Whittle-le-Woods - Vine Tavern

Name: The Vine Tavern

Address: Sandy Lane nr Whittle Springs, Whittle-le-Woods

The Vine Tavern was a beer house run from the farm of John Crook in the 1860s. John was a local man, born in 1810 in Wheelton and is recorded on the 1869 Slater's Directory as a "Retailer of Beer" near Whittle Springs.

1845 Map

The route of the enumerator who recorded the census records in 1861 (below) confirms that John Crook's farm was located between New Springs and South Hill RC Chapel on Sandy Lane close to the Red Cat Inn which at that time was run by the Eccles family so would have been either Tan House, Scotson's, Higher Fold or Critchley's farm.

1835 Marriage Record of John Crook and Esther Philipson

Records from 1835 (above and below) confirm this was the year John got married and was also listed as occupying 60 acres of land, with buildings on Sandy Lane.

1835 Land Register 

By 1841 they were living in nearby Heath Charnock near Anglezarke reservoir at a property called Knowsley, which was next to Dill Cottage, which many will know was to become the Yew Tree Inn in the decades that followed.

Yew Tree Inn

1841 Census - Heath Charnock

By 1851 the family had left Knowsley and moved west to a farm at Hall i'th Hill just south of Chorley where the golf club is today. John is absent from the census record, his whereabouts unknown. 

1851 Census - Esther Crook Hall i'th Hill

It was on the 1861 census that we see John, Esther and the rest of the family living on Sandy Lane, from where he ran the Vine Tavern and farm. Directory records from 1869 confirm he was a beer seller and a farmer.

1861 Census - Sandy Lane Whittle-le-Woods

1869 Slater's Directory of Retailers of Beer

1869 Slater's Directory of Farmers

THE WIGAN OBSERVER AND DISTRICT ADVERTISER.. FRIDAY. SEPTEMBER 3. 1869

…Thos. Sumner, Bolton-street, Chorley; John Crook, Vine Tavern, Whittle-le-Woods; and James Halstead, Man’s Hall, Hoghton. About half-past seven o’clock the court rose, and the hearing a number of applications for renewals, several were refused...

03 September 1869 - Wigan Observer and District Advertiser - Wigan, Lancashire

The above excerpt from the Wigan Observer appears to have heralded the end of the Vine Inn and two years later the family had moved once more, back to Wheelton where they lived at Ratten Clough Farm.

1871 Census - Ratten Clough Farm, Wheelton

Ruins of Ratten Clough Farm today.