King's Arms, Deansgate

Elizabeth Ashworth, the licensee of the King's Arms, pictured at the turn of the century. A few years after the photo was taken Mrs Ashworth died and the pub was sold to Jackson's Brewery of Spa Road.

The King’s Arms was situated at 86 Deansgate. The pub dated back to the 18^th century and the building can still be seen, though at the time of writing (April 2014) it was not in active use.

By the early-nineteenth century the pub was run by the Stewart family with Thomas Stewart as landlord in 1818 and he had been succeeded by Ann Stewart – presumably his wife – in 1824. She was still listed as the licensee in the 1836 directory.

The pub brewed its own beer until the early part of the 20^th century.

The noted author and local historian, the late Norman Kenyon, lived at the King’s Arms from his birth in 1917 until 1929. Norman’s father, Frank Kenyon, took over the pub the year before Norman was born and the family remained there until they left to run a fish and chip shop at 42 St Helens Road.

In his book Bolton Memories, Norman blames a drop in trade after the pub’s owners, Jackson’s Brewery of Spa Road – half a mile away from the pub - were taken over by George Shaw & Son Ltd of Leigh in 1927. [1]

“Many customers didn’t take to the new beer, preferring to go to other pubs such as the Blue Boar,” Norman wrote.

Shaw’s weren’t in charge for long and were taken over themselves by Walker Cain Ltd of Warrington in 1931. The King’s Arms became a Walker’s pub until they merged with Joshua Tetley & Sons Ltd of Leeds to form Tetley Walker Ltd. Tetley’s soon decided to close the pub and last orders were finally called in 1962. The pub remained empty for some 12 years before being taken over by a booksellers named Chapter & Verse.

In his book, Pubs Of Bolton 1800 – 2000 [2], Gordon Readyhough stated that it was a religious bookshop. Others recall a more varied selection of books on sale at the shop, which was run by some long-haired gentlemen. However, the layout of the shop was very much as it was in its days as a pub with a short corridor near the entrance with two rooms on either side.

The image at the top of the page is that of Mrs Ashworth, a former landlady who is pictured standing outside the pub some time in the early 1900s. Norman Kenyon wrote an account he was told of the death of Mrs Ashworth, which took place in December 1909, a year after the death of her husband, Henry.

“It was a stark contrast to the frail old lady pictured at the door of Gordon Readyhough’s book Pubs Of Bolton Town Centre. Before he took the licence, Father worked for Mrs Porteous, who ran the Kings Arms from 1911 to 1916. She told him that when Mrs Ashworth died they had to take the sashes out of a bedroom window and lower the coffin to the street because of the awkward stairs and landing.” [1]

The premises were remodelled in the eighties. Chapter & Verse closed in 1980 and the Preston firm of Sweeten’s took over and converted the shop into an open plan. The rickety floorboards were still a feature as they were in Chapter & Verse days. Two of Sweeten’s employees bought the shop in 1997. The shop was Bolton’s final independent bookseller but it closed in 2011 and the building is no longer used.

The shop is pictured here on its final day of trading. 

Proposals to demolish the row of buildings in 2005 and replace them with 24 small shop units came to nothing.

According to the book Haunted Bolton, the building was supposed to be haunted with a number of people alleged to have experienced some sort of paranormal activity. A former landlord sensed the spirit of an elderly lady said to have passed away at the pub in the early-twentieth century (maybe the ghost of Mrs Ashworth). A subsequent psychic investigation sensed the spirit of a middle-aged man on the upper floor. [3]

[1] Bolton Memories by Norman Kenyon, published by Neil Richardson (1993).

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

[3] Haunted Bolton, by Stuart Hilton and Michelle Cardno. Extract here.  Retrieved 15 April 2014.

Hand and Banner, Deansgate

The Hand and Banner Inn stood at 113-115 Deansgate and dated back to the eighteenth century. It was built on the site of the substantial dwelling house belonging to John Okey, a puritan and prominent Boltonian who died in 1684 and is best remembered for his gravestone on south wall of Parish Church. [1]

In 1797 it was the first meeting place of the Corinthian 221 masonic lodge which met there for three years until it moved to the Lord Nelson on Derby Street (the lodge still exists today). [2]

In 1803 it was left in the will of William Markland of Heaton to his son Thomas [3] and in 1809 it was the venue for the inauguration of the Friendly Ironmongers Society. [1]

Census records for 1891 show William Barlow as landlord and he lived on the premises along with his wife, four children and two servants aged 18 and 13. [4]

The Hand and Banner closed in 1911. [5] It demolished that same year and a bank was built on the site. That building still stands. It served for many years as a branch of Lloyds Bank (later Lloyds TSB) and was recently converted into student accommodation.

