Town Hall Hotel, Old Hall Street South

A side view of the Town Hall Hotel taken in the 1920s from the side of the town hall itself. The entrance was on Old Hall Street South, which ran down the side of the pub.

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

The Town Hall Hotel – not to be confused with the nearby Town Hall Tavern – stood on Old Hall Street South. It dated back to the 1840s and was originally known as the Stork.

Old Hall Street South no longer exists, though Old Street North is still there. It is the small side street that runs down the side of Beale’s to Le Mans Crescent. In the 1840s it went as far as Ashburner Street, but it was split into two in the 1870s with the building of Bolton Town Hall. This majestic symbol of civic pride cost taxpayers £167,000 having originally been slated to cost only £60,000.

In the early 1860s the town’s mayor, Alderman James Wolfenden, championed the idea of a new town hall on the site of the old pot market. What is now Victoria Square was, at that time, the town’s market place.

As plans came to fruition and the imposing building arose at the side of his pub, the landlord of the Stork, Henry Grindrod, had an idea. He renamed his pub the Town Hall Hotel and in doing so he pre-dated the actual town hall. By the time the new building was declared open on 5 June 1873, Grindrod’s Town Hall Hotel had been trading under its new moniker for quite some time.

The construction also meant that the Town Hall Hotel was now at the end of its row as previously it was in the middle of a terrace. The laying out of the new Town Hall Square meant the demolition of some of the pub’s neighbouring properties and the partition of Old Hall Street. The Town Hall Hotel was now on Old Hall Street South.

The Crown Brewery Company of Bury bought the Town Hall Hotel during the First World War but in 1933 they decided to close the pub. The former pub remained standing until 1947 when it was demolished along with a number of other buildings on Old Hall Street South. The area was landscaped and became a grass enclosure surrounded by benches. In 1967 the Octagon Theatre was built on part of the enclosure. The Wellsprings was built on the rest of the site in 1983.

Old Hall Street South no longer exists. The rebuilding of the west side of Newport Street in 1957 meant that Coronation Street was slightly diverted and extended to meet what was then the Town Hall Square.

For pub-goers of a more recent vintage, the entrance to entrance to the former Oscar’s bar (now the Motorcise gym) is on part of the site of the former Town Hall Hotel.  

Old Hall Street South pictured in 1957. The area once occupied by the Town Hall Hotel is now a grassed enclosure with benches placed at various intervals around the perimeter.  The Market Hotel (T'Crate Egg) can be seen in the distance.

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

The Wellsprings in 2012 (copyright Google Street View).Coronation Street can be seen running down the side of the building. The street was slightly re-routed to include the former Old Hall Street after the west side of Newport Street was re-developed in the late-fifties.

Lower Nags Head - Oliver's, Deansgate

Two versions of the Lower Nags Head  pictured in 1927. At the top is the original eighteenth-century building. Below the grander, version, rebuilt in that year. That building still stands and is currently used as a bank .

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

The Lower Nags Head stood Deansgate, close to the junction with Bridge Street and Mealhouse Lane and a few doors along from where Marks and Spencer’s now stands.

The area around the pub once belonged to the Brownlow family who built Hall-I’th-Wood in the sixteenth century. Gardens and orchards extended over what is now Market Street and Victoria Square.

The original Lower Nags Head building dated back to the eighteenth-century. It was originally known simply as the Nag’s Head and appears on the Great Bolton licensing records of 1778. It pre-dated as a pub its similarly-named neighbour the Higher Nags Head by over 40 years.

By the 1840s the pub was being styled ‘the Old Nags Head’ to differentiate it from its upstart neighbour which only became a pub in around 1820. The landlord at that time was James Isherwood and he had a sideline as a coach proprietor. His Prince William stagecoach would head off to Manchester from outside the pub once every day.

The local brewery of Magee, Marshall and Co eventually took over the pub. By the twenties they also owned the Higher Nags Head and decided to close down both pubs and rebuild the Lower Nags Head (as it  had been styled since the 1860s).

