WHO remembers the Bowling Park Hotel? In the latest of his look backs at old Bradford pubs, Dr PAUL JENNINGS writes about the Wakefield Road establishment:

Other than the Bedford at its foot and the Royal Engineer at Dudley Hill, I don’t think I have featured another Wakefield Road pub in these pieces.

I remedy that omission here with the Bowling Park Hotel, which stood opposite St John’s Church at the junction with New Hey Road.

It opened as a beerhouse named the Graziers’ Inn in 1864, with one James Robertshaw its first licensee. It was then granted a full licence in 1881 to William Mathers, formerly a publican in Leeds. At this point it was re-named the Bowling Park Hotel, the year following the opening of the lovely 53-acre park.

A Post Office Directory of this time shows no fewer than 24 pubs in Wakefield Road, some with rather attractive names like the Busy Bee Inn, the Chinese Temple or the Tichborne Arms, formerly the Swan Tap and presumably renamed for the famous ‘claimant’, who claimed he was the missing heir to the Tichborne baronetcy but having failed to convince a civil court in 1871 was then convicted of perjury and given 14 years in prison.

The pub became part of the tied estate of brewers JR Holmes and Sons of Dowley Gap, Bingley and passed then to Bradford brewers Hammonds when they acquired the firm and its 51 pubs in 1919. My photo (which the former Bass North were good enough to let me copy some years ago when I was doing research at their Headingley office)dates from the tenancy of Hannah Smith, who held the licence from 1899 to 1906. That may well be her in the doorway but unfortunately I am unable to put names to any of the people. Note the woman in the shawl, which was worn by many working-class women at this time.

Nor I'm afraid do I have any personal memories of the pub. Perhaps readers can help. I knew the area as a boy, cycling from our Little Horton home through Bowling Park to my aunt and uncle’s house in East Bowling. By then Wakefield Road and the adjoining streets were undergoing the massive redevelopment which was to transform the area utterly. I remember my aunt and uncle attending a meeting to protest what they saw as the destruction of East Bowling by the new highway. Which had no effect. Houses, shops and pubs all went in the redevelopment.

Licensing records show that in 1966 council planning officers met with the Bradford Brewers Association to discuss the redevelopment of both Wakefield and Manchester Roads, which between them contained a large number of licensed houses, many described as ‘small and outdated’. Only a limited number of new sites for pubs were available and therefore the aim was to distribute them equitably among their owners. The Bowling Park Hotel was one of those closed, in 1967, along with the Greenhouse Inn. Many others also went. The site of the Bowling Park became part of a giant sunken roundabout.

* Dr Paul Jennings is author of The Local: A History of the English Pub and Bradford Pubs. Visit pauljenningshistorian.wordpress.com and thehistorypress.co.uk