WHICH pubs do you miss?
Last week the Telegraph & Argus reported some good news for the pub trade - Bradford’s historic Boy and Barrel, which looked set to become yet another relic of our drinking establishment past, has been saved.
The Westgate pub, closed since a refurbishment in 2020, has been sold for £160,000 and is said to be re-opening at an unconfirmed date.
Pubs have been central to community life for centuries, but are declining at an alarming rate. Dr Paul Jennings, author of The Local: A History of the English Pub and Bradford Pubs, says the pandemic had “an unprecedented impact”.
He adds: “It highlighted the decline which the pub has faced for some years now and yet showed just how important it remains to the nation’s leisure habits and its sense of identity.”
Paul’s book - a third edition was released last year - traces the origins of the pub back to medieval inns, alehouses and taverns, through gin shops of the 18th century and 19th century beerhouses. The word ‘pub’ wasn’t in general use until the 1870s, says Paul, and the term ‘local’ came in the 1930s, then during the Second World War when the pub was seen as vital to morale.
In his book, Paul writes of the men and women who ran pubs and the customers who drank in them; “the conversations they had, music they heard and games they played”. He sets their stories in the economic, social, political and cultural history of England and, for the latest edition, adds a section on the significance of the pandemic on the history of the pub.
Among the old pubs that Paul has looked back on in the Telegraph & Argus is The Empress, a much-missed late Victorian hostelry on Tyrrel Street, opposite the Town Hall. Writes Paul: “The ‘flagship’ pub of Hammond’s Bradford Brewery Company, it replaced the old Commercial Hotel, built at the close of the 1820s and bought by Hammonds in 1891. The company’s new pub of 1898 saw it renamed the Empress after, of course, Queen Victoria’s title Empress of India. Such was its importance to Hammonds that it was never allowed to run out of beer during wartime shortages and, after the war, the then Hammonds United Breweries continued to hold its AGMs in the large upstairs meeting room.
“It was a magnificent example of a late Victorian gin-palace style pub and its opening in June was featured in detail in local papers. The Bradford Illustrated Weekly Telegraph described it as ‘equal in its kind to any in the country’ and ‘modelled in the style of first-class London houses’, no expense having been spared.
“The classical exterior featured granite columns and stained-glass windows. The chief entrance led through a vestibule to a broad passage with mosaic floor, tiled walls and archway. The bar had counter and cabinet work in Spanish mahogany, walls decorated with Japanese paper and deep red lincrusta dado. In the saloon bar, in addition to the mahogany woodwork, were mirrors, coloured glass and electroliers.
“A large market room behind this indicated the use of pubs for commercial purposes. There was also a luncheon bar, a small smoke room and a bar parlour, accessible from a separate entrance, for working-class customers.”
The Empress closed in 1972 and was demolished the following year. The Provincial Building was built on the site.
Paul has written, lectured and made broadcasts about pubs for 30 years, and his Bradford favourites include the Cock and Bottle on Barkerend Road. It is, he says, a pub that spans Bradford’s modern history: “The first documented reference to a building on the site was in 1747, plus an adjoining cottage and a close of land called the Toad-hole. Since a James Clough is recorded in early licensing records, it is likely that it had been a public house since at least the mid-18th century.
“The name Cock and Bottle appears in early 19th century licensing records, when John Thornton was the landlord. After his death it passed to his son then in 1859 to a nephew, James Bower. By this time the area was being developed with housing. The Cock and Bottle was in a poor neighbourhood, with a mix of English and Irish residents and a little colony of Italians.
“Bower rebuilt the frontage and remodelled the interior. He was an important figure in the local pub world, being President of the Licensed Victuallers Society.”
The pub survived into modern times, with its upstairs function room, bottle and jug department and gin-palace style fixtures. It became a Tetley’s house. “This was the pub as I encountered it from the early 1980s,” writes Paul. “It was one of the few older buildings to survive the post-war transformation of the area. It seemed to do a good trade, attracting a loyal following and visitors drawn to its liveliness and lovely interior, used as a set in 1983 film The Dresser.
“But at some point the pub began to decline. The construction of the six-lane inner ring road immediately below it can’t have helped. In 1999 it opened as ‘Britain’s first Christian pub’. This didn’t last.”
Last time Paul looked, a blue Heritage Inn plaque remained on the pub wall, a nod to its historic interest. But, he adds: “Peering through the window I saw no traces of that splendid interior. Another in a long list of treasures Bradford has lost.”
l Visit pauljenningshistorian.wordpress.com and thehistorypress.co.uk#
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