Runcorn and Widnes Memories: Pub life of old communities
PUBS have always been part of community life, especially in twin-towns like Runcorn and Widnes about which it was often said there was a saloon bar on almost every street corner.
The Industrial Revolution swept through the North West like a whirlwind and way back in the early part of the 19th century there were beerhouses everywhere.
The navvies constructing canals and railways found it thirsty work, as did the men engaged in the early chemical factories. Belching chimneys mushroomed, planning controls were non-existent and workers' conditions were absolutely dire.
And conditions in some of the pubs were not all that good either - no surprise, therefore, when many of them, little more than spartan premises, best remembered for spittoons and sawdust, were closed down.
Today, most of our best pubs not only offer environmentally friendly conditions but also ample sports facilities, including Sky and Setanta TV viewing - but even some of these are now facing a different kind of threat to their future as a result of crippling alcohol duty and cheap supermarket products.
Fortunately, Runcorn and Widnes seems to have fared much better than some, particularly those in rural areas.
Re-reading parts of Ian Bailey's splendid book Fancy a Pint? which he describes as "a historical pub crawl of the pubs of Widnes of the last 250 years", I concentrated mainly on West Bank, an area I came to know well, first as a copy boy on a bicycle travelling between the two towns in the mid-1940s and later as a reporter.
Viaduct Street was the first row of houses you saw when coming off the incline at the end of the Runcorn Railway Bridge footpath. Equally prominent was the Bridge Hotel (pictured above) - the pub with the huge rounded window facing the bridge footpath exit from the corner of Church Street. That window, I was subsequently told by a reader, was shattered one day when a young fellow on a bike came off the incline and went straight through it (he had no brakes!).
Built in 1866 for Gilbert Greenall, the pub was open until about 1960 when it was swallowed up in the wake of the then new bridge approach roads.
I never went in the Bridge Hotel but one pub I did visit was the White Star Hotel on West Bank Street.
Our chief photographer in those days was a former Daily Express cameraman who often knocked back more than 12 pints of beer a day. We were looking for a photo of a man facing a murder charge and our photographer was certain he had snapped him at a hot pot supper at the White Star.
Sure enough, he had and we had an excellent picture of the man who had strangled his wife after discovering letters she had exchanged with a man who was in Walton Jail.
A Greenall Whitley pub from 1899, it remained in Greenalls hands until its closure in 1975. A light industrial estate had appeared in that vicinity and the pub's customers had dwindled.
Ian Bailey, who sampled a pint or two in every pub in town from the 1960s onwards, reminds us of all the pubs which graced the Riverside district, including the Mersey Hotel, best known locally as 'The Snig', so-called because of a local delicacy - a pie made with locally caught small eels - known as snigs.
Most West Bank families could probably reel off the names of most of the district's pubs. The Britannia Hotel (also known as 'The Blood Tub') was demolished in 1979 to make way for new housing. It was at the bottom of Irwell Street.
The Main Top (at the end of White Street) is still standing but the equally well known Arch Hotel in Dock Street disappeared with the coming of the bridge approach roads. The pub was known locally as 'The Slutch Hole'. Renowned for its entertainment, it was one of the venues to host the great Ken Dodd in his early years in the business.
The West Bank Hotel still stands - but now in the form of four flats.
Harry Grennan was one of the best known landlords of the Angel Hotel, a popular figure and a regular visitor to our old head offices in Victoria Road. One got the impression he could have turned his hand to almost anything.
Sadly, the Angel pub came to an unexpected end one night a few years ago when the rear gable wall collapsed. The Angel had survived for more than a century.
And, of course, you cannot draw on the names of West Bank pubs without mentioning the Swan Inn.
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How lovely to read about my great uncle Harry Grennan (landlord of The Angel in Widnes).
I cam across the site while researching for a novel I'm writing, set in Widnes.
Thank you for your information on Widnes. I have forwarded the comment to Ray Miller in the Widnes office.
What an interesting article. My husband and I are publicans in Canterbury, Kent. I recently became interested in my family tree and found out that a relative of mine - Henry Horobin was landlord of The Railway public house in Wesley Street, Crewe and died of 'exhaustion' in 1872 at the age of 65! If anyone has any info on this pub or can point me in the right direction of where to look I would be most grateful. Hope Fiona's novel went well.
I agree, Ian Bailey has written a fascinating book. My Great Grandfather, Thomas Hewitt had The Watermans Arms on Sankey Street around the turn of the last century. He also had a pub on Farnworth St for a while. My OTHER Great Grandfather, William Ince of Halebank is listed as staying at the Clapgate Hotel on a night that a census was taken. His will is witnessed by Willougby Gillbody, landlord of The Blackburne Arms.