Look back: Black Swan pub in Frizinghall

Recent T&A reports of the conversion of the Black Swan at Frizinghall to a restaurant prompted a look at some of the history of what is a very old pub, indeed one of the oldest surviving in the city.

Local historian William Cudworth in his history of Heaton, of which Frizinghall formed a hamlet, described it as ‘of ancient standing’ when he was writing in the 1890s. He recalled a former landlady called Mally Rhodes, who also carried on an extensive business as a ‘middiff’, in the days when this task could be performed by amateurs. He also reproduced a bill of sale for an auction to be held at the Black Swan on the 10 September 1770, when William Whatmough was the licensee, which included the pub and other land and property in Frizinghall (together with properties at Calverley).

Pubs were a usual venue for such sales. Whatmough was also available to show the properties to prospective buyers

It was no doubt a busy pub, as it stood on the old road from Bradford towards Shipley before the new stretch of Keighley Road was constructed in the mid-1820s and when the Turf and Branch pubs were built. The rebuilt Turf of 1894 was more recently converted to a restaurant but the Branch was demolished and its site remains empty.

I looked at the deeds to the Black Swan when it was a Tetley’s house. They show that Tetley’s bought it in August 1914, for £3,600 from the then retired licensee William John Bell. He had in fact already mortgaged it to the brewer in 1907 and also agreed to buy all his beer from them. This was to enable him to buy it from the trustees of Willliam Lister Marriner of Keighley.

A number of landowners were developing Heaton particularly as a middle-class residential area at this time and Marriner’s Drive is named after him. Growth in Frizinghall itself had been stimulated by the building of the railway station in 1875.

It was a pub I once knew quite well. It was nicknamed inevitably the Mucky Duck. I attended the nearby grammar school from the mid-1960s to the early 70s and it was a great favourite of its pupils. Lunchtimes would see it crowded with boys drinking our pints and eating our beef and onion sandwiches. On one occasion, in the sixth form, I had a free period just before lunchtime and nipped down for a pint only to be greeted by the sight of a senior master propping up the bar. He never said anything about it.

I remember it then as a really busy pub, quite a fashionable place it seemed, through the 1980s and into the 90s when it was again a nice place to come out to for lunch.

I don’t know the more recent history of the pub I am afraid, or what has led to the current change. But pubs of course have been struggling for some time now and are closing still at a record rate.

* Dr Paul Jennings is the author of Bradford Pubs and The Local: A History of the English Pub.