The Higher Nags Head was demolished in 1929 and converted into shops which can still be seen in between Market Street and Oxford Street. The Lower Nags Head survived – in name only and not without radical change. The tiny, eighteenth-century building was deemed not fit for purpose and Magee’s rebuilt the Lower Nags  a couple of doors down in 1927.

The photo at the top of the page shows the two buildings side-by-side. The difference is remarkable; the old building looks like a shack compared to the newer Lower Nags Head with its impressive Doric columns and its ornate rooftop.

But while the old building had served as a pub for 150 years the new pub, for all its fancy architecture, lasted considerably less as licensed premises. Magee’s had sold out to Greenall Whitley in fifties and Greenall's obviously considered the Lower Nags to have more potential as a retail outlet than as a pub.

When Magee’s rebuilt the Lower Nag's they put in a huge cellar along with a downstairs lounge. In 1966 Greenall’s closed the two ground floor bars and extended the downstairs lounge into part of the cellar. The Doric columns were torn down and the street-level entrance was divided into two with stairs leading down to a Nags Head that really was ‘lower’, but with Hepworth’s tailors taking up the rest of the entrance and the whole of the ground floor.

But the Lower Nags Head received a new lease of life. A resident DJ was put in and the pub is fondly remembered on various internet forums. The 70s Bolton group on Facebook has numerous reminiscences from customers, licensees, doormen and DJs at the Lower Nags and it is clear that a great deal affection remains for the pub amongst its former customers.

However, it wasn’t to last. There was a refurbishment in 1982 and a name change to Oliver’s in 1985 but Greenall’s pulled the plug in 1989 and the pub closed.

The Abbey National building society converted the whole of the ground floor into one of their branches. It is now a branch of the Santander following their takeover of the Abbey National.

The Magee Marshall insignia can still be seen on the roof of the former pub premises.

The Lower Nags Head in 1980. Image from the Bolton Library And Museums Service collection. Copyright Bolton Council.

Higher Nags Head - Holden's Vaults, Deansgate

The Higher Nags Head pictured a few years before it closed in 1929.  Image from the Bolton Library And Museums Service collection. Copyright Bolton Council.

The Higher Nags Head was situated on Deansgate in between Market Street and Oxford Street.

The building was a private residence for some years before becoming a pub. It was built in 1735 as a townhouse for John Andrews (1684-1743). Andrews’ principle residence was Rivington  Hall, which he bought from the Breres family in 1729 but he needed a residence in the centre of town.

Andrews was famous for having built the beacon on top of Rivington Pike in 1733.

Around 1820 the house became licensed premises. It wasn’t uncommon for there to be two pubs of the same name not too far away from each other. For example, Whellan and Co’s Directory of 1853 shows the Millstone on Crown Street and the Old Millstone on Deansgate; a Three Crowns and an Old Three Crowns, both on Deansgate, and about 20 yards away from each other a Higher Nags Head and the Lower Nags Head, both of which were named the Nags Head  in 1853.

For a number of years people differentiated between the two pubs by referring to the Higher Nags Head as Holden’s Vaults. That was after John B Holden and Co, a firm of wine and spirit merchants who owned the pub and used it to store their stock.

John Brown Holden was born in Bolton in 1797 to the family that owned the George and Dragon in Oxford Street, just around the corner from the Higher Nags Head. The Great Bolton licensing records of 1778 show that Holden’s grandfather, John Brown, was in charge of the George and Dragon at that time. His mother, Mary, was later a licensee of the pub, certainly around 1818 and John was in charge by 1824. He added the Higher Nags Head around 1840 and used it as a base for his wine and spirits business.

Like a number of people in the drinks trade Holden entered politics. He was also a councillor for six years from 1851 to 1857 representing Exchange Ward for the Liberal Party. He was also a subscriber to the Bank Of Bolton.

John Brown Holden died in 1866, aged 69, the George and Dragon having been relinquished but with the Higher Nags Head still in the possession of John B. Holden and Co. Indeed, Holden’s were still charge into the early part of the 20^th century.

