Arkwrights Ale House - Gardeners Arms (Monkeys Nest), Valletts Lane

Shorn of its pub signage, but still a classic example of late-nineteenth century pub architecture, Arkwrights Ale House in late 2014. The pub was awaiting sale as a residential property.

Article updated 18 January 2022 with photos of the pub from 1964 (see below).

In olden days, a pub given the sign of the name of an occupation would denote that it was often used as a meeting place for workers in that trade. But the increased number of licensed premises when beerhouse licences became freely available after 1830 led to new entrants into the trade and many of those named their pubs after a former profession or after the trade of members of their family.

In 1871, Ralph Southern was a gardener living at number 2 Valletts Buildings, just off Valletts Lane. Ralph was 61 and a widow and he lived with his two sons, William (25), who was also a gardener, and 21-year-old Alfred who was working as a butcher and who, before long, had opened up a meat stall in the Market Hall in town.

Next door to the Southerns, at number 4 Valletts Buildings, was a beerhouse run by one of their relatives, Moses Halliwell, and his family. This enterprise was short-lived, but later in the 1870s, Alfred opened a beerhouse of his own at number 10 Cope Bank, just a bit further up Valletts Lane, and he named it the Gardeners Arms in honour of his father and his brother. Sadly, this venture didn’t work out. In June 1883, Alfred Southern petitioned for bankruptcy at the Bolton County Court with debts estimated at £1300 – a huge sum in those days.

The Gardeners Arms was bought by local brewers Joseph Sharman’s. But as the nineteenth century wore on, the area around Valletts Lane and Cope Bank became more populous and the decision was made to rebuild the pub a little further down from Cope Bank on Valletts Lane  itself, next to a bowling green that the brewery already owned. The new Gardeners Arms opened in 1895.

Sharman’s were taken over by Shaw’s of Leigh in 1927 and like the rest of Shaw’s estate the pub was bought by Walker Cain Ltd in 1931.

The Manchester Archives hold this image of the Gardeners during the Sharman’s era. It has been dated to around 1920 when the landlord would have been Percy Stafford.

The Bolton News published a piece about the pub towards the end of 2014 and they received this response from a Mr Hardman:

"Valletts Lane used to run from Church Road to Ivy Road and off the lane was Horrocks Street and Benson Street. On the other side was a council land fill site.

"The pub was called the Gardeners' Arms and the landlord was a former international football called Donaldson.

"He turned the bowling green into a football pitch for the young of the area, which put the old men's backs up," he says. [1]

This would have been in the 1950s. Alex Donaldson was born in 1890 in Barrhead, East Renfrewshire. An outside forward, he was signed by Bolton Wanderers in 1912 from Scottish minor side Ripley Athletic. He spent nine years at Burnden Park in a career that was interrupted by World War I before leaving for Sunderland in 1921. He subsequently had spells at Manchester City, Chorley and Ashton National and made six international appearances for Scotland, most of those caps earned during his time at Bolton. [2]

After his playing career ended, Mr Donaldson opened a sports shop in Gorton, Manchester, but he eventually went into the licensed trade and ran the Gardeners Arms during the late-forties and early-fifties. He was running the pub in 1951 when his 20-year-old daughter June married a local motor mechanic, Frederick Parkinson and the couple lived at the pub after they wed. Alex Donaldson died in Bolton in 1972.

The layout of the Gardeners was of a classic pub design. The lounge-best rooms were on the left of the entrance while the vault – and its curved bar - was to the right of the entrance.

The pub was nicknamed ‘The Monkey’s Nest’ though the origin of this name isn’t known.

The Gardeners became a Tetley pub when they took over Walkers in 1960. The bowling green was eventually converted into a car park and after another licensee fell into bankruptcy, the Gardeners was sold into the free trade in the mid-1980s. It became Arkwrights Ale House in an attempt to give a typical down-to-earth feel to a traditional pub.

