Why Buy The Pub?

Keeping Money Local

 

 

It is obvious why a local landowner at the time of the Industrial Revolution would wish to own a local pub. As revealed below, Robert Hargreaves was a clever businessman.

Robert Hargreaves lived in a splendid Elizabethan Manor House called Knightley Grange.

It is still very strange why a land owner living in an ecclesiastical estate should own a Public House (later named after him) in Lancashire.

However with a little research we soon found out why. The villages surrounding Pendle were responsible for four fifths of all cotton production in Lancashire.

Land owners were encouraged to set up Mills in the area and to invest in leisure facilities for the workers.

This was at a time when there was great industrial unrest so it is not surprising that Land Owners would purchase Public Houses, thereby ensuring that money earned by their workers went straight back into their pockets and not outside the community.

Laneshawbridge is a beautifully located small village on the road from Colne to Keighly, at the crossroads of the old Herder’s Track to Haworth, birthplace of the Brontes. A perennially popular residential village, Laneshawbridge shares all the surrounding history and boasts many charming cottages and houses.

It is therefore doubly obvious why this Public House was of such commercial interest sitting adjacant to the main throughfare for all the flocks.

The pub was the focal point for the village and by ensuring that facilities were made available for the mill workers, Hargreaves also ensured that any dissent could be not only strictly controlled but monitored.

By the time the son (Robert) took over the estate and also at the time his son became a Justice of the Peace, any trouble in the locality (from 1880) could easily be addressed.