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The Canteen Inn was situated on Radcliffe Street. This pub closed in the early 1960s.

Source: David Gartside

In 1964, when the terraced houses of the old St Mary’s Ward in Oldham were being pulled down, the BBC made a film there, called “The End of the Street”. The Canteen Inn on the corner of Mulliner Street and Radcliffe Street featured in the film, with landlady Catherine Mayall saying goodbye to her customers and wishing them well as they prepared to move out to the new estates around the town. Twenty years later the BBC returned and made another film, containing interviews with people living in the flats in the new St Mary’s Ward and also featuring the 1964 scenes at the Canteen Inn. How things have changed in St Mary’s Ward! The Canteen opened in 1858 and it was typical of Oldham’s street-corner beerhouses. Two small houses were combined to get the licence, but ten years after it opened the tenant was subletting the part fronting Radcliffe Street as a dwelling for 3/10d a week, plus 3d for the gas. He was told to reinstate the beerhouse or lose his licence. So the undertenant had to move out and find somewhere else to live for his 3/10d a week. By the 1880s brewers J W Lees owned the Canteen. It was licensed to sell wine as well as beer in the 1890s and the building was then in fair repair with four drinking rooms, three bedrooms and overnight accommodation. The Canteen became a fully licensed public house in 1961 but three years later Mulliner Street was about to be demolished and on 16th December 1964 Catherine Mayall called the final ‘Last orders’.

Bob Poyner (April 2024)

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