But despite being based in a built-up area, Arkwright’s struggled particularly during its final years. Licensees came and went – there were 11 changes of supervisor between 2005 and 2013. The pub closed in June 2014 and was sold for residential use later that year. Trust Inns, the Chorley company that were its final owners, were looking for just £165,000 for what was a sizeable property.

The property’s Rightmove entry for its 2014 may still be seen here. 

The pub was sold and was later demolished to be replaced by housing.

[1] Bolton News, 21 January 2015. Accessed 27 May 2015. 

[2] Wikipedia entry for Alex Donaldson. Accessed, 27 May 2015.

Thanks to reader Tony Kelly for these photos of the Gardeners Arms taken in 1964.

Music Tavern, Gaskell Court, off Churchgate

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The Music Tavern was situated on Gaskell’s Court, off Churchgate, and although it was only a pub for perhaps 20 years or so in the nineteenth century it became one of the town’s most notorious beerhouses. It grew out of a lodging house on one of the many courts that led down tiny alleyways off the main streets of Bolton. Practically all have disappeared, though the entrance to Gaskell Court can still be seen next to the Churchgate pub, formerly the Brass Cat.

There is no mention of any licensed premises on Gaskell Court prior to the 1851 census when 26-year-old John Roberts was named as a beerseller. He lived there with his 21-year-old wife, Ellen, two children, his mother-in-law, a brother-in-law, a servant and no fewer than 14 lodgers. By 1859 Sarah Kearsley was announcing in the local press that she had taken over. The premises were certainly commodious and Ms Kearsley was able to offer “apartments for families”. [Bolton Chronicle, 7 April 1859].

Sarah Kearsley was only at the Royal Music Tavern, as it then was, for a few years. By Christmas 1862, John Fielding was in charge and he put on a Christmas tea party for 40 women over the age of 60. They were entertained by Mr Fielding's three children playing the piano, violin and the piccolo. One of the attendees was Betty Pearson of Farnworth who was in her 108^th year. Mrs Pearson's daughters, aged 64 and 76 were also present along with a woman aged 98 and four others over the age of 80. People born at the end of the 18^th century – as these women were – had a life expectancy of less than 40 years at birth. (source: Wikipedia )

By the late-1860s the pub was known as the Music Tavern and it was being run by one of Bolton’s most notorious characters – Isabella Dewhurst.

Mrs Dewhurst had previously been at the Churchgate Tavern (no relation to the similarly-named pub a few doors further up_. However, she had to leave when the Churchgate was sold and converted into retail premises. Situated at 33 Churchgate it was much later part of the Sandwich Inn.

The Churchgate was notorious in being a brothel as well as a beerhouse, but it paid well. Her partner George Smethurst was ostensibly its landlord but Isabella Dewhurst managed to save £100 in sovereigns, apparently unbeknownst to Smethurst. How she saved the money – the equivalent of £12,000 today – can only be the subject of some speculation.

There was a bizarre incident at the Music Tavern in January 1868 and it caused Mrs Dewhurst to be hauled in front of the court. She was charged with permitting disorderly conduct at the house after police arrived one Sunday and found customers wrestling for beer. The case was dismissed on a technicality, the summons only having been served the previous day.

Justice finally caught up with Isabella Dewhurst in July 1868 when she was charged with keeping a disreputable house. The case was proved by two young women, 17-year-old Nancy Mather and Elizabeth Ann Hull, aged 20. Both girls stated that they had gone voluntarily to the pub and that different sorts of people – often in great numbers - visited the premises for immoral purposes. Mrs Dewhurst was absent from court and the case was heard in a side room away from the public but with reporters present. Her representative, Mr Ramwell, stated that if girls didn't visit these places then they wouldn't exist. The Magistrates found her guilty had the options of fining Mrs Dewhurst up to £10 or jailing her for a month with or without hard labour.

