A RECENT article on the demise of the district’s pubs led regular contributor Vincent Finn to reflect on his own memories of a historic Bradford establishment.

“I was a regular at the Cock and Bottle for some years,” says Mr Finn. “Like many pubs in the area, it was the custom that the landlord held the licence for many years. In the case of the ‘Cock’, Tom Ford and his wife Elsie held the licence for more than 30 years. Tom was always dressed in a suit with a waistcoat and tie. When he died his wife held the licence for many years afterwards.”

Adds Mr Finn: “In the years before the 1920s, beer was brewed on the premises. The Fords had an adopted daughter, Annie, and it was she who managed the beer quality.

“I have been in the cellar of the Cock and Bottle, it was a perfect temperature/climate to keep beer. Maybe that was why the beer sold out, it was always of such good quality.

“Rumour had it there was a tunnel from the cellar of the Cock to the Cathedral, but I never heard of anyone who saw the entrance.”

Mr Finn, who grew up in Barkerend and now lives in America, recalls a pianist playing in the Cock and Bottle at weekends. “He was a member of the family called Brendan Scarey, and he was blind,” he says. “The Church Bank entrance had a large music room and two snugs just off the main bar. The Otley Road entrance took you into the tap room.

“Immediately inside the entrance was a small nook, the Jug and Bottle Room, where in days gone by people would come in with a jug and buy a pint or a couple of gills to take home. They were mostly women, but there was a handful of women who used to sit in the Jug and Bottle Room and enjoy a drink and a smoke. Women weren’t allowed in the tap room.

“If you lived any distance from a pub, people would get their ‘home beer’ from a local off-licence. Up to the early 1950s, most off-licences had a barrel of beer in the cellar and a set of pumps on the counter. They sold draught beer in pints or gills, customers brought their own jugs. As a boy I used to go to the off-licence in Seaton Street for my grandmother, and for about four pence you would get almost a full jug, probably about three quarters of a pint.”

Up to 1959 the Cock and Bottle was a Melbourne house. “One of the features of Melbourne houses was that they had elaborate leaded light windows, and lots of mahogany woodwork,” says Mr Finn. “There are a couple of originals left in Bradford - the British Queen at Odsal and the Boy and Barrel in Bradford city centre.”

Mr Finn continues: “Tetley’s took over Melbourne brewery in 1958-59. One loss to beer drinkers was that Melbourne brewed a mild beer, which sold alongside its bitter. It was a very popular pint and disappeared with the takeover.

“The Cock’s days were numbered when the new highway cut across the junction at the top of Barkerend Road and Otley Road.”