Of pubs and people

I am never very good at endings.  Just when I think a story has run it natural course I come across something new.

Yesterday it was the bewildering decisions of the licensing authorities and how some people got permission to open new pubs and sell alcohol and others were just knocked back.  I followed the events and reported them and must say thought that was that. http://chorltonhistory.blogspot.co.uk/2012/06/new-pubs-for-old-and-disappointed.html

In the February of 1907 neither the Royal Oak nor the Bowling Green Hotel were to be rebuilt despite what seemed very good reasons.  And in the same way just 14 years earlier an enterprising Charles Prince Hill was refused permission to sell bottled beer from his confectioners shop on Wilbraham Road.

The Bowling Green Hotel dated from the late 18th century and was a rambling building with ten rooms and in 1907 it had perhaps had its day, although I wish I could have wandered around it.  It had had been where some of our Sick and Burial Clubs had held their meetings, ran one of the two bowling green’s in the village and must have benefited from being so close to the parish church.

Now despite being unsuccessful at the annual licensing meeting the tenant of the pub must have taken heart at the promise of the committee to “visit the place and form our own conclusions on the spot.”  And this was what they must have done, because the following year a brand new pub just a little west of the old one was built.

The much smaller Royal Oak had to wait until the 1920s before it too was replaced by that large pile which stands a little to the east of the old one.

No such final luck for Charles Prince Hill.  Now in time I thought I might pursue Mr Hill who was still there in his confectioners in 1903 but had moved on by 1909 and might have prospered elsewhere.  Either way his successor continued to run confectioners and as little footnote to history and a concession to the present, the building at number 28 is still there.  It is the fifth property along from Keppel Road heading towards the junction with Barlow Moor Road, and what was once a confectioner is now a fast food chicken takeaway.

It wasn’t difficult to track him and his family.  By the April of 1911 he was living at number 8 Silverdale Road which was an eight roomed tall semi detached house.  Silverdale runs parallel with Wilbraham Road, connecting Buckingham and Egerton Road North, and would have been handy for the railway station but was secluded enough on a road tucked away from the noise and bustle of this part of new Chorlton.

The family had not been there long, perhaps just a few months and I would love to know more.  Charles described himself as retired which at 49 seems young, but perhaps it was on the grounds of ill health.  He died aged just 53 in 1915.  I could of course search deeper but perhaps this is an ending.

Pictures; The Bowling Green Hotel, 1970, A Dawson, m49269, Courtesy of Manchester Libraries, Information and Archives, Manchester City Council, the Royal Oak from the collection of Andrew Simpson