Look back to Bradford inns that are long gone

But the same disquiet was expressed by our Victorian forebears. Local writer James Burnley recorded a conversation in the mid-1880s among Bradford ‘worthies’ about how slum clearance and street widening had ‘destroyed some of the finest old Yorkshire pubs that ever existed’.

Fortunately, artists and historians were around to record them and this piece was suggested to me when I had the pleasure recently of viewing this watercolour of the Bull’s Head, Westgate at The Bingley Gallery in Park Road, courtesy of the proprietor David Starley. It is by Arthur McArthur, an artist who lived and worked in Bradford in the 1870s.

This inn stood facing the old market place at its junction with Ivegate and Kirkgate. It was named for the ‘sport’ of bull baiting with dogs, which was associated with market days until it died out or was suppressed from the latter part of the 18th century. The bull ring was directly in front of the inn. The blood-sport connection was later kept up when the Bradford Coursing Club had a room there, for their general meeting for example in April 1846, having had an ‘eminently successful season’, according to secretary Thomas Hirst.

The Bull’s Head was an important meeting place. The merchants, woolstaplers, and manufacturers went there to discuss politics and trade, forming ‘a veritable Chamber of Commerce’. The first Bradford Club assembled there to enjoy Mrs Duckit’s ‘genuine rum punch’.

The Bull's Head by Arthur McArthur

In those early years of the 19th century, it was also a musical inn. The old Choral Society set up headquarters there, its meeting nights arranged for a Tuesday on or before the full moon, in order to accommodate country musicians making their way home. It played an important role in politics and government. In the election of 1826, it was the headquarters of the liberal Tory candidate; the local government body of Improvement Commissioners sometimes met there; it served as the Excise Office; and coroner’s inquests were held there.

As these functions were moved to other venues, so some of the old inns sought to bring in money through establishing dram shops to push the sale of spirits, partly to counter the competition of the many beer shops which were set up after the 1830 law which deregulated that trade. The one at the Bull’s Head was known as the Little Bull. They tended to attract a rougher element. James Burnley witnessed in his observations towards the end of the 1860s, in which it is rather thinly disguised as the Gull’s Head, ‘scenes of degradation’. One such took place in July 1874 when Ann Gorman, aged 21, described as ‘a woman of loose character of Hall Lane’, was given two months with hard labour for striking waiter Alfred Carter in the face with a stone after being thrown out for her violent behaviour. The old inn was demolished in 1884 to make way for a connecting link from Kirkgate through to Godwin Street.

Another old inn painted by McArthur was the Wool Packs. This stood near the canal basin and local historian William Scruton noted how ‘fresh-water-sailors’ gathered there in the search for work.

Arthur McArthur's painting of the Wool Packs

It was closed in 1866 and demolished for the opening up of Canal Road, at the time when the canal basin was filled in. Scruton published his research and sketches in his Pen and Pencil Pictures of Old Bradford in 1890.

Another old inn he featured was the Sun Hotel at the bottom of Ivegate, an important coaching inn.

The Sun Hotel on Ivegate

This too was demolished, to make way for the Prudential Assurance Company building in 1895, built in the company’s characteristic red brick and terracotta of its London headquarters. Another coaching inn was the Talbot in Kirkgate, which I featured in an article in February this year, and which was replaced by a new Talbot Hotel in 1878, best-known for the stone dogs which gave it its name. The Bowling Green in Bridge Street, which like the Sun had been rebuilt in the middle of the 18th century, made way for the Mechanics Institute building, in turn demolished later in the 20th century. The landlord of the White Swan in Market Street was actually a coach proprietor, John Bradford, who drove the Highflyer coach from York to Liverpool. The name of that coach was perpetuated in a row of cottages he built at Laisterdyke.

The White Swan on Market Street

The Bowling Green on Bridge Street

The inn closed in 1876 to be replaced by an arcade which preserved its name. It was painted here by local artist Neil Crichton. Some of the Crichton paintings are on display at Bolling Hall and the rest are in storage.

But whilst many old inns were demolished, and this is but a selection, others survived into modern times. One of the few to make it to the present day is the Shoulder of Mutton in Kirkgate, rebuilt in 1825 for landlady Elizabeth Wilson, a fact noted above the entrance. A surviving fragment of a rich history.

The Shoulder of Mutton on Kirkgate has survived into modern times

* Dr Paul Jennings is author of The Local: A History of the English Pub (new revised third edition), Bradford Pubs and Working-Class Lives in Edwardian Harrogate. Available at Waterstones, WH Smith and online.