Pen & Wig / Wellington / Railway Inn, New Bailey Street

Pen & Wig, New Bailey Street, 1990. (c) deltrems at flickr.

On the Salford edge of our boundary, and just opposite the Mark Addy pub, was the Pen & Wig on the corner of New Bailey Street and Brown Cross Street.  A small two-roomed pub with central bar area, it was a regular haunt for people coming out of the adjacent court rooms following charges.  More often than not, they would try the Mark Addy first but would be refused entrance and would therefore opt for the more downmarket alternative. The pub was previously known as the Wellington, seen below as a Wilsons house in the 1960s or '70s.  Random fact about the Wellington: it was the first pub in Salford to be granted a TV licence in 1952 [1].  The Pen & Wig was so renamed, when the courts were built, in 1978.  A Websters pub, it survived until 1998 and it was demolished in 2001, first for a car park and now for an office block and Spar shop on the same site.

Wellington, New Bailey Street. (c) Salford forum.

In 1863 there was a butcher's shop on this site and this became a beerhouse ran by John T Bailey, named as the Railway Inn in the 1870s.  A few years later it became the Wellington Inn and in 1904 it was taken over by Wilsons Brewery after a few years as a Britannia Brewery house.  Wilsons made many changes to the Wellington over the years, cladding the ground floor in the traditional cream tiles and adding the "Sign of Quality" draughtboard where the corner door used to be [2].

Wellington, New Bailey Street, 1965. (c) Neil Richardson [2].

1. Roy Bullock at http://services/salford.gov.uk/forum.

2. Salford Pubs. Part One: The Old Town, including Chapel Street, Greengate and the Adelphi, Neil Richardson (2003).