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Bradford > BD1
> Boy & Barrel
Boy & Barrel
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Date of photo: 2007 |
© Copyright Betty
Longbottom and
licensed for reuse under this Creative
Commons Licence |
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The Boy & Barrel was situated at 60
Westgate. This pub closed in January 2021. |
Source: John Yeadon |
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According to 19th century local historians,
James and Cudworth, there was an old public house called Bacchus, named
after the God of wine. Often represented on signs as a chubby infant on a
barrel, hence the name.
It was licensed by the 1770s when the landlord was a Richard Mortimer. His
daughter Nanny, married William Scholefield, who took over towards the end
of the century.
In 1874 Richard Mason Scholefield, a wool broker sold the Boy and Barrel and
with a neighbouring beerhouse to local brewers Wallers for £5,000. The
building was probably rebuilt in the early part of the 19th century.
In 184, a petition was organised against the pub by the local vicar and
others about the concerts held there, to which, it was alleged, ‘hundreds of
young persons both male and female’ went. The following year the licence was
refused because of disorderly company and prostitutes on the premises, but
renewed the next year to a ‘new and respectable tenant', who had closed the
concert room. In 1853, a man bit off part of another man’s nose in a fight
and two years later four soldiers created a disturbance, breaking glasses
and assaulting a policeman. The town’s shoemakers had a club room there.
The Boy and Barrel was converted into a gin-palace style pub about this
time, with large external window and lavish interior fittings. This didn’t
extend to the toilet facilities as in 1918 the magistrates only renewed the
licence on condition they were improved.
Karaoke came later. According to one new landlady it retained into a new
millennium,a ‘reputation for disorder’. She claimed it had ghosts, perhaps
landlord Walter Waters, who cut his throat in October 1833 while his mind
was disturbed when suffering from scarlet fever.
In 1959 the pub featured in the film Room at the Top. And in 2012 the pub
featured in the controversial Channel 4 documentary Make Bradford British.
It was refurbished in early 2020 but closed again and the owner sold it to
another pub company and once again put up for sale by June 2022. Later the
Boy and Barrel was used as a cannabis factory and more than 500 plants were
found on the premises worth more than £520,000 with a predicted yield of at
least 52 kg. Albanian national Anduel Rupo was jailed for two years for the
offence at Bradford Crown Court. |
Paul Jennings (June 2022) |
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