The Higher Nags Head was eventually taken over by Magee, Marshall and Co of Daubhill. By then they also owned the Lower Nags Head. Having two pubs with similar names just a matter of feet from each other obviously made no sense to Magee’s. Two decisions were made in the late-1920s. First of all, in 1927 the Lower Nags Head was completely rebuilt and the old building demolished. Then, in 1929, the Higher Nags Head was sold.

The building was subsequently demolished and shops built on the site between Market Street and Oxford Street.

White Horse, Mealhouse Lane

This photograph shows Mealhouse Lane around the turn of the 20^th-century. There was a good pub crawl within about 100 yards in the late-1890s - and probably for some considerable time before that.  Behind the photographer – and out of shot – was the Queen Anne. On the right is the Crown and Cushion which was rebuilt around 1901. At the bottom of the block – where the HSBC Bank now is – was the Old Woolpack. A left turn around the corner would have brought you to the Bay Horse.

However, it the area to the right of the photograph that concerns us, the board covered with posters. This was the site of the White Horse Hotel. It dated back to around the 18^th century and appears in the 1778 list of Great Bolton Alehouses.

The White Horse closed in 1901 and was demolished soon afterwards. The above pictured comes from the Bolton Museums collection  (copyright Bolton Council). The caption on the photo has a date of 1890 but that seems unlikely. The newly-rebuilt Crown and Cushion is complete so it is obviously after that.

The site of the White Horse is covered in posters suggesting it has already been demolished. One of the posters advertisers a match between Bolton Wanderers and Stoke City – a sunny day, the shadows short. We’re guessing it was shortly before the Trotters’ 2-1 home defeat to the Potters in September 1905.

The Bolton Evening News extended their offices and the new building was completed in 1907. The Crompton Place shopping centre now stands on the site.

An image of the White Horse prior to its demolition. Shipgates is the very narrow thoroughfare running down the side of the pub.

Grey Mare, 6 Newport Street

Newport Street in 1957 with Victoria Square in the distance. The third building up, beneath the Allsopp’s sign, is the Grey Mare. Picture from the Bolton Library and Museum Service collection, copyright Bolton Council. All the properties were demolished soon after the photo was taken. Battersby’s  ended up in a property further up Newport Street which was later turned into a supermarket which housed Whelan’s, then Morrison’s, Kwik Save, Iceland and B&M Bargains before being demolished as part of the new bus-rail Interchange.

The Grey Mare on Newport Street dated back to the 1830s although the building was initially constructed for other purposes. In his Historical Gleanings Of Bolton and District, TB Barton states the building was initially built to house the Bolton Chronicle, the local newspaper that began publication in 1824. By the 1830s the Chronicle had moved off and the building put to more useful purposes as a beer house before obtaining a full public house licence in 1844. [1]

In those days the address was given as 19 Cheapside rather than Newport Street. Cheapside ran from Victoria Square up to Ashburner Street. The three streets – Cheapside, Newport Street and Ashburner Street - met where the Newport Arcade now is. It was called Cheapside because in the middle of the nineteenth century this was the town’s main market place and the goods on offer in Cheapside were said to be of an inferior quality and were therefore less expensive than in the Market Place, which was where Victoria Square now is - hence the name.

The 1853 Bolton Directory gives the licensee as Squire Wolstenholme. Two of Mr Wolstenholme's sons went into the licensed trade. One of Squire's sons later ran the Lord Hill on Sidney Street.

By 1871, Thomas Ellis is listed as the landlord. Unfortunately, the entry was already out of date by the time the directory was published. Ellis had gone out of business and was living in an apartment at number 5 McHale’s Court, a row of low-grade tenements just off Derby Street. The McDonald's restaurant opposite the university now stands on the site of McHale’s Court.

Thomas Ellis was succeeded by John Wolstenholme - son of Squire - who remained at the Grey Mare until at least 1885. 

The Grey Mare was later a William Tong’s house and became a Walker’s pub when they took over Tong’s in 1923.

Last orders were called in 1957. Plans were laid to demolish all the properties on the western side of Newport Street along with properties on Old Hall Street South. The Grey Mare stood on the corner of Back Exchange Street, a small thoroughfare running down the side of the pub which was built over when Newport Street was redeveloped.

