Looking Back: Flag Hotel had served the town for 150 years

This is possibly the last photo of a Bolton town centre pub before it was demolished to make way for a car park.

The Flag Hotel, pictured here in December 1970, stood on Great Moor Street and dated back to the early 1820s. It got its name from the large flagstones used on the street weighing over six tons each.

Initially the pub produced its own beer but later became a Magee, Marshall and Co house and then subsequently Greenall Whitley.

The closure of the Howell Croft bus station in 1969 affected passing trade and a year later the pub closed. In the background you can see Elizabeth House being built.

Source

I never had the chance to have a drink in there but I remember the pub being at the corner of the bus station where we caught the bus to go up Daubhill to see my aunty and Great Moor Street and so we drove around it ever time we did.

I found this picture below that might give some a better understanding of where it was...



A big shout out to the building being built behind it though, Elizabeth House, which hosted the Va Va, later renamed Pips and ended up being Space City, in the basement - spent many happy nigh out there but Space City was for the younger kids that came after my time and became the first generation of computer game players.

Those shop fronts have never really changed since. Couldn't miss them with the suspect varanda over them. There is a really good model shop there or at least there used to be along with a shoe shop and a general shop selling all sorts of cheap (and nasty?) looking shite.

I can’t for the life of me think of what the pub was called facing the shops that’s now closed down?

I've never really thought about it before but one of my aunt's from Daubhill used to use the Wheatsheaf as her regular, the Wheatsheaf being roughly where the bloke taking the picture I posted would have been stood.

I guess she and her mates would have caught the number 82 into town, get off at were the bus station once was, which is directly in front of the Flag Hotel and down towards where the Octagon car park now stands, and in to the Wheatsheaf.

(In fact if you look closely you can actually see a bus shelter in the picture above - at first glance it looks like it is part of the Flag's paintwork but it is actually one of the long, old fashioned covered shelters they had back in those days).

Next door to the Wheatsheaf and on Newport Street was the UCP shop were my mam used to buy tripe, cow heels and pigs feet.

I used to like the boiled tripe in milk my mam cooked served with creamed potatoes, my dad and brother used to eat it raw with pepper and vinegar.

I didn't like the cowheel pie or the trotters though!

It all seems like a completely different world now - bus station gone, the mill chimney in the background gone, the old street lights gone, the old fashion style of pram gone, Flags Hotel gone, Wheatsheaf, gone, UCP gone, no one eats tripe, cow heel or pigs feet anymore, even the old ladies and gent in the picture are long gone too!!!

karlypants wrote:I can’t for the life of me think of what the pub was called facing the shops that’s now closed down?

The Griffin.



The Railway used to be a bit further along.

(it later changed its name to the Quill and pen and ended up as this)

Ah the Griffin! Always full of shoplifters from Morrisons trying to flog whatever they had managed to escape with. Been offered meat, a block of cheese even Jeans in there in the past 

Norpig wrote:Ah the Griffin! Always full of shoplifters from Morrisons trying to flog whatever they had managed to escape with. Been offered meat, a block of cheese even Jeans in there in the past 

Been in with in with my dad several times back in the day, we used to do a little pub crawl around there, York and the Clifton on Newport Street, Griffin, Railway, New Zeeland Chief and Ancient Shepard on Great Moor Street.  

We never really went in the Wheatsheaf to avoid bumping into my aunt (I think my dad and her didn't get along to well) and the Balmoral was one I went into a lot as my local used to be at the Trotters on Bradshaw Gate. 

The Army recruiting Centre used to be on Bradshaw gate just around the corner from Gregory and Porrits and my dad used to tell me this tall tale about how one of his mates had got a skin full at the Ancient Sheppard before signing up and for laugh put his religion as an Ancient Sheppard which somehow got overlooked and ended up appearing on his official documents!

I suspect it wasn't true but my dad never missed a chance to tell me and enjoy a laugh doing so.

Maybe it was true after all?

Not that it matters but it always gives me a little smile when I remember things like this.

Happy days.