WE think of Manchester or Leeds or Wakefield Roads as once lined with pubs but every main route into the city had its share. Most are now gone, saying a lot about the city’s, and indeed the country’s, recent history.

Take the route from Greengates, for example, along which I have regularly travelled. At the junction the Seven Stars is now a restaurant and the Roebuck was demolished. Up the hill, the Oddfellows Arms is the only one still trading on Harrogate Road. The Station Hotel is now a shop. The Ring o’ Bells, a rather fine example of an inter-war pub, was demolished and replaced by a convenience store.

Another example, the Prince of Wales, is now a heap of rubble. Above it the Wellington Hotel, latterly TJ Wellington’s, has been put to other uses. And at Undercliffe, the Robin Hood is now a beauty parlour, whilst below it the Green Man, which dated back to the 18th century, is being converted into an Islamic centre.

Further down the hill, the former Beldon Hotel has also been altered and converted to other uses.

We reach then the Peel Park Hotel, which has become the Al Manaar Institute. All of those pubs had their varied histories, but I focus here on the Peel Park.

A licence was granted in 1852 to Daniel Riddiough, born in Colne, for the Undercliffe Hotel, whose name was changed fairly quickly to that of the new adjoining public park. Riddiough was an enterprising character, in business variously as a blacksmith, builder, quarry owner and farmer, as well as a publican. He also set up on the premises the Peel Park Brewery. This became a limited company in 1872. But within just 10 years, it was wound up ‘in an utterly insolvent condition’, the creditors being owed £49,000.

Eventually it was sold back to Riddiough, who managed to pay off the debts. It was said to have been oversold originally and it would seem also to have bought too many pubs too quickly. It owned the Bolton Hotel, at the other side of Peel Park, and other pubs including the Beldon Hotel and the Hare and Hounds at Undercliffe and the Roebuck at Greengates.

The Peel Park itself had been extended in 1877 to create the large lounge overlooking the park.

In this photograph, (from the former Bass North) it is seen in its Hammonds days, the company having bought it and several other former Peel Park Brewery pubs in 1891. It was therefore a Bass pub when I occasionally bobbed in, late 1980s/early 90s, after a walk in the park.

I sometimes used to muse over the park’s temperance monuments and its once no-drink policy, when at each main entrance there was a large pub. It seemed to do a good enough trade in the tap room and lounge and was lively on a weekend night.

If we continue down Otley Road, there once traded the Cambridge Hotel, New Inn, Airedale, George, Olive Branch and Cock and Bottle. Only the Airedale does now.

* Dr Paul Jennings is author of The Local: A History of the English Pub (new revised third edition), Bradford Pubs and Working-Class Lives in Edwardian Harrogate. Available at Waterstones, WH Smith and online.