Hare and Hounds

Name: The Hare and Hounds Inn

Address: 65, Standish Street, Chorley

The Hare & Hounds right of picture in the 1960s

The Hare and Hounds was located next door to the Lightoller family's cotton mill on Standish Street, an area of Chorley known as "Little Ireland" due to the large number of Irish families that settled there following the potato famine of the mid-1800s.  The pub no longer stands but was known locally as the "War Office" which may indicate the type of night out one could expect when calling at the Inn!

Chorley's Irish community centred on Standish Street and would earn the nickname of "Little Ireland" or "Club Street". As the cotton mills went up at the latter end of the 18th and the turn of the 19th century, so did the shops, taverns and housing around it. Standish Street had two cotton mills both owned by the family name of Lightoller, and the local inn there was the Hare and Hounds, a tavern well known for its occasional drunken riots. Attitudes to the local Irish community were mixed as they were elsewhere. Riots occurred in 1850 and 1864 in Standish Street between the Irish on one side and the Orange Order on the other, with the latter assuming some sort of armed uprising from the Irish despite the lack of evidence to prove this theory.  Children worked long hours at the mills despite the 1840's legislation set up to prevent this, though some employers still found ways to avoid the law by making children work their lunch breaks to clean the machinery sometimes resulting in the occasional accident. 
(Excerpt from http://www.acwrt.org.uk/profile_Barnacles--Alabama-Crewman.asp)

Listed landlords included John Walker (1871), Patrick Loughlin (1881), Bernard Commons (1891), John Lister (1901), Joseph Locke (1911), Sophia Glazebrook (1921) and George Fishwick (1936).

1871 Census

1881 Census

1891 Census

 “The Inn was a favourite drinking place for residents of Chorley who were of Irish origin. This was in the 1940s and 50s and so many fights took place inside the pub that local people called it ‘The War Office’.” Jack Winrow (2011).

1901 Census

1911 Census

The Hare and Hounds undergoing maintenance

1921 Census Sophia Glazebrook

The photos above and below show the early stages of the redevelopment of Lightoller's Mill site where the Hare & Hounds originally stood on Standish Street in early 2021.