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The Queens Hotel was situated at 300 Manchester Road.

My father, John Vesey, was the landlord of the this pub between March 1955 and February 1958, though I think only for a period of about two years at most. I remember living there, with my parents and siblings, as a child of about 8-9 years old. As I remember it, it was a large, square building, fronting onto the main road, with at least two bars, a ballroom where weekend dances were held, and upstairs two more floors with several bedrooms, some of which were full of junk such as stuffed bears and bull's horns, all of which had no doubt once graced the bars below, and which to me as child were quite scary. The floor, in the main bar at least, was tiled and it was my job to mop it on Saturday mornings before opening time. On Sunday mornings I and my siblings would race downstairs to the ballroom, to search under the seats and tables for coins or notes dropped by customers who had perhaps slightly overindulged the night before. (I once found a silver penknife which became a treasured possession, but which for some strange reason I think I traded for a toy soldier at school.) At the back there was what seemed to me, as a young child, a huge yard, cobbled I think, with big wooden gates that looked over onto a croft, possibly a bombsite from the war. This yard was where the dray used to pull in and the draymen used to remove empty beer barrels and restock the cellar with full barrels through a trapdoor into the cellar below, using ropes if I remember rightly. It was a process that always fascinated me, as did the cellar itself, with its barrels and lines, where I sometimes helped my mother clear the ash out of the boiler - needless to say a rather dirty, unpleasant job. It was where too an occasional rat could be seen scurrying about ... I believe Albert Pierrepoint was the landlord of Help the Poor Struggler at 303 Manchester Road during the time we lived at the Queen's Hotel and that the two pubs were more or less opposite each other or at least quite close. At any rate I think he occasionally dropped into the Queen's for a pint or tipple of some sort. I even remember seeing him standing at the bar once or twice, in trilby and mac, and feeling more frightened of him than the stuffed bears or bullhorns upstairs ... I went back to see the pub a good many years ago now, hoping to have a pint in there as an adult and do some reminiscing, but to my dismay it had been demolished.

Eugene Vesey (February 2023)

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