Mills, Brownlow Mills and the Mortfield Bleachworks provided work for many of the residents, and beer houses such as the Queens sprang up in the 1880s.

The Queens was bought by Magee, Marshalls and closed around 1968. The whole of the area surrounding the pub was re-developed with the demolition of housing that had been built little more than 80 years previously. New housing was built in its place.

The image below is taken from roughly the same position as the photograph at the top of the page. Kirkhope Drive was built on the site of Southern Street. Carlyle Street has gone while the Croft Mills, out of shot on the older picture and on the right-hand side of Carlyle Street as we look, was demolished in the eighties. 

Globe Inn, Higher Bridge Street

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Image from the Bolton Library And Museums Service collection. Copyright Bolton Council.

The Globe is the distinctive white building in the near distance on this photo of Higher Bridge Street from around 1975. The heating firm of J Smethurst and Son (Bolton) Ltd, just a few doors down, continued in business until the late-nineties, though not from the same premises.

The Globe Inn on Higher Bridge Street was one of those street-corner locals that began to spring up in the middle of the 19^th-century – a small beer house in a residential area.

It dated back to the 1860s and the building was a pub for pretty much the whole of its existence. That part of Higher Bridge Street was undeveloped on the 1849 map but we know the Globe was in existence by 1870 at the latest.

The Globe was situated on the main road out of Bolton with Heywood Street running down one side of the pub and Graham Street down the other. Until the 1930s there was a small row of three houses directly to the rear of the pub on Heywood Street. There was also housing on Edmund Street which ran behind the Globe so there was an immediate catchment area.

The Globe was a traditional multi-roomed pub but by the eighties any walls between the various rooms had been torn down and it had more of an open-plan look. There was a small vault to the left of the entrance, next to the bar; a lounge was on the right and there a pool room at the back. The efficient use of space meant the pub looked bigger than it actually was from the outside. The building was actually situated on a small incline and there was a notable slope from the front door down to the back room.

The Globe was bought by Wingfield’s Brewery which was situated on Nelson Square until the late-1890s in premises that were eventually demolished to become part of an extended Pack Horse Hotel. Wingfield’s were bought out by the Manchester Brewery Company. That business collapsed in 1912 and the pubs were bought by Walker and Homfray’s of Salford. In 1949 Walker and Homfray’s were taken over by Wilson’s.

The Wilson’s beers were usually pretty well kept, though. The brewery, in Newton Heath, Manchester, became part of the national Grand Metropolitan combine along with the Halifax brewery of Samuel Webster’s. However, Wilson’s brewed their own beers for a tied estate largely based in the Greater Manchester area but which reached out to the whole of the north-west.

The Globe pictured in the 1980s in a photograph sent in by Josh Bladen. The gentleman in the doorway is his grandfather who was the pub's landlord at the time.

But Wilson’s closed in 1986 with its beers now supplied from Halifax. It was the beginning of the end as GrandMet eventually got out of brewing and its pub empire was eventually packaged up and sold out to the resurgent pub retailers.

The Globe also began to suffer from a lack of local custom. The housing behind the pub disappeared in the fifties, sixties and seventies and while the rows of terraced houses on the other side of Higher Bridge Street also disappeared there was a  little compensation in that a number of pubs – the Hearts Of Oak and the  Haydock Arms on Haydock Street to name but two examples – also closed. That had the effect of driving custom from the new flats at Skagen Court to the likes of the Globe and the Borough higher up the street. Casual lunchtime custom was also affected by the closure of a number of mills in the area.

The Globe continued until around 2002 when it closed down. It can be seen here in 2000, a couple of years before it shut and with the Wilson's sign still showing on the side of the pub. A little further down Higher Bridge Street the local motor firm of Gordons Of Bolton had expanded in the eighties and nineties and began to buy up land along Higher Bridge Street. The Globe was subsequently demolished and its site is now part of Gordon’s car park.

Many of the regulars at the pub moved to the Rock House Hotel a couple of hundred yards away on Duke Street. The Rock House was renamed the New Globe. It closed at the end of 2013.

Two views of the site of the Globe after its demolition. Above, in August 2008, the site of the pub is fenced off. Heywood Street and Graham Street flank either side of the pub's location. Below, a similar view in May 2012 showing all the land now part of Gordon’s Of Bolton. The former Heywood Street is now just the entrance to the car park. The white van in the foreground is parked on the site of the Globe. Both images are copyright Google Street View.

Harp Tavern, Moor Lane

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The Harp Tavern was a beerhouse situated on Moor Lane opposite what is now the Bolton fire station.

The pub dated back to the 1860s and drew its custom from Flash Street and Back Crook Street. But this was a heavily-pubbed area with something like 13 licensed premises in just a few hundred yards from what is now the fire station up to the junction with University Way.

Magee’s owned the Harp and they took the decision to close it in 1913. [1]

Alan Jenkinson writes on the Ancestry forum that his ancestor, John Helm, ran the pub from shortly before the 1911 Census until shortly afterwards which suggests he was probably the pub's last landlord.

The building later became a motor repair garage and remained in use for over 60 years. It was demolished in 1974 along with a number of other buildings on that row and the site was later developed to form a junction for part of the southern limb of Bolton’s inner relief road.

The photo at the top of the page shows the Harp garage, clearly marked, shortly before its demolition. Flash Street runs by the handwritten ‘No Parking’ sign. Further along, next to the white building is the former Old Three Tuns Hotel which opened in 1804 and closed in 1973. The Division One furniture store can be seen in the distance. The image is from the Bolton Library And Museums Service collection. Copyright Bolton Council.

The image below shows a view from much the same position in April 2012. Copyright Google Street View.

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