Good afternoon everyone,
I presume readers and contributors to this very splendid forum like a drink. Well I’d be surprised if they didn’t as some contributions do bear all the hallmarks of a visit to the computer after a visit to the pub.
I must confess I do like the occasional gill of mild myself as does Frankie and Jake is now quite partial to a drop of ouzo, or so the grape vine would have us believe.
Even Gnatalee’s Great Grandfather: Harry the Demon Barber of Bridge Street, the Vidal Sassoon of his day, liked a pint of best. Well quite a few actually, if truth be told.
Nothing wrong with that Gnat. Not in my book at any rate and at a penny for a short back and sides he wouldn’t have been able to use Jake as the source of his beer tokens.
Anyway I digress:
As I was saying to Nigel on here yesterday pub names change and disappear as they are doing even today at a greater rate than ever before and I thought it might be interesting to look at a few of our own examples. I’ll start at the top of Whaley but there are as many in Whaley and more in Horwich End.
In 1823 John Johnson told the inquest into the murder of William Wood, where the scene is denoted by the Murder Stone, that he lived at The Bull’s Head half a mile from where the body was found.
I do not, as yet, know where the Bull’s Head was actually situated. The body was put on a cart and taken to The Male Hen except it wasn’t The Male Hen as we know it today: it was The Jodrell Arms.
Yes The Jodrell Arms in 1823 was The Male Hen it had recently changed its name from The Grapes but when it first opened its doors about 25 years previously to the people of Whaley it was The Farmer’s Arms.
That is why the older people of Whaley refer to the current Male Hen as the New Male Hen. I know it’s hard to follow but bear with me.
The funny thing is that when the people who found William Wood’s body they decided not to take him to the police station or a doctor’s or even leave him where he was pending further investigations. No they decided to throw him on a cart and take him to the pub. Whether they thought a quick pint of best bitter would revive him or not I do not know. But they did not take him the half mile back to the Bull’s Head and they went straight passed The Swan Beerhouse on Whaley Lane. There is no report of the landlord’s reaction to a couple of blokes arriving at his pub with a dead body on a cart and asking him to clear a table so that they could lay it out.
Could you imagine it today: a couple of blokes are driving back from Macclesfield, come across a dead body at the side of the road and in these days of crime scene investigations, forensic evidence and such they simply chuck the body in the back of the car and drop it off at The White Horse.
So I really don’t know the explanation for their actions except to say that it was along time ago.
Perhaps the friends of Whaley Station or the Council will have more information for us.
More pub stories and name changes later on perhaps.
R. S-S
