Oliver Cromwell, 125 Bridgeman Street

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The Oliver Cromwell was situated on Bridgeman Street, on the corner of York Street and Back Coe Street, neither of which are still in existence. It dated back to the middle of the nineteenth century.The Sir Sidney Smith was just three doors away until that pub's closure in 1934.

In September 1854, landlord Ralph Fairhurst fell foul of the recently-passed Sale Of Beer Act. The act forced pubs and beerhouses to close between the hours of 2.30 and 6pm on a Sunday afternoon with another closing time of ten o'clock on a Sunday night. Fairhurst was charged with having a number of persons in his pub at 5.30 one Sunday afternoon. He argued that he was at his wife's funeral at the time in question and had left his brother-in-law in charge. As Fairhurst had no previous complaints against him he given just a 5 shilling fine. [Bolton Chronicle, 2 September 1854]

The Oliver Cromwell was one of David Magee's first pubs. Magee was at the Good Samaritan on Derby Street in 1853 but he snapped up pubs as he tried to find a market for his beers. One of those pubs was the Oliver Cromwell.

In 1869 Magee ran into a problem when the Oliver Cromwell's licence was revoked. This was on the grounds that the licensee, William Burtonwood, was a drunken person and had twice been fined. [Bolton Evening News, 15 September 1870]. The case went as far as an appeal to the quarterly Salford Hundred Quarter Sessions in November 1869 where it again refused. Burtonwood was given notice to quit by Magee and the pub remained closed for over a year until new landlord Edmund Charlesworth was eventually granted a licence in November 1870.

For many years, from the late-1870s until 1916, the pub was run by the Barrow family who lived in nearby Burns Street according to the 1871 census. The pub was initially run by Joseph Barrow, a man who was to become well-known to the police and courts.

In March 1879, Barrow appeared at an inquest regarding the death of a local man, John Andrew Sykes, who lived in John Taylor Street just yards from the pub. Sykes was hit with the double blow of losing his job at Norris's timber yard on Bridgeman Street and being rejected by the object of his affections, a girl working as a servant in a local public house. On Friday 21 March 1879, Sykes walked into the Oliver Cromwell and told those present that he was going to drown himself. He added that he had one penny left to his name and that he would buy a gill – half a pint – of ale with it. Landlord Joe Barrow said that if he had a penny then he should have a full pint and he served him with one. Sykes then asked four other people in the pub to drink with him. He emptied his pockets giving away his pipe, his tobacco and two buttons, one of which Joe Barrow nailed to the wall of the tap room as a memento. Barrow also asked for a lock of his hair, a wish that Sykes was unwilling to grant. Then, rather chillingly, Barrow advised Sykes that as the water was so cold he ought to find a warm-water lodge in which to drown himself. Nobody sought to try and talk Sykes out of his suicide. As Sykes left the pub he said: “Good neet, owd lad. Tha'll never see me any more.” Barrow responded by suggesting to Sykes that he went home to bed but the following morning Sykes' body was fished out of the lodge at Marsden's mill on Cochrane Street at the top of York Street. A verdict of 'temporary insanity' was given. [Bolton Evening News, 25 March 1879; Yorkshire Post and Leeds Intelligencer 25 March 1879].

Joe Barrow liked a bet but it was to get him in trouble on two occasions. In December 1879 he was sued by William Sheppard for £10, the sum being a bet Sheppard had with Barrow over a foot-race between Sheppard and a man named Hall. The race wasn't run but Barrow kept the money, anyway, claiming it was part of a written agreement. But as neither he or his solicitor were able to provide a copy of the agreement the judge found against him. He also ordered him to pay costs on the grounds that he was a pub landlord. “They have these things to bring people to their beerhouses in order to drink,” the judge told his barrister.

But Joe Barrow faced a far more serious charge the following year. On Sunday 17 October 1880 police raided six pubs in the Bolton area. Around 60 officers were despatched to the Oliver Cromwell, the Kay Street Arms and the Black Horse both on Kay Street, the Ancient Shepherd on Bold Street, the Turk's Head on Bridge Street and the Sun Ray on Mill Street. Officers were placed at each entrance of the six pubs to prevent anybody from leaving. Other officers entered the pubs and took away betting books, papers, lists and telegrams. Among the publications found were the Sporting Life and McColl's Turf Calendar. Sixty men were arrested and some of the pub landlords were found with as much as £10 on them – a huge sum in those days. The men were taken to the Town Hall where a large crowd of people gathered and remained until midnight.