The pub's full license was transferred to the Mosley Arms, a newly-built pub on Red Lane, Breightmet.

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

Lark Hill Hotel, 227 St George's Road

The Lark Hill Hotel pictured in 1895.

The Lark Hill area took its name from an area of meadows on the outskirts of Bolton. When St George’s church on St George’s Road was consecrated in 1796, Green Hill was immediately to the west with Lark Hill further on towards the road to Chorley.

The Lark Hill Hotel dated back the 1860s and was situated close to the junction with Chorley Old Road and Chorley New Road.

It remained as licensed premises until 1926. By that time it had been in the hands of local brewery of Magee, Marshall and Co. Ltd for a number of years. 

Perhaps the fact it was a Magee's pub was its problem. Just a few yards away was the Crofters Hotel, a fully-licensed long-established pub that Magee’s rebuilt in 1907. 

Magee’s closed the Lark Hill in 1926 though it’s a wonder it remained open for so long.

The site of the pub is empty land which until the Crofter’s closed formed part of its car park.

Crown Hotel, Derby Street and the Magee, Marshall Brewery

At the top is the Crown Hotel on the corner of Derby Street pictured by Humphrey Spender in April 1938. In the background is Magee, Marshall's brewery on Cricket Street. The image is taken from the Bolton Worktown website and is copyright Bolton Council. On the right is the same view taken in April 2012 (copyright Google Street View). The building featured on the left of both images  is a bank, the District Bank in 1938, a branch of the Natwest until its closure in 2015. 

The Crown Hotel was situated at 213 Derby Street on the corner of Cricket Street.

The pub dated back to at least the 1860s and possibly slightly earlier as that part of Derby Street began to be built up in the 1850s.

In 1866 the landlord was one David Magee who moved to the Crown from the Good Samaritan a little further down Derby Street at number 73. He had been at the Good Samaritan since 1858. 

Magee was a brewer and he wanted to build a brewery on land next to the Crown. It was a brave move as the beer market for Daubhill was quite competitive. A number of pubs were brewing their own beer in 1866. The Albert, just a hundred yard from the Crown, was brewing for other pubs, while the Derby Street Brewery, just a few doors along from the Derby Arms, began brewing in the 1820s and was there until the end of the nineteenth century.

But Magee was undeterred and built the Crown Brewery right next to the Crown Hotel. It was operational by 1870 and was extended in 1875, the same year that David Magee died at the age of just 46. He was succeeded by his sons Thomas, John and Joseph and they extended the brewery again in 1893.

By then Magee, Marshall and Company Ltd had been formed. It was set up in 1888 after Magee's had taken over Daniel Marshall & Co’s Grapes Brewery on Brown Street, off Manor Street three years previously. They also bought the One Horse Shoe brewery in nearby Water Street at the same time. Henry Robinson’s Wigan Brewery was added in 1894 and John Halliwell’s Alexandra Brewery in Mount Street, Bolton, was bought and closed down in 1910.

Magee’s advertised themselves as late as the 1950s as “brewing in Wigan, Bolton and Burton” though Henry Robinson’s closed soon after takeover and Magee’s only leased the Bell Brewery of Burton-on-Trent for a short time in 1902. [1] However, until the fifties the brewery transported Burton water by rail to their own railway sidings next to the brewery (part of the original line of the Bolton to Leigh railway).

The Crown Hotel remained pretty much as it was on the corner of Cricket Street while the small brewery that was once situated next door grew to a become five-storey traditional tower brewery taking up most of the block behind Derby Street.  A 1982 image of the brewery complex can be seen here. 

Indeed the pub was all that was unchanged around Cricket Street in that period surrounding the end of the nineteenth century. A row of houses next to the brewery was named Magee Street but all the houses in the street were bought up in the early-1900s and the whole street demolished as the brewery expanded. The row of Peel Street, from Cricket Street up to German Street (later Haslam Street) also disappeared to be built upon by Magee's.

