Much Hoole - Rose & Crown

Name: The Rose & Crown Inn

Address: Turnpike Road (now Liverpool Old Road), Much Hoole

c.1920s

Listed landlords at the Rose & Crown were John Banks (1841), Richard Wilson (1851-), Nicholas Topping (1869-82), Matthew Forshaw (1889-), Robert Norris (1901), John Robert Murray (1911-) and Albert Pierrepoint (1954-).

1844 Map

1841 Census - John Banks

1851 Census Richard Wilson

PRESTON POLICE CASES
...Cunliffe and Watson's office, with having stolen a pair of Wellington boots, the property of Richard Wilson, of the Rose and Crown Inn, Much Hoole, on the 2nd June last. The prisoner, it seemed, stopped at the house of the defendant...
Tuesday 10 February 1852 Preston Chronicle

1854 Mannex Directory Richard Wilson

1861 Census Richard Wilson

1869 Slater's Directory

1871 Census Nicholas Topping

1881 Census Nicholas Topping

Death Notices
January 24 at his residence, the Rose and Crown Hotel, Much Hoole, Nicholas Topping aged 64 years. 
Saturday 21 January 1882 Preston Herald

Following Nicholas' death in 1882 the family were left to run the pub and it wasn't long before his daughter Jane married and together with husband Matthew Forshaw they took over the business, although their time there was not always smooth running.

1882 Marriage of Nicholas Topping's daughter Jane to Matthew Forshaw

...Dr. Gilbertson, upon the body of a child, eighteen months old, named Fanny, daughter Matthew Forshaw, landlord the Rose and Crown, Much Hoole. The evidence showed that Wednesday afternoon the deceased was the garden at the rear the house...
Saturday 20 April 1889 Preston Herald

LEYLAND PETTY SESSIONS
John Newton, Black Horse, Much Hoole, supplied sample of whisky which was found to be under proof, or per cent, too weak. Matthew Forshaw, Rose and Crown Inn, Much Hoole, also supplied sample of whisky...
Wednesday 28 August 1889 Preston Herald

1891 Census Matthew Forshaw

At the Leyland Petty Sessions, on Monday, Matthew Forshaw, landlord of the Rose and Crown Inn, Much Hoole, was summoned for having his house open during prohibited hours.
Saturday 19 November 1892 Preston Chronicle

1895 Kelly's Directory Matthew Forshaw

1901 Census Robert Norris

To Let

Fully Licensed House and Small Farm attached—the Rose and Crown Inn. Much Hoole together with 8 acres of excellent land and suitable farm buildings...

Saturday 14 August 1909 Northern Daily Telegraph

The next landlord at the Inn was John Robert Murray, who ten years earlier had been running the Dolphin at Longton. His father too was an Innkeeper in Kirkham running the George Hotel.

Dolphin Inn, Longton

1911 Census John Robert Murray

It was to be in the 1950s that the Rose & Crown's most infamous landlord took over the running of the Inn alongside his other part-time job...

Mr. Albert Pierrepoint is to transfer to the 

Rose and Crown, at Much Hoole...
Sunday 06 June 1954 Weekly Dispatch (London)

Albert Pierrepoint

Albert Pierrepoint (30 March 1905 – 10 July 1992) was an English hangman who executed between 435 and 600 people in a 25-year career that ended in 1956. His father Henry and uncle Thomas were official hangmen before him.

Pierrepoint was born in Clayton in the West Riding of Yorkshire. His family struggled financially because of his father's intermittent employment and heavy drinking. Pierrepoint knew from an early age that he wanted to become a hangman, and was taken on as an assistant executioner in September 1932, aged 27. His first execution was in December that year, alongside his uncle Tom. In October 1941 he undertook his first hanging as lead executioner.

During his tenure he hanged 200 people who had been convicted of war crimes in Germany and Austria, as well as several high-profile murderers—including Gordon Cummins (the Blackout Ripper), John Haigh (the Acid Bath Murderer) and John Christie (the Rillington Place Strangler). He undertook several contentious executions, including Timothy Evans, Derek Bentley and Ruth Ellis and executions for high treason—William Joyce (also known as Lord Haw-Haw) and John Amery—and treachery, with the hanging of Theodore Schurch.

In 1956 Pierrepoint was involved in a dispute with a sheriff over payment, leading to his retirement from hanging. He ran a pub in Lancashire from the mid-1940s until the 1960s. 

After the war, Pierrepoint left the delivery business, and took over the lease of a pub, the Help the Poor Struggler on Manchester Road, in the Hollinwood area of Oldham. 

In the 1950s he left the pub and took a lease of the larger Rose and Crown at Much Hoole near Preston, Lancashire. He later said that he changed his main occupation because:

I wanted to run my own business so that I should be under no obligation when I took time off...I could take a three o'clock plane from Dublin after conducting an execution there and be opening my bar without comment at half past five.
(Courtesy of Wikipedia)

Pierrepoint stays put
...was replacing another as Briton's public hangman No. 1 were denied today. Albert Pierrepoint, landlord of the Rose and Crown, at Much Hoole, near Preston, is not retiring and his assistant, Harry Allen, landlord of the Junction Hotel...
Wednesday 12 October 1955 Manchester Evening News

HANGMAN PIERREPOINT
...POLITICAL CORRESPONDENT WHERE HE WORKED WHERE HE WORKS ALBERT PIERREPOINT, Pentonville. His pub—the Rose and Crown at Much Hoole. Britain's publican Public Executioner, has resigned his part-time job as chief hangman...
Sunday 26 February 1956 Sunday Mirror

The pub finally closed in 2002 and was turned into the Bangla Fusion restaurant.

2015 Image of Bangla Fusion (Google Maps)