When the came case to court at the end of October the number of defendants was reduced to 50 – the charges against ten men in the Ancient Shepherd having been withdrawn. The case against Barrow hinged on PC Gaskell eavesdropping on a conversation about betting odds while he was outside the pub. However, Gaskell couldn't say for sure that the voice he heard was that of Barrow and the case was dismissed.

Joseph Barrow died in June 1893. The Oliver Cromwell was taken over by his sister Ellen Barrow who remained there until she died in 1916. Ellen had previously worked as a servant to the Sparling family on Manchester Road. By 1901, one of the Sparling children, Hannah Sparling (born 1868) was also living at the Oliver Cromwell along with Ellen and Ellen's nephew who was also named Joseph Barrow.

The Oliver Cromwell became a tied of Magee Marshall in 1888 when that firm was formed by merging David Magee's properties and the brewery he had built on Cricket Street, off Derby Stree, with Daniel Marshall's pubs and his Grapes Brewery on Water Street.

When the area between Bridgeman Street and Lever Street began to be cleared in the late-fifties Magee’s saw an opportunity. The fate of the Oliver Cromwell and a nearby pub, the Peels Arms on Sidney Street, had already been sealed and the two pubs were due for demolition. But Magee’s – recently taken over by the Warrington-based Greenall Whitley -  were building a new pub, the Morris Dancers on the corner of Sapling Road and Morris Green Lane. The brewery did a deal with the licensing magistrates whereby the licences for the doomed Oliver Cromwell and Peels Arms were surrendered and a full licence obtained for the MorrisDancers.

The Oliver Cromwell closed in 1962. The building was demolished shortly afterwards. In his reminiscences of the area – see comment below- Fred Spencer, who was born at 1 York Street, writes that the last landlady was Mrs Duffy.

CHARGE OF OBTAINING MONEY BY FALSE PRETENCES. 

A middle-aged man named John Young, described as a millwright, was charged with obtaining 2 shillings and 6 pence, from James Dawson, of the Oliver Cromwell beerhouse, Bridgeman Street, by false representations. Mr John Gordon conducted the prosecution, and Mr Richardson appeared for the defence. It appeared that the prisoner went to the house, represented himself as a millwright just engaged at Messrs Hargreaves mill, and after obtaining lodgings there, borrowed 2 shillings and 6 pence, which he said he wanted to release his luggage from the railway station. The prosecution, however, did not succeed in establishing the fraudulent pretence, and the prisoner was discharged. It was stated that there were a number of other cases of a similar character against him. 

- Bolton Chronicle, 9 May 1857.

INGENIOUS DETECTION OF A BEERHOUSE OFFENCE. 

William Cromwell, landlord of the Oliver Cromwell public house, Bridgeman Street, was charged with opening his house for the sale of intoxicating liquors at improper hours on Sunday morning last. Mr Ramwell defended. Police-constable Greenhalgh said that, at half past eleven o'clock, he, in company with Police-constable Dearden, went to the defendant's beerhouse, and observed three men go into the house by the back door. He saw them come out again, and the officers then went into the house and found defendant's wife with a half-gallon jug and a glass in her hand. She then went downstairs followed by the officers who saw her spill the ale in the jug all over the floor. Upon Greenhalgh attempting to get hold of the jug, she threw what was left of the ale in his face. Police-constable Dearden corroborated this testimony, and the magistrates fined the defendant 20 shillings and costs. 

- Bolton Evening News, 21 January 1869.

Bridgeman Street pictured in September 2014 (copyright Google Street View). The Oliver Cromwell was situated on the right-hand side at the bend in the road and opposite the entry to  Lecturers  Closes on the left.

Article re-written 3 October 2018.

Bradford Arms, 28 Foundry Street

Another  Bradford Arms to go with the Bradford Arms on Bridgeman Place and the Bradford Arms – previously the Bradford Hotel – on Bradford Street. This Bradford Arms was situated on Foundry Street, just off Thynne Street.

The pub is listed in the 1871 Bolton Directory with John Mee as the licensee. But when John’s daughter Elizabeth married Patrick Murphy in 1868, John’s occupation is given as a moulder. Patrick was also a moulder and the new Mrs and Mrs Murphy’s address was given as 28 Foundry Street – the same address as the Bradford Arms a few years later. It is likely that both men were employed at the nearby foundry that gave the street its name and John Mee must have decided to open up his home as a beer house.

The Bradford became one of Hamer’s pubs and was supplied from the company’s brewery behind the Volunteer Inn at Bromley Cross. Hamer’s sold out to Dutton’s in 1951.