The Bolton Chronicle of 11 July 1868 takes up the story.:

“The Magistrates consulted a few minutes and the Mayor then announced they had decided on committing Mrs Dewhurst for a month, with hard labour in each of the two cases – the second month to take effect upon the expiration of the first. His Worship added that Mr Superintendent Beech deserved the thanks of the Bench for having brought the matter so clearly before them.”

The police were then sent to the Music Tavern to bring Isabella Dewhurst into custody ready to begin her sentence at the New Bailey, the 18^th century prison next to the River Irwell on the Manchester-Salford border. It was to create great excitement in the town and Mrs Dewhurst was determined to go down with an air of defiance about her. But it was not to be.

The Chronicle's report continued:

“The defendant was immediately brought into custody, and taken to the police station. She is well known in the town and is possessed of considerable means. She was exceedingly well-attired on Monday [the day of the trial], wearing a silk dress, velvet mantle and veil. A handsome drag or dog-cart belonging to her was driven to the Police Office in the expectation that she would be allowed to the New Bailey in her own conveyances, under police escort; but she was sent along with two male prisoners, to one of whom she was handcuffed, by the Bolton to Manchester omnibus, which left soon after three o'clock in the afternoon. A large crowd of persons witnessed her departure from the Police Office and they saluted her with loud hootings.”

While it was the end of Isabella Dewhurst's time as a pub landlord it didn't end her association with the Music Tavern. Her former associate Edward Gordon took over the running of the pub after she was sent to jail. In April 1869, she was involved in another court case when she was sued by Gordon over the theft of some money from the pub. Mr Gordon took over the tenancy of the Music Tavern from Mrs Dewhurst in 1868, but the building was actually owned by Nicholas Heyes, the landlord of the Welcome Traveller on Union Buildings just off Bradshawgate. Despite having no further business at Music Tavern – at least not with regards to the sale of beer - Mrs Dewhurst regularly stayed there and was accused by Mr Gordon of having stolen £22 from a cashbox at the pub– a considerable sum in those days.

“Isabella Dewhurst Back On The Scene”, yelled the Bolton Evening News of 10 April 1869. But after claim and counter-claim from both parties the judge, J.S.T. Greene found in favour of Mr Gordon but to the tune of just £7. During the course of the case it transpired that Mrs Dewhurst already owned several properties from which was receiving rents. She said she lived in Blackpool for seven or eight weeks at a time and wasn’t without money. The cashbox in question was her own and contained rents from her properties.

The beginning of the end for the Music Tavern came in September 1869. An Act of Parliament passed that summer gave local magistrates the power to strip beerhouses of their licences. Prior to that beerhouse keepers simply paid a fee of two guineas for their licence. Now the magistrates in Bolton required every beerhouse in the town to re-apply for their licence on an annual basis and on this the first occasion they closed down some 50 of them. One was the Music Tavern and Edward Gordon was up before the bench on the first day of the hearing. While he claimed the pub had been cleaned up since he took over the tenancy, the local constabulary claimed it was very much business as usual.

As the Bolton Evening News reported on 2 September 1869:

“This house was the notorious one formerly kept by Isabella Dewhurst. The present tenant entered on the 14th of July last year, and since that time, it was alleged, the character of the house had been entirely changed. The complaint against the house was that it was a notorious haunt of prostitutes and bad characters generally. The Mayor to the applicant: How long have you lived in the house? – Gordon: Two and a half years. - The Mayor: Then you lived with Isabella Dewhurst? Gordon: Yes, sir. – Police constables Greenhalgh and Fletcher both gave the house a very bad name. There were two girls in the house, ostensibly as servants, but they were in reality prostitutes. They knew as many as four loose girls kept there a few days ago”.

Mr Gordon’s application was thrown out and the Music Tavern lost its licence. The pub closed down the following month, but not before he received at least three more visits from the police, who were keeping their eye on the pub despite its imminent demise. They found Edward Gordon selling sherry and wine which, being a beer house, he was not licensed to do and he was hauled before the court again. He left for America early in 1870.

