Chorley's Inns and Taverns: Whittle-le-Woods

Name: The Duke of York Inn

Address: Chorley Road, Whittle-le-Woods

The Duke of York has been open since the early 1800's and used to be situated on the side of the canal leading to the mill, but this has long since closed and been filled in and the Inn itself has also been unoccupied for a number of years and is now in a state of disrepair. Back in the 1840's the road was known as Lord Street but by the 1861 census it had changed to Chorley Road and today is referred to as Chorley Old Road

Listed on the 1824 directory for the Whittle area was an Inn called the "Packet Boat", which I strongly suspect was the name of this Inn prior to being the Duke of York based on the fact that many Inns located alongside the canals throughout England around this time were called "Packet Boat" or some reference to this on account of the fact that people would congregate there waiting for the packet boats to come by from the local mill. There were only two Inns in Whittle located on the canal, the Navigation and the Duke of York; the former already bears reference to it's location hence my thoughts on the origins of the Duke.

This is supported by the following article on the Tow Path Treks Website >>

www.towpathtreks.co.uk

That being the case, the landlord in 1824 would have been Daniel Aspull.

1824 Directory

Listed landlords at the Duke of York were William Holding (1841-51), James Fryer (1861), Evan Kershaw (1871), Hugh Barton (1881), Alice Barton (1891), John Barton (1901-21) and Elizabeth Ann Haydock (1935).