The whole area around Bridgeman Street began to be redeveloped in the 1950s. The 1954 Ordnance Survey map of Bolton shows the Bradford Arms alone on its row, the neighbouring properties all having been demolished. The row on the other side of the street was still standing at this stage.

In his book Bolton Pubs 1800 – 2000, Gordon Readyhough says the Bradford closed around 1960. In truth, it probably shut a few years earlier. The pub and its remaining properties were demolished and the area cleared. The land was acquired by Edbro’s – or Bromilow and Edwards as it was in the fifties – who by then owned the foundry that John Mee and Patrick Murphy were once employed in. Edbro’s closed off that end of Foundry Street and for many years the land was used as a parking space for trucks.

Edbro’s closed their Foundry Street works in the late-eighties. The factory, which had been on the site in one form or another for over a hundred years, was demolished and the Orlando Village student accommodation opened around 1995.

Foundry Street ran from Sydney Street to Bridgeman Street. It is now truncated at the student village, but here’s a 2014 view (copyright Google Street View) of the former Bridgeman Street entrance partly built over by the Medina Dairy (formerly the Associated Dairies Bolton depot). The Bradford was around halfway towards the current end of Foundry Street on the right-hand side.

Egerton Arms, 284 Lever Street

The Egerton Arms on Lever Street isn’t a pub that has lasted long in the memory of older drinkers. Plenty of people reminisce in on-line forums about more recent closures such as the Tanners Arms or UncleTom’s Cabin or even the Recreation Tavern  next to Bobby Heywood’s Park, but more than 50 years after the Egerton finally closed its doors there is barely a memory of the place.

The pub was situated on the corner of Reservoir Street, and like the Recreation it was close to Heywood Park, across from Lever Street meets Rupert Street and some six doors up from Uncle Tom’s Cabin. 

The pub dated back to the 1860s. The opening of Heywood Park led to a development of the area and the 1871 directory gives Jeremiah Aspin as the landlord. But by the time Mr Aspin’s daughter Elizabeth married John Foster later that year he had moved to take charge of the Cotton Tree opposite the Tanners Arms at the other end of Lever Street at its junction with Nelson Street. 

It is likely that the Egerton was taken over at the time by Henry Heyes of the Fox and Goose pub on Deansgate and was supplied directly by that pub’s brewery. Jeremiah Aspin’s occupation was put as a brewer on his daughter’s marriage certificate and it seems that the Egerton’s own brewery had closed as a result of the pub’s sale.

The Fox and Goose and its brewery closed in 1897 after the pub’s licence was refused. The Egerton was sold to a Rossendale company, Grant’s Tower Brewery of Ewood Bridge. In 1913, Grant’s sold out to John Kenyon of Barrowford, near Nelson, but despite Kenyon’s falling into the hands of Massey’s Brewery of Burnley in 1928, the Egerton ended up in the hands of a more local concern, Cornbrook’s of Manchester, who already had a number of pubs in the Bolton area.

In 1962, Cornbrook’s closed the Egerton. It was a double blow for Lever Street as the Cotton Tree also closed in the same year.

The area was redeveloped in the seventies and new housing replaced the old terraces. The photo below from September 2014 (copyright  Google Street View) shows Lever Street with a walkway heading off the street. That was once Reservoir Street and the Egerton stood to the right of the passage fronting Lever Street.

Houghton Street Tavern (Bricklayers Arms), Houghton Street

The Houghton Street Tavern was one of those ‘back street’ pubs that somehow managed to keep going until the early 1970s. It was situated on the corner of Houghton Street and Shaw Street, close to the bottom of Derby Street.

The pub was in business for over 100 years and was originally known as the Bricklayer’s Arms. In 1871, the landlord was George Timson, but he had only been at the pub for a couple of years. In June 1869, he married the landlady of the Bricklayers, a lady named Susannah Bishopp. Neither were from Bolton: he was from Lincolnshire, while she was from Buckinghamshire. George was 25 and a cab driver who lived in Coe Street, not a million miles from Houghton Street – it was around 400 yards away on the other side of Bridgeman Street. Susannah was 32, a widow who had taken over the Bricklayers on the death of her husband.

The Timsons were gone by the end of the 1870 and their union didn't last. The 1881 Census shows her alone in west Yorkshire running a small shop. 

