P h o t o B l o g

Monday 23 March 2009

Mossley on Monday: The Shears


Last week we saw a photo of a building on Carrhill Road known as the Old School House, which had an interesting history.

Today's photo is of the building next door, which also has an interesting past. This house is known as "The Shears".

It was built in 1794 as a pub - named the Shears Inn, in reference to sheep shearing, to reflect the importance of the woollen industry in Mossley at that time. It was the first pub to be built in the Roughtown area of Mossley. The bar rooms were on the first floor level, entered by the side door at the top of a flight of steps.

In 1856 a meeting was held in The Shears to discuss the setting up of a Co-operative Union for Mossley. Regular vegetable shows and September Fairs were also held there. The pub had its own brewhouse and stabling.

In 1913 inspectors tried to close the pub on account of the ceilings being too low, the approach being too steep and police supervision too difficult! The brewery lowered the floor by 16 inches and created a less steep flight of steps to replace the steep slope and the pub survived until 1970. It has now been converted into a pair of houses.

See Google Aerial View of this location.
See LiveSearch Birds Eye View of this location.

3 comments:

  1. Could be that the low ceiling caused as many sore heads as the beer. The steep stairs after a few pints doesn't sound much fun either. Add in a rolling pin if you ever made it home and drinking in those days must have been a risky occupation.

    It reminded me (the stairs, not the drinking) of a visit to some first floor offices in Ashton and nearly breaking my neck coming down the stairs. It turned out that one of the steps near the top of the stairs was narrower than the rest. From what I was told, it was deliberately made like that so that any burglar would drop all he'd pinched and wake the dog, before limping away with a twisted ankle.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. i can remember going in there with my dad .they used to have a minor bird behind the bar

      Delete
  2. We as a family used to live across the road from the Shears Inn and I remember on one occasion the back garden of the pub flooded and we used an upturned table as a boat

    ReplyDelete

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