The former Lloyds TSB building on the corner of Howell Croft North and Deansgate. The building was previously the site of the Hand and Banner.

[1] Bolton Town Centre, A Modern History. Part One: Deansgate, Victoria Square, Churchgate and Surrounding Areas, 1900-1998.

[2] Lane’s Masonic records.  Retrieved 14 April 2014.

[3] Tonge family. Retrieved 14 April 2014.

[4] Barlow genealogy.  Retrieved 14 April 2014.

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

George and Dragon, Oxford Street

The George and Dragon and surrounding properties pictured in 1907.

The George and Dragon stood on Oxford Street and dated back to at least the 18^th century. It was certainly licensed in 1780 when the landlord was John Brown and in 1818 a Mr R Ainscow was the licensee.

During the early part of the nineteenth century, like in so many of the old-established pubs in Bolton, the George and Dragon played host to numerous political discussion groups [1]. In his book,  Classic Soil: Community, Aspiration, and Debate in the Bolton Region of Lancashire, 1819-1845, Malcolm Hardman states that the Liberal debating club met at the George and Dragon [2]. The Conservatives, meanwhile, met at the Swan Hotel while Hardman writes of a meeting in November 1816 of radicals at a pub “frequented by the lower orders” close to Dog Court on Brown Street. [Click here for details]. Maps of the time show a Dog Yard behind the Horse Shoe pub on Manor Street.

Although not a huge pub if the above photograph is anything to go by, the George and Dragon was used for meetings throughout the nineteenth century. As an example, when one of the pub's neighbours, the auctioneer and valuer James Holt of number 17 Oxford Street, went out of business in 1877, a creditors’ meeting was held earlier the following year at the George and Dragon. [3]

Later in the nineteenth century it was taken over by the local brewery of Joseph Sharman [4], but it was closed and demolished in 1924 when the Bolton Co-operative Society bought the site bounded by Oxford Street and Victoria Square to build a new department store. The Co-op remained at the site in 1986 when it was closed as part of the move to the new Normid Superstore built at the Embankment End of Burnden Park.

[1] Leisure In Bolton, 1750-1900, Robert Poole, 1982.

[2] Classic Soil: Community, Aspiration, and Debate in the BoltonRegion of Lancashire, 1819-1845, Malcolm Hardman. Published by Rosemount Publishing and Printing Corporation (2003).  

[3] London Gazette, January 4, 1878. https://www.thegazette.co.uk/London/issue/24538/page/96

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

Crompton's Monument, 35-39 Mill Street

Mill Street, Mill Hill, Bolton looking towards the town centre, photographed in April 2014. Photo copyright Lost Pubs Of Bolton.  The Town Hall can just about be seen in the distance, Bury New Road runs across the image beyond the traffic lights in the background. St Peter’s Way cannot be seen but runs parallel with Bury New Road though at a lower level. Before the area was redeveloped Mill Street ran at an angle roughly beyond the where the traffics lights are all the way down to Church Wharf and the Manchester, Bolton and Bury Canal. Given that the pub was still standing when St Peter’s Way was open it is likely that it stood close to the banking that now leads down to the by-pass. Hilary Devey lived in the pub shortly before it closed and said it was at the top of a hill.

The 1830 Beerhouse Act saw an explosion of public houses all over the country. In Bolton, there was a particular increase in the number of small pubs opening in working-class residential areas and the Mill Hill area saw a huge increase.

Nowadays, Mill Hill is roughly bounded by St Peter’s Way, Folds Road, Bury New Road and Kestor Street. Prior to the 1830 Act there were no pubs in the area, but as our map shows there were subsequently around a dozen beerhouses in this densely populated part of Bolton.

One of the pubs that opened after 1830 was the Crompton’s Monument on Mill Street. By 1862 it was brewing its own beer and was under the control of John Cooper and that year John’s cousin Joseph Sharman moved to the pub to work alongside him.