The Bricklayers Arms became the Houghton Street Tavern and the pub eventually came under the control of the Leach family whose brewery was based at the Albert Inn on Derby Street. The Leaches built up a small tied estate including the Houghton, the Albert, the Clifton Arms on Newport Street and the Albion, which still stands on Moor Lane.

But the Leaches went out of business in 1936 and they sold their remaining pubs – namely, the above with the exception of the Clifton - to the Leeds brewery, Joshua Tetley. The Leach purchase, along with the separate purchase of the Sweet Green Tavern, gave Tetley’s a small foothold in Bolton. They added considerably to this with the merger of Walker’s of Warrington in 1961, which had also ended up with a sizeable tied estate in Bolton after a series of takeovers. From then until the vertically-integrated model in the brewing and pub industries began to unravel in the 1990s Tetley Walker was the largest pub owner in Bolton.

The Houghton was a beerhouse until 1961 when it was granted a full licence enabling it to sell wine and spirits. It carried on until the early-seventies but by then a redevelopment programme at the bottom end of Derby Street had seen huge swathes of properties demolished. Houses on Rothwell Street, Pilkington and Derby Street were cleared away and streets such as Apple Street, Hammond Street, Peel Street and Glass Street were no more. When the council offered to buy the Houghton Street Tavern from Tetley’s they snatched their hands off. All the pub's customers had moved on.

The land occupied by the Houghton has never been built on. A car park for the Centredart fireplace showroom now occupies the site as can be seen below in the Google Streetview image from September 2014.

School Hill Hotel (T'Skennin' Door), 6 School Hill

The School Hill Hotel was known locally as T’Skennin’ Door due to its having two doors set on slightly different angles.  

School Hill itself took its name from its proximity to St George’s School at the top of Bath Street. When  St George’s church was consecrated in 1796 Green Hill was immediately to the west of the church, with Lark Hill further on towards the road to Chorley. School Hill was to the north of the church.

The pub occupied the junction of School Hill and Haworth Street and it dated back to the 1860s.

In his book, Bolton Pubs 1800 – 2000, Gordon Readyhough tells us that Ellen Crompton was the licensee in the 1880s when the pub also had its own brewery. Indeed, Mrs Crompton was already at the pub in 1871, according to Worrall’s Directory for that year, and there is every chance that she and her husband John were the pub’s first licensees. Mr Crompton had previously run a beerhouse on Higher Bridge Street.

Later, the School Hill became a Settle’s pub. Settle’s were a local firm based on Cross Street, just off Turton Street [more details on Settle's brewery can be found here]. Settle’s sold out to Dutton’s of Blackburn in 1951. Dutton’s and its 800-odd pubs were bought by Whitbread in 1964. The presence  in the above photo of a Whitbread tankard on the front of the pub suggests the image was taken post-1964.

The School Hill closed in 1972 and was demolished soon afterwards. The whole area was redeveloped and Topp Way opened roughly on part of the site of the pub in 1980.

The image below (copyright Google Street View) shows Topp Way with the former St George’s school (later Ben Topps and McGinlay’s) on the right. The School Hill was roughly where the green sward of grass can be seen next to the pedestrian crossing. 

Waterloo Tavern, 197-199 Folds Road

The Waterloo Tavern pictured in the 1920s shortly after it had been taken over by Shaw’s of Leigh. Note the Shaw’s sign – bare on the 1976 photo (link here).

Not to be confused with the older and - it has to be said, grander - Waterloo Hotel at the other end of Waterloo Street, the Waterloo Tavern was a beer house on Folds Road at its junction with Waterloo Street.

It dated back to around the 1860s and Alexander Martin is shown as the landlord in the 1871 Bolton Directory. In the 1880s it was taken over by George Walker of the Park View Brewery on Spa Road and as the brewery changed ownership on a number of occasions over the years so did the pub and the rest of the brewery’s small tied estate. It became the Spa Wells Brewery in 1900 then James Jackson & Sons Ltd in 1904.

Jackson’s sold out to George Shaw & Co Ltd of Leigh in 1927; Shaw’s were bought by Walker Cain Ltd in 1931 and Walker’s merged with Tetley’s in 1961.

Like many pubs, the Waterloo was originally two dwelling houses that were knocked together and was numbered 197-199 Folds Road.

The end for the pub came in 1976. Many properties on Folds Road were knocked down in the sixties and seventies and the row containing the Waterloo, between Waterloo Street and Turton Street were among the last to be demolished.  

The pub can be seen here in a photograph from the Bolton Evening News of 15 September 1976  It’s the last property still occupied in a row of boarded up houses.