Such was Isabella Dewhurst’s reputation that her name was also used by the authorities to close down the New Inn on St George’s Road. That the beerhouse was “the resort and residence of prostitutes and bad characters generally” didn’t help, but the fact that Mrs Dewhurst had been seen playing cards there was also brought up at the hearing. Mrs Dewhurst’s sister, Margaret, was the wife of the licensee, James Mason.

Isabella Dewhurst went to live in a property she owned in Coe Street, a very basic weaver's cottage off Bridgeman Street in a poor part of Bolton. By 1871, she was joined by her niece, Isabella Banks Walker, the daughter of her sister, Margaret. Isabella Banks Walker married a local clerk, Alfred Aldred, in 1873 and the couple went to live at another of Mrs Dewhurst’s properties in Silverwell Street. It was there that Isabella Dewhurst died on 16 July 1876. She was 48.

Mrs Dewhurst's estate, as proved by Alfred Aldred and his brother, a local accountant named Bold Aldred, came to £1500 – a huge amount of money in those days. But if Isabella Dewhurst’s gains – ill-gotten or otherwise – were unable to get her beyond a weaver’s cottage on Coe Street, the beneficiary of her will, her niece Isabella Aldred, made wise use of her bequest. In 1878, the Aldreds bought 66 acres of farmland at Old Clough Farm in Worsley. By the end of that decade they had emigrated to New Zealand where they were to spend the rest of their lives. Alfred Aldred died in 1930, Isabella Aldred died in Auckland in 1937.

AN UNDESIRABLE CUSTOMER – William Burns, painter, Back-King Street, was charged with being drunk and disorderly in Churchgate. Isabella Dewhurst, beerseller, said the defendant came into her house on Wednesday afternoon, and suspecting him to be a bad character, she ordered him to leave. He refused to go and she sent for a policeman. Having been previously convicted he was fined 10 shillings and costs, in default 14 days hard labour. - Bolton Chronicle, 2 May 1868.

Churchgate pictured in September 2014 (copyright Google Street View). The Brass Cat is the white building in the picture and immediately to its left is the entrance to Gaskell House. In the nineteenth century it led to Gaskell Court, home to the Music Tavern. 

Article written 9 April 2015.
Updated 19 October 2019 with more details on Isabella Dewhurst.

Brewers Arms, 79 Newport Street

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In 1851, William Whitfield was listed a brewer living in Newport Street, next to Back Newport Street on the stretch between Great Moor Street and Trinity Street. William was a brewer and when he converted part of his home into a beerhouse he gave it the name the Brewers Arms.

This appears to have been later in the 1850s. The pub doesn’t appear on an 1853 list of beerhouses, but it was being used as such by 1861. Whitfield was living there in 1861 with his wife, Catharine, two daughters and a grand-daughter. Later that decade – though six years apart - the two daughters, Hannah and Jane, each married one of the Almond brothers, Lawrence and John.

The Brewers Arms was close to the Newtown area of Bolton. The district was situated where the Morrisons supermarket now stands and was home to Bolton’s Irish community, but while the Brewers Arms was considered a rough pub it was popular with local railway workers. In 1869, an incident at the Brewers Arms led to the death of an Irish labourer, John Heyes. A man named Henry Horrocks, with whom Heyes had been drinking, was found guilty of manslaughter but was ordered to be bound over to the court for the sum of £20. [1]

William Whitfield died in 1872 and he was succeeded by Joseph Turton. The pub then began to sell beers from John Halliwell’s Alexandra Brewery on Mount Street and it was a Halliwell’s pub when it closed in 1908. [2]

The building was subsequently used as a branch of the Royal Liver Friendly Society but it was demolished in the 1950s. A new building was erected in its place which was taken over initially by Battersby’s department store who were previously further down Newport Street close to the town hall. Battersby’s were succeeded Whelan’s supermarket, owned by Dave Whelan the future chairman of Wigan Athletic. After the takeover of Whelan's in 1978 it became a branch of Morrison’s, followed by Kwik Save, Iceland and B&M Bargains. This successor building to the Brewers Arms was demolished in 2014 to make way for the new bus-rail interchange.