Sharman was born in Derbyshire in 1841 and by the age of 8 he was working down a coal mine. He moved to Bolton to help out at his cousin’s pub, but John Cooper died in 1868 and his widow, Ann, leased the pub and the brewery to Joseph.

The enterprise clearly prospered and by 1874 Sharman had built his own brewery on Mere Hall Street, about a mile away from the Crompton’s Monument. He went on to build up a tied estate of some 58 pubs and became a Conservative councillor for the North Ward in 1886.

Sharman died in July 1916 and is buried at St Peter’s, Halliwell. The brewery was sold to George Shaw and Son Ltd of Leigh in 1927. Shaw’s subsequently merged with Walker’s of Warrington in 1931, while Walker’s in turn merged with Tetley Walker of Leeds in 1960. A number of former Sharman pubs remain and were Tetley houses for many years, at least until breweries sold off much of their tied estates in the nineties. The town centre pub now known as the Flying Flute was once a Sharman’s pub named the Fleece.

Back to the Crompton’s Monument and it seems that Sharman didn’t hang on to the pub after he moved to Mere Hall Street.  Gordon Readyhough states that it later became a Cornbrook pub after their purchase of the tied estate of John Atkinson & Co Ltd from Boardman’s United Breweries in 1898, which suggests that either Joseph Sharman or Ann Cooper had already sold out by then, most likely when the Mere Hall Brewery was built. [1]

The family of local businesswoman and Dragon's Den judge Hilary Devey were the final licensees of the Crompton’s Monument. In her book Bold As Brass: My Story, Ms Devey describes the pub:

“The main room, which was filled with chairs and tables, was always heaving and off it was the vault, a tiny room where all the diggers used to sit playing cards and dominoes.” [2]

The diggers were the Irish labourers employed on the construction of St Peters Way and who frequented Crompton’s Monument while constructing the by-pass.

Eventually, the Crompton’s Monument was the subject to a compulsory purchase order and it closed in 1972. The entire Mill Hill area has been redeveloped as an industrial estate. The final pub in the area, the Wellington, closed in 2013.

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

[2] Bold As Brass: My Story, by Hilary Devey. Published by MacMillan (2012). 

Sir Sidney Smith, Bridgeman Street

The approximate site of the Sir Sidney Smith, pictured in 2011 (copyright Lost Pubs Of Bolton). The pub was situated on Bridgeman Street at its corner with York Street in between Coe Street and Nile Street. York Street no longer exists. The street in the background is Coe Street.

The Sir Sidney Smith opened in 1808 on the corner of Bridgeman Street and York Street in a part of the town only just being developed.

At the end of the 18^th century the area from Crook Street over as far as Green Lane was known as the Sweet Green orchard while the area from the lower end of Fletcher Street towards what was once Hick, Hargreaves & Co and is now the Sainsbury’s supermarket was the site of a large encampment where gypsies would traditionally stay for a number of years.

The Sir Sidney Smith was the first pub in the area and it took its name from a navy admiral who was active in the late-eighteenth and early-nineteenth century. 

Fast forward 40 years or so from the opening of the pub and the 1849 map shows that the bottom end of Bridgeman Street had now been fully developed. Housing had been built on York Street, Coe Street, Nile Street, Sidney Street and Foundry Street, while Benjamin Hick’s Soho Ironworks was already in production. But there was also competition: the Bridgeman Arms had opened further down Bridgeman Street around 1825, while the Farmers Arms had just opened on the corner of Bridgeman Street and Fletcher Street. Plus there were a number of beerhouses in Coe Street, Sidney Street and Foundry Street.

By 1927 the Sir Sidney Smith was one of 58 pubs owned by the Bolton company of Joseph Sharman & Sons Ltd, whose Mere Hall Brewery was built in 1874 on Mere Hall Street. [1] Joseph Sharman died in 1916 and the company was taken over by George Shaw & Son Ltd of Leigh in 1927. In 1931, Shaw’s was taken over by Walkers of Warrington who immediately began a review of their enlarged tied estate.

