OUR recent article on day trips organised by Bradford pub the Red Inn has prompted memories of the Barkerend establishment.

Vincent Finn, who grew up in Barkerend, says: “Landlords of all the pubs lived on the premises, usually in an apartment upstairs. Pubs usually had a barmaid four or five nights a week, in addition to a waiter. In the case of the Red House, Lily Powell worked behind the bar for many, many years.”

Mr Finn has sent us this photograph of regulars at the Red House about to set off on a pub trip to the Isle of Man.

“Harold Fox (centre) who was the waiter for years and Harry Williams (right) a regular for years. He parachuted into Normandy the night before D-Day,” says Mr Finn. “I don’t have the name of the first man in the picture. Maybe a reader could identify him.”

Paul Jennings, author of Bradford Pubs and The Local: A History of the English Pub, says: “Following the recent T&A piece on the Red House pub in Barkerend Road, I thought readers my be interested in a little of its earlier history, which comes from the deeds to the pub and police and newspaper accounts.

“The pub was built in around 1850 in red brick, unusually for Bradford, hence its name. It had stables and a coach house in the yard, the entrance to which can still be seen there.

“It was kept for many years from 1852 by a man called Whitaker Clough and his wife, Martha. They bought it in 1860 and sold it in 1872 to Halifax brewers Lupton and Charnock who in turn sold out their Stone Trough Brewery - where the massive Halifax Building Society HQ was later built - and pubs to brewer John Ramsden.

“They were taken over by Tetleys in the mid-1960s. During the First World War, the landlord was fined heavily for serving drink to a member of the armed forces after the newly introduced closing time in the afternoon.

“And at Christmas 1915 he was again fined for allowing two young children on the premises, which had also just been made illegal a few years earlier. The children were mummers doing the rounds during the festive season.

“Nothing festive there now - it has been closed and boarded up for some time.”

By the 1960s, the Red House was one of four pubs within half a mile of each other on the lower end of Barkerend Road. “There was the Army and Navy, the Barkerend Hotel, The Ivy and the Red House,” recalls Mr Finn. “The Red House Inn was the last remaining pub on Barkerend Road.”

Anne Broadley’s dad, Frank, used to drink in the Red House. “We lived in the area for a while when I was a child, I remember him being a regular at the pub in the 1950s. I think he went on a couple of pub trips, he got involved in organising some of the social events,” says Mrs Broadley.

“He went to the pub once or twice a week. It was what working men did back then; they all had a ‘local’ where they played dominoes, cards and darts and put the world to rights.

“Women didn’t go to pubs in those days, certainly not on their own. That would have been very frowned upon.”

Emma Clayton