Mass Observation tells us that in 1937 Magee’s best-selling product was Mild, much as it was in the rest of Bolton. Best Mild was lighter in colour than ordinary Mild. It was also 20 percent dearer at 6d a pint (2 ½ p) against 5d (2p). Those two products accounted for over 90 percent of the company’s sales. An IPA was brewed using the water from Burton. It cost 7d (3 ½ p) a pint, but it largely was snubbed as it was stronger and had a reputation for giving a bad hangover. Remember that in those days there were no teenagers in pubs trying to get drunk as quickly as possible! [2]

The catchment area of the local pub was very small. Few people walked more than 300 yards to their local and in the case of the Crown Hotel that meant its customers were in Bantry Street, Peel Street, Parrot Street, Brigg Street, Haslam Street and some of the houses fronting Derby Street. The pubs were quiet until 8.30 or 9 o’clock and chucking-out time in 1937 was 10pm - every night of the week. There were no facilities for food.

Magee’s built up a substantial tied estate. It was mainly in the Bolton and Wigan areas but with outlets at seaside resorts such as Blackpool and Southport, both places where the brewery's customers would take their annual holidays. 

But being a family-owned business it was prey to takeover and the company lost its independence in 1958 when it sold out to Greenall Whitley. The Crown  brewery continued in service still producing Magee's beers until it was closed in October 1970.

The poor reputation for Greenall’s beer in Bolton dates back to the closure of Magee’s and the replacement of local brands with Greenall’s own products. A few years ago Hop Star brewery in Darwen brewed a few test brews based on a Magee’s recipe.  It wasn’t hard to see why Greenall’s were so scorned. If this one beer was anything to go by it was completely different to anything Greenall’s brewed. It had more of a sweet taste to it whereas the standard Greenall’s beers were more bitter. People liked what they knew and Greenall's tasted much different to what they knew.

The Crown Hotel carried on for a further ten years – as a pub, at least. In his reminiscences of the pub on the Bolton Worktown website, Mike Wilson says:

“The Crown Hotel was always a busy spot. The locals always boasted the freshest beer in town. The locals said that Magee Marshall piped it in from the vat itself. Not true, but I am sure the legend got its legs from the regular crowd.”

It probably wasn’t true and the beer was perhaps no fresher than it was at the Ram’s Head or the Pike View a couple of hundred yards up the road. But the Crown was the ‘brewery tap’ – the nearest outlet to the brewery – and there is a certain prestige to being the pub on the brewery’s doorstep.

But that prestige ended when the brewery closed. There had also been certain social changes in the 12 years since the Magee family sold out with many of the streets from which the Crown drew its custom demolished in the sixties and seventies.

Greenall’s took the decision in 1980 to hand over the Crown to the Royal Antediluvian Order of the Buffaloes and it spent its final seven years as the RAOB Club.

The Magee’s site became the headquarters of Cambrian Soft Drinks, another Greenall’s subsidiary. The moved out in the nineties and the site is home to a number of small business units.

In 1987, three years after the brewery was demolished, last orders were called at the RAOB Club - as the Crown then was - and the building was pulled down to provide a small number of extra space in the Cambrian car park.

The firm of Magee Marshall and Company Ltd lasted until August 2017. The limited company was formed on 22 March 1888 by the Magee family and Daniel Marshall. It was part of the De Vere Group, which Greenall’s became when they got out of brewing and pubs in the nineties. By June 2016 the company had been sold to a local brewer, Edward Ian Mather of Halliwell, and there were rumours that the original recipes were going to be recreated. That didn't happen and on 15 August 2017 the company was struck off by the Registrar Of Companies.

[1] The Lost Beers & Breweries of Britain, by Brian Glover. Published by Amberley Publishing (2009).

[2] 5d in 1937 works out at £1.28 a pint in 2014. The average wage in Bolton in those days was around £1 12 shillings a week, the equivalent of about £100 a week in 2014.

This is the view from the front door of Magee's offices taken by Humphrey Spender in April 1938. The land in the foreground belonged to the brewery and was used to exercise the company's dray horses. The street on the left is Bantry Street, which still exists. The street on the right is Peel Street which was demolished in the sixties. Image from the Bolton Worktown website. Copyright Bolton Council.