The lost pubs of Chorlton, No 3 the Travellers Rest

It is a pity that we only have this picture of the Travellers Rest.

It stood at the bottom of Beech Road and was open for business from 1832.

Strictly speaking it was a beer shop and  not a pub and the distinction is an important one.  Beer shops or beer houses sprang up after the 1830 Beer Act which allowed anyone to brew and sell their own beer for the cost of a beer license.

It was a deliberate ploy by the government to undermine cheap gin and the “gin palaces” and it was very successful.

Gin had been a real problem and was commented upon by many social observers of the period.  In Manchester while the population had doubled “the consumption of gin and whiskey has quadrupled.......... Drunkenness has infused itself into the bosom of society.  Habit has conquered shame, and that which formerly drew a blush from the men, is now regarded as a daily habit by women and children. ” *

The1830 Beer Act which allowed anyone who was a rate payer and could afford the yearly license of two guineas [£2.10p], to brew and sell beer from their own homes.  The beer they sold was stronger

The result across the country was an explosion in the number of beer shops.  In Manchester just ten years after the Beer Act there were 812 beer shops compared to 502 pubs which rose to 920 in 1843 as against 624 pubs and 31 inns and hotels.     Ten years later there were 1572 beer shops compared to 484 pubs.

And so to the Travellers Rest.  It is one of the places I have a real affinity for.  This is partly because it served the community for over 70 years and also because for much of the 19th century it was run by the Nixon family who also ran the pub over the river.

Samuel and Sarah Nixon were selling beer from the Travellers Rest from the 1840s and were both buried in the parish church yard where their grave stone can still be seen today.  Their son ran the post office and his son the newsagents which today are occupied by the Etchells family.

Their beer shop was small, just 11 feet wide and six feet long and the building is still there. Today it is Franny and Filer Gift Shop at no 70 Beech Road.  Stand in the front part of the place and you get a very clear sense of just how little space the Nixon’s had in their beer shop.

* Faucher, Leon, Manchester 1844, Its Present Conditions and Future Prospects, 1844 l Heywood, 1844,  Frank Cass, 1969,  pages 48-49

** http://chorltonhistory.blogspot.co.uk/search/label/A%20new%20book%20for%20Chorlton

Picture; from the collection of Tony Walker, circa 1900

On the green circa 1898

It’s a picture I have shown before, but is well worth a second look.

The caption suggests a date around 1898, arguing that this “Prince of Wales Horse bus at the Green.  Probably about 1898 before the Corporation took over the Carriage and Tramways Company, but maybe slightly later.”*

The Manchester Carriage and Tramways Company had been formed in 1865 from a merger of the two bus companies serving the city and neighbouring townships.

The larger was owned by the Greenwood Company and brought over 500 horses and 33 omnibuses to the merger, while what had been McEwen’s City Omnibus Company contributed the routes to Bell Vue, Rusholme, Longsight and Didsbury.

And at the end of the 19th was taken over by the City Council.

But what intrigues me is not so much the horse drawn bus but the surrounding buildings.
To the extreme right is the Travellers Rest which had been a beer shop since the 1830s and for most of that century had been run by the Nixon family and next to it the Beech Inn.

To the left is the Horse and Jockey which back then consists just of the middle building.  Beyond the outhouse jutting out towards the green was the tall cottage of Miss Wilton who had died the year before in 1897.

And it was her death which brought our village green back into common usage. From sometime earlier in the century till 1897 this had been the private garden of the Wilton family, surrounded and made secluded by tall hedges, but with her death the land reverted to the Egerton estate who in turn opened it to the public.

And tucked away in the corner was the  little cottage once the home of the Malloy family and later the sweet shop of Miss Gertrude Green.

Location; Chorlton



Picture; from the Lloyd collection

The lost pub of Beech Road

Peter has painted the Beech before and I have written about it. http://chorltonhistory.blogspot.co.uk/2012/01/beech-painting-another-story-and-bit-of.html

But today I want to concentrate on the other buildings in his picture. What are now numbers 70 and 68 are I think the oldest commercial properties still in use in Chorlton and they have intrigued me ever since I began writing my book on the history of the township.*

You might even say it was what got me going. You see Samuel and Sarah Nixon ran the Travellers Rest which was the beer shop next to the Beech for 40 years. They are buried in the parish church yard and it was the chance discovery of their gravestone that started me on researching the history of the village.

Samuel’s father had run the pub across the meadows by Jackson’s Bridge from the 1830s and sometime in the 1840s Samuel and Sarah took over the Travellers Rest. It was the only drinking place on what was then known as the Row and had been made possible by the Beer Act of 1830 which allowed people to set up beer shops for the price of a beer licence.

Stand inside number 70 today and you can get a sense of how small the beer shop would have been, and remember it was only the first half of the present shop which served as the room dispensing beer. Next to it was the stationer’s of Thomas Taylor. Now Taylor was an interesting chap who may have deprived the Methodists of the their Sunday school and owned both numbers 70 and 68 which may date from the 1830s, because he was happy to allow Thomas White later of the Horse and Jockey to apply for the first beer license for number 70 in 1832. But as they say that is all in the book, so no more about them at present.

The two buildings have had a mixed history since and for a long time served as one of our bakery shops here on Beech Road only closing as the Oven Door in the early 1980s. They were then converted back into single units and were much knocked about so today little is left of the original buildings. Even the roof was heightened much to the annoyance of friends who live along Stockton Road and the old stone urinal of the beer shop removed.

Peter’s work is on display around Chorlton and can also be seen at https://www.facebook.com/paintingsfrompictures


An occasional series of stories and pictures in the run up to the Glad to be in Chorlton Past and Present Exhibition during the Big Green Festival on March 31s

Picture; Peter Topping 2011 www.paintingsfrompictures.co.uk

*Chorlton cum Hardy A Society Transformed http://chorltonhistory.blogspot.co.uk/search/label/A%20new%20book%20for%20Chorlton
http://chorltonhistory.blogspot.co.uk/2011/11/chorlton-cum-hardy-community.html