Description

This list entry was subjected to a Minor Enhancement 11 June 2024 to amend details in the description, add Historical Note and Sources

SE 0423 and SE 0523
12/283

SOWERBY BRIDGE
TOWN HALL STREET (north side)
No 17, The Bull on the Bridge

(Formerly listed as The Bulls Head, TOWN HALL STREET)

GV
II

Hotel. Mid-C19
Built of ashlar with a slate roof, being of three storeys above a basement. It has a three-bay frontage with an additional corner bay on the left (south). The basement is rusticated and has paired sashes, upper floors have moulded cill bands. There is a moulded cornice to the eaves supporting a blocking course above. The roof has brick end stacks.
The central bay breaks forward and has an entrance approached by external steps with twisted iron balusters. This entrance has a four-panel door under a fanlight set in around-arched, quoined architrave with imposts and a bulls-head keystone, flanked by Tuscan pilasters supporting an entablature with a dentil cornice. Above this door (at first-floor) is a sash window set in an architrave with a triangular pediment supported by consoles. Above (second-floor) are a pair of hood-moulded round-arched sashes, the cill supported by small consoles. Other bays have paired sashes with cills that break forward of the cill bands, supported by block corbels. The corner bay has basement windows which are shouldered-arched; a ground floor canted bay window with a cornice and blocking course; a sash with console cornice to first floor, and paired round-arch sashes with hoodmoulds to the second-floor.

Included for group value.

Listing NGR: SE0594723585

History

Formerly the Bull’s Head Inn, the original inn was a vernacular building of coursed stone and three storeys but with a much lower eaves, a stone slate roof and stone mullioned windows. Its location on the turnpike road between Halifax and Rochdale, built in the 1790s, made it a popular coaching inn and a convenient place to hold meetings. For instance, the Sowerby Bridge Board of Health, the forerunner of the local council, held its inaugural meeting here in 1856. Renamed the Bull’s Head Hotel, it was substantially rebuilt in 1865 when it was acquired by John Naylor of the Albion Brewery, Warley. The angled main elevation is thought to preserve that of the original building, which is in turn believed to have been aligned with an early packhorse route predating the turnpike road. In 1895, the landlord was Thomas Riley, at which time a contemporary directory described it as ‘the most important hotel in the locality’, it was described as comprising a dining room, coffee room, smoke room and a number of ensuite bedrooms. Further alterations were proposed in 1898 when it was owned by the Halifax Brewery Company, and again in 1911 and 1916 for J. Alderson and Company Limited of Warley Springs Brewery. Following a short period of closure, it reopened in 2015 under the new name ‘The Bull on the Bridge’.

External Links

• Wikidata Q26409994

External links are from the relevant listing authority and, where applicable, Wikidata. Wikidata IDs may be related buildings as well as this specific building. If you want to add or update a link, you will need to do so by editing the Wikidata entry.

Recommended Books

• 
  Cork: City and County (Pevsner Architectural Guides: Buildings of Ireland)
• 
  Somerset: South and West (Pevsner Architectural Guides) (Pevsner Architectural Guides: Buildings of England)
• 
  Yorkshire West Riding: Sheffield and the South (Pevsner Architectural Guides: Buildings of England)
• 
  Central Leinster: Kildare, Laois and Offaly (Pevsner Architectural Guides: Buildings of Ireland)
• 
  Staffordshire (Pevsner Architectural Guides: Buildings of England)
• 
  London 3: North West: North West v. 3 (Pevsner Architectural Guides: Buildings of England)