Below is a modern-day view from September 2014 (copyright Google Street View). The site once occupied by the Waterloo Tavern is now landscaped with the bottom of Waterloo Street closed off and traffic diverted to the bottom of Turton Street via Slater Lane. The pub was next to the footpath leading up Waterloo Street.

Prince Arthur Hotel, 82 St John Street

The Prince Arthur Hotel pictured in the 1920s shortly after Tong’s had been taken over by Walker Cain Ltd of Liverpool. It was a sizeable building and may have been two or three properties knocked into one. The pub was on the corner St John Street and Pen Street and the latter street can be seen to the side of the pub. Like a number of pubs it also had a counter for the sale of beer to be consumed off the premises.

 Updated on 10 October 2016 to include more on Robert Wood and the pub’s brewery.

The Prince Arthur was a beerhouse situated on St John Street, which was just off Higher Bridge Street. Egyptian Street, which still exists, was the next street along and the two streets converged as Bridge Street. St John Street ran off the main road at an angle as far as Pen Street. At the junction with Pen Street stood the Prince Arthur.

The pub began in the 1860s when Robert Wood, who was previously the licensee of the Cross Keys on Cross Street and who had also run the Rising Sun  on Churchbank near the parish church, moved into the premises along with his wife Catherine. Wood was a weaver by trade, but Catherine’s family were publicans. Her father, John Holgate, was the landlord of the Farmers Arms on Bridgeman Street when the couple married in 1856.

Many pubs brewed their own beer and sold only their own draught ales on the premises. But there was an increasing demand for what was known at the time as a ‘common brewer’. That was a brewery that sold beer to pubs who didn’t have their own brewery.

The Prince Arthur was in heavily-pubbed part of Bolton as beerhouses sprang up all over the rows of terraced houses that were being built between Higher Bridge Street and Halliwell Road. Robert Wood began to build up the brewing side of the business and was soon supplying other pubs in the area. It was a competitive market. Joseph Sharman had just built his Mere Hall Brewery while John Halliwell had the same idea as Robert Wood and was supplying pubs from the Alexandra Hotel just a hundred yards or so away from the Prince Arthur on Stewart Street.

Even so, there is evidence that Robert Wood was very successful as a brewer. The 1871 Census shows him and his family living on the premises. The Bolton Directory of 1876 shows Robert living nearby at 83 Hampden Street – so the business was profitable enough for him not to have to live on the premises. But by 1881 Robert Wood was going up in the world. Aged 50 he was living in Victoria House on Markland Hill not far from the Victoria Hotel (“Fanny’s”) which still stands. Ten years later and Robert had obviously retired. He was living on Raikes Parade in Blackpool where he died on 29 March 1895.

A measure of Robert’s success can be seen in his will. He left a fortune valued at £18,000 – the equivalent of over £2million in today’s money – from a 30-year career in brewing.

Robert Wood was succeeded in the business by Catherine and their sons, Thomas and John. Charles Holgate, who was born to Catherine out of wedlock in 1852, was also a partner in the business.

At the end of 1909, Charles Holgate retired from the business   but the Woods continued as a partnership. He died in 1920 and was living at 71 Hampden Street at the time.

Catherine Wood died at the end of 1914 at the age of 84 and the following year the Woods converted their business partnership into a limited company.

By this time the Prince Arthur brewery was not only supplying its own pub but also a small tied estate. This included the Little John, which still stands on Lever Street, as well as the Mortfield Tavern on Gaskell Street  , the Caledonian on Lyon Street , the Kings Arms on Chorley Old Road, the Noble Street Tavern on Noble Street, the Prince Hotel on Thwaites Street, the Standard Hotel on Gray Street and the Fountain Inn on Nelson Street.  Most were reasonably close to the brewery with the Prince Hotel being just a few yards away.

But the first world war was under way and trade was tough. Small brewers such as Wood’s found it difficult to continue in business as even the basic raw materials for brewing became more and more difficult to get hold of.

The Woods packed in brewing at the Prince Arthur in 1917. The pub was sold to a larger local concern, William Tong’s, who were in turn taken over by Walker Cain Ltd of Liverpool in 1923. Walker’s merged with Joshua Tetley Ltd of Leeds in 1960 to form Tetley Walker Ltd and it was a Tetley pub that the Prince Arthur ended its days in the early seventies.

Nothing remains today of St John Street and only very little remains of Egyptian Street.  The site of the Prince Arthur is covered by part of the playing fields surrounding St Matthews primary school.