[1] The full story of the death is told in MurderousBolton, by Steve Fielding (2009). 

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

Newport Street at is junction with Back Newport Street pictured in 2012 (copyright Google Street View).

Bee Hive, 51 Back Derby Street

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The term ‘back street pub’ is normally used for pubs off the main road, but the Bee Hive really was in a back street. Its address was 51 Back Derby Street but it was actually an end terrace on Milk Street. Part of the property had been converted into a pub and was given its own entrance in Back Derby Street. The licensees and their families actually lived in another part of the same property, 2 Milk Street.

The pub dated back to the 1840s when a labourer named Henry Ashton opened up part of his home in Milk Street as a beerhouse. He was succeeded as landlord on his death in 1864 by his second wife Ann Ashton, with his son James Ashton working in the pub’s brewery.

The Ashtons were succeeded in the 1870s by the Reddy family: Martin Reddy and wife Mary. Martin Reddy died in 1888 and he was succeeded by his wife, Mary and when she died in 1899 by their daughter, also named Mary.

The Bee Hive became a Magees house. It closed in 1936 and the property was converted back into a private residence where the younger Mary Reddy lived until her death in 1957. It was demolished in the early-1960s, along with part of Milk Street. The rest of the area was pulled down in the early-seventies.

Faringdon Walk was built on the site of Milk Street. Back Derby Street still exists in part, but the stretch close to what was Milk Street is now Ashbury Close. The shot below from 2012 (copyright Google Street View) is of the Ashbury Close  - Faringdon Walk junction. The Bee Hive stood on the site of the bungalow on the corner.

Brewers Arms, 4 Atherton Street

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The Brewers Arms was situated at 4 Atherton Street, just off Cannon Street.

The pub certainly existed in 1869 when the licensee was Lucy Turtle, but it perhaps didn’t have the name the Brewers Arms at that time. It is believed that the pub took its name in the 1870s when Isaac Openshaw had the pub. Isaac was a brewer by trade though within a few years he had moved to the Farmers Arms on nearby Derby Street.

The Brewers Arms subsequently became a rare outlet for the Phoenix Brewery of Heywood but it was sold in the 1890s to T & R Wingfield’s. Their Silverwell Brewery situated on Nelson Square in premises which later became part of the Pack Horse Hotel.

Wingfield’s sold out to the Manchester Brewery Company in 1899 and the Brewers became a Walker and Homfray’s house when MBC was taken over in 1912.

The Brewers Arms closed in 1924 and the building was demolished to make way for an extension to the nearby Garfield Mill. The mill closed for the manufacture of textiles in 1960 and was used by a number of small firms until its demolition in the early seventies. Housing now stands on the site.

Cannon Street looking towards Deane Road. To the right is Chatham Gardens which was built on the site of Atherton Street in the 1970s. Before Garfield Mill’s expansion in 1924/25 there were two houses on the corner of Atherton Street: number 2 and number 4. The Brewers Arms was at number 4 close to the junction with Cannon Street on the far corner as we look.

Legs Of Man, 24 Churchgate

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The Legs Of Man can just about be seen in the distance in this 1950s view looking up Churchbank towards Churchgate.

The Legs Of Man public house stood at 24 Churchgate in between the Grand Theatre and the Theatre Royal in what for over a hundred years was the entertainment centre of  Bolton.

