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Picture source: Peter Ashworth
The Bay Horse was situated at 30 Bolton Old Road.
My great-grandmother Edna Clough and her ‘husband’ Jack Greenough, were the publicans from 1936(?) thru 1951; and my father Arthur Parry, his mother Edna Parry (née Clough) and his two sisters moved to the Bay Horse Inn in 1936… My father wrote some description of the location of the Bay Horse Inn after he was displaced from the idyllic countryside through the fallout of his mother’s divorce: an extract: “The pub stood on the corner of High Street and Bolton Old Road. Bolton Old Road was not a road in the strictest sense of the word, but was really a street. It was flanked on both sides by long row housing built, I would guess, about 1880. The houses generally consisted of two bedrooms upstairs and two rooms down with perhaps a tiny kitchen in the rear. Some had been modernized with an indoor toilet and maybe a bath. The other had one cold water tap and the toilet outside – no bath. After all, they were the homes of the working class and this was England. The coal mines were privately owned.” There were no passengers riding on the Bay Horse – all were crew. Mother had no money. She was working her passage and ours by playing the piano, waiting on customers, cooking, and helping with the cleaning. When Grandma catered for weddings and parties, that meant extra work for everyone. My roll on these occasions was at the sink. Standing on a small stool, I seemed to be washing dishes forever. Sometimes, my sisters would take it in turns with me; the only times we were allowed to stay up late. Mother was, at the beginning, constantly reminded by Grandma how well off she was. When the divorce money came through, thirty-seven shillings and sixpence per week, Grandma took thirty shillings. If I received a few pennies for my rendition of ‘When the Poppies Bloom Again’ on a Saturday night in the singing room, I gave them to Mother. Years before, we had walked through Bell Green Lane eager to see our new farm home. We were passing through George Orwell’s ‘Wigan Pier’ then. Now, we lived on it.
Kevan Parry (February 2016)
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Other Photos
Date of photo: 1950	Picture source: Kevan Parry