Robin Hood Farm (Leigh)

From International Robin Hood Bibliography
Locality
Coordinate 53.480694, -2.537884
Adm. div. Lancashire
Vicinity 263 St Helens Road, Aspull Common, Leigh
Type Public house
Interest Robin Hood name
Status Defunct
First Record 1846
A.k.a. Robin Hood Farm
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Site of the Robin Hood/Robin Hood Farm.
The site of the Robin Hood/Robin Hood Farm / Google Earth Street View.

By Henrik Thiil Nielsen, 2021-01-20. Revised by Henrik Thiil Nielsen, 2022-04-22.

A Robin Hood public house on St Helens Road at Aspull Common, Leigh, Lancashire, was in existence by 1846. It was situated on or near the plot currently occupied by Smiths Service Centre and Mike Ince Car Sales. After it went out of business as a pub, it became known as Robin Hood Farm.

The pub is first recorded in the tithe award for Pennington (1846), where it is listed as 'Robin Hood Public House [with] outbuildings and yard', with Daniel Gaskell, Esq., as landowner, Ellen Eckersley as occupier, '[p]asture' as state of cultivation, and an area of 2 acres and 24 perches (8700.74 m2).[1] It is not included on the oldest 6" O.S. map of the area, which was published in 1849 and based on a survey carried out 1845–47. By 1894, when the first revised edition of the 6" O.S. map was published, the pub had become Robin Hood Farm, a name included on the maps at least as late as 1951. In view of the amount of land listed in the tithe award, it would seem likely that the place had been run as a public house cum farm before it became a farm only.

A piece in a local paper on the death of the oldest lady in Leigh, 94 year old Mrs Sarah Aspinall of 7 Aspull Common, in 1941, it was noted that

She remembered the time when there was no Flash at Pennington, and when there was no Pennington railway bridge. The only railway line in the district was a single line from Bolton to Kenyon, and Mrs. Aspinall could remember a row of stately poplar trees running from Aspull Common to Pennington Hall, for the houses in St. Helens-road had not then been built. Robin Hood Farm was in those days a public house. It had a gaily painted sign of Robin Hood outside.[2]

At some point, probably in the late 19th or early 20th century, a new Robin Hood pub opened a few tens of metres to the north, on 257 St Helens Road. This is still in business as of 2021.

Gazetteers

MS sources

  • 1846 tithe award for Pennington ('Penington), Leigh, online at the Genealogist, Piece 18, sub-piece 242, Image 010 (£)
  • accompanying map, online at the Genealogist, Piece 18, sub-piece 242, Sub-Image 001 (£).

Maps

Background

Also see


Notes

  1. 1846 tithe award for Pennington ('Penington), Leigh, online at the Genealogist, Piece 18, sub-piece 242, Image 010 (£); accompanying map, online at the Genealogist, Piece 18, sub-piece 242, Sub-Image 001 (£).
  2. Leigh Wiki: Death of Leigh's Oldest Lady.