The pub dated back to the late-eighteenth century. Gordon Readyhough puts its establishment at 1790. [1] Certainly, it doesn’t appear on the 1779 list of Bolton alehouses [2], though it was certainly in existence by 1800. That was when it was first used as the headquarters of one of Lancashire’s earliest Masonic lodges, Anchor and Hope, which was based at the pub from 1800 to 1801 and from 1804 to 1844. [3] The St John’s lodge also met there from 1846 to 1856. [4]

The Legs Of Man was run by the Thorp family for much of the nineteenth century. William Thorp took over around 1818. A year earlier, when he married the widow Mary Cooper, his profession was described as a warehouseman. But by the time the Bolton Directory for 1818 was published just a few months later he was the landlord of the Legs Of Man. He ran the pub until his death at the age of 62 in 1845 and was succeeded by his widow, Mary who ran the pub with John Cooper, a son from her first marriage.

Mary died in 1856. John Cooper – described as a ‘brewer’ when he married Ann Butler in 1858 - remained at the pub for a few years after her death.

Cooper’s profession suggested that, like many other pubs in the town, the Legs Of Man brewed its own beer. But while it became a tied house owned by a brewery later in the eighteenth century it was actually owned by three breweries in succession: Magee’s, followed by Tong’s, and finally the Salford brewery of Groves and Whitnall. Pubs usually changed hands when breweries were taken over so it was perhaps an indication of the competition in the Churchgate area with seven pubs and two theatres in a stretch of around 200 yards.

But it could also be argued that competition of a different kind saw off the Legs Of Man. The advent of television, which reached the north-west in the early-fifties, affected theatre audiences as customers stayed at home and watched the new medium. The Legs was hit due to its reliance on passing custom before and after shows.

The Legs Of Man closed in March 1962. The Theatre Royal closed later that same year. The Grand Theatre became a bingo hall in 1961 but that failed and it closed in 1963. [5] All three buildings were demolished and Churchgate House was built in their place.

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

[2] Pubs Of Bolton Town Centre, 1800 – 2000, by Gordon Readyhough. Published by Neil Richardson (1986).

[3] Lane’s Masonic Records. Accessed 11 March 2015.

[4] Lane’s Masonic Records. Accessed 11 March 2015. 

[5] Arthur Lloyd. Accessed 11 March 2015.

Baths Tavern, 42 Bridgeman Place

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The Baths Tavern stood at number 42 Bridgeman Place. This beerhouse dated back to the middle of the nineteenth century and it took its name from the nearby Bolton Baths which opened on Lower Bridgeman Street in 1845. The privately-owned bathing facility was believed to be the first public baths in the country since Roman times.

For many years the Baths Tavern was run by the same family. Thomas Lane was a cooper on Chancery Lane in the 1840s. By 1853 he was working at premises on Churchbank but he died in 1858. His wife, Jane Lane, was Welsh, born in Denbigh in 1817 and the couple had one daughter, Sarah, who was born in late-1839 or early-1840 and one son, William, born 1836.. Jane was listed as the licensee of the Baths Tavern in the 1860s though it is entirely feasible that she took on the pub along with her husband while he was still alive. By 1871 she was living at the pub alone but with a servant in residence.

Jane Lane died in 1881. At the time, her daughter Sarah was living with her at the pub as she entered the final stage of her life.  Some of Sarah’s younger children were with her while her husband, Reuben Bolton, a baker, lived in nearby Matthew Street South with the rest of the family.

After Jane’s death, Sarah Bolton took over the running of the pub. She was to remain there for the rest of her life. Reuben Bolton died in 1896 and by 1911 Sarah was at the pub with her four unmarried adult children. Three daughters worked at the pub while her son worked elsewhere as a patternmaker.

Sarah Bolton died in 1925. In 1927, the owners of the nearby Globe Hosiery Works, Hodgkinson and Gillibrand Ltd, wanted to rebuild and expand their factory. That meant buying seven properties, including the Baths Tavern, which were owned by the Earl Of Bradford. The pub closed down and the new Globe works was completed in 1929. The building remains on the site today.

 Bridgeman Place in September 2014 with Salop Street running off to the left (copyright Google Street View). The Baths Tavern was directly opposite the entrance to Salop Street.