HAVING recently looked at the Craven Heifer, my next two pieces take us further up Manchester Road to Bankfoot, where two pubs there happily still trade: the Woodman and the Red Lion.
From Smiddles Lane I walked up Faxfleet Street, where some of the earliest council housing in Bradford was built at the beginning of the 20th century to provide homes for the former slum dwellers of Longlands. Unfortunately, I wasn’t tempted to linger as a large terrier-type dog seemed to be watching me with some malevolence through a gate.
Arriving at Bankfoot then, on the right is the Woodman, just beyond the row of shops that was built when the road was widened.
Like the Craven Heifer, it owes its existence to the creation of that earlier new Manchester Road in the mid-1820s. Here, a straight stretch was cut through Truncliffe to create an easier approach to Odsal, rather than the old road up Wibsey Bank. The Woodman then first appears in licensing records in 1827, when the landlord was Joseph Shutt. He was also a joiner, hence its name, adopting one commonly used for pubs around the country. He didn’t enjoy it for long, however, as in January the following year he was reported as bankrupt in the grandly named but also short-lived Bradford and Huddersfield Courier and General West Riding Advertiser.
At this time, the pub was described as of two stories, with five rooms on each floor, and with a brewhouse, stable and other outbuildings. My photograph, taken in the 1920s, shows the arched entrance to the stables, later blocked up and incorporated into the pub.
It played host to many of the varied activities associated with pubs in the past. In April 1847, under landlord John Yewdall, a shooting match was held there, although the report doesn’t specify what at. And in November 1850, the Bradford Observer also reported that the Ancient Order of Foresters had its court room there for Lodge number 57.
Yewdall also was a joiner and cabinet maker, as well as innkeeper, according to his census entry of 1851. Together with his wife Mary, the pub was also home to three servants: a joiner, a farm labourer and 15-year-old Mary Feather, the house servant.
It was eventually owned by the brewer Joseph Stocks and Company of Shibden Head, between Queensbury and Halifax, as may be seen in the photograph.
It is included in an 1897 list of premises, the year it became a limited company, one of over 100 pubs in the company’s estate. Stocks in turn became part of Websters of Halifax in 1933.
Now it belongs to the Craft Union Pub Company, based in Wakefield, dedicated, according to its website, to ‘putting brilliant pubs back at the heart of local communities’.
Of these, the Woodman itself says it offers ‘a watering hole where the drinks flow as freely as the conversations’ and published photographs certainly suggest a lively place.
* Dr Paul Jennings is the author of Bradford Pubs and The Local: A History of the English Pub.
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