About three-quarters of a mile away from the Sir Sidney Smith stood the Ninehouse Tavern on Ninehouse Lane, just off Grecian Crescent. Whereas the Sir Sidney Smith stood in the middle of a heavily-pubbed area, the Ninehouse Tavern was the first pub you came to as you walked down Rishton Lane. As such, it was the nearest pub to housing developments in the area bounded by Settle Street, Rupert Street and Weston Street. Those homes were of a better quality than those at the bottom end of Bridgeman Street, which by then was becoming quite run down with some of the houses approaching 100 years old.Rishton Lane was therefore home to a wealthier class of patron such as skilled workers, artisans and office workers. 

But the Sir Sidney Smith had something that the area managers at Walkers of Warrington decided would be more useful to the Ninehouse Tavern: a full licence. The Ninehouse was a beer house whereas the Sir Sidney Smith was also licensed to serve wines and spirits. It therefore made sense for Walkers to close the Sir Sidney Smith and transfer its full licence to the Ninehouse. [2]

The Sir Sidney Smith closed in 1934. The building was demolished along with the rest of the area in the early sixties before redeveloped as the industrial estate that still stands today. Coe Street is still there but York Street – just after the bend in Bridgeman Street as you go out of town – no longer exists.

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

[2] Moving pub licences is still practised today. In 1998 Thwaites closed the Ancient Shepherd and transferred its licence to a new development named Red On The Square. The venture lasted only a few years and the premises have been sold on two more occasions (it is now home to Blind Tiger). While tales abound of the Ancient Shepherd, in contrast Red On The Square has left little or no mark on Bolton’s collective memory.

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.

Derby Arms/Cross Keys, Churchgate

The Derby Arms Hotel situated next to the Theatre Royal in this image from the Bolton Library and Museum collection (copyright Bolton Council). The library archives state that the image is from 1947. However, the Capitol cinema was showing Robert Montgomery's Live, Love and Learn that week, a film given its US release in October 1937. The image is more likely to date from late-1937 or early-1938. The letters RAOB GLE on the wall of the pub stand for the Royal Antediluvian Order of Buffaloes, Grand Lodge of England, a nationwide fraternal and community organisation that had strong associations with the theatre world. An RAOB Club was later situated on Derby Street, first at the former Crown Hotel before later taking over the Ram’s Head. Note, too, the  Bush Hotel, the Boar's Head (now Hogarth's microbrewery) and a glimpse of two pubs still with us, the Man and Scythe and the Golden Lion (now the Brass Cat).

The Derby Arms Hotel dates back to at least the late-eighteenth century and was originally known as the Cross Keys. It appears under that name on licensing records from 1778 when the landlord was Thomas Whittle.

The pub was taken over by James Arrowsmith around 1811. Arrowsmith was still at the Cross Keys in 1821 but a hews year later he left the pub after the death of his father to take over the family’s counterpane and quilt manufacturing business.  He subsequently became a leading business figure in the town and became the Liberal Mayor of Bolton in 1840-41. He was the first member of the Church Of England to hold the post as his two predecessors were both Unitarians.

The Cross Keys became the Derby Arms at some stage in the second half of the nineteenth century. Towards the end of the century it was home to one of Britain’s official executioners, James Billington, who was landlord the Derby from 1898 until his death in 1901. Billington’s son Thomas also lived at the pub and assisted his father on seven executions in 1898 alone. [1]

Billington died of pneumonia in December 1901 just ten days after carrying out his final execution, that of Patrick McKenna, a regular at the Derby who had been found guilty of murdering his wife. Local people organised a petition to spare McKenna on the grounds that he had repented but the sentence was carried out regardless. Thomas Billington also died of pneumonia the following month.

In the latter part of the eighteenth century the Derby was owned by Atkinson’s, [2] whose Commission Street Brewery was situated at the bottom end of Deane Road on land now occupied by Bolton College. Atkinson’s sold out to Boardman United Breweries in 1895 and three years later all the former Atkinson pubs were sold to Cornbrook’s Brewery of Chester Road, Manchester. Cornbrook’s were taken over by Bass Charrington in 1961 but the Derby was still supplied from Cornbrook’s by the time it closed in 1963. The pub, the Theatre Royal and the Bush Hotel were all demolished shortly afterwards and Churchgate House was built on the site.

The site of the Derby Arms in April 2012. The pub was situated further down Churchgate on the right-hand side. Image copyright Google Street View.

This is a view of Churchgate from August 1938 taken from the direction of Deansgate.

[1] The Executioners Bible he Story of Every British Hangman of the Twentieth Century, by Steve Fielding.

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