Royal / Widows Rest, Eccles New Road

Royal, Eccles New Road, Salford. (c) Salford Pubs of the 70s at flickr [1].

This pub only closed in 1999, when it had spent its last few years renamed the Widows Rest, a nickname that the boozer had held since the Victorian era due its role in reviving and consoling grievers.  The original beerhouse here on the corner of Cemetery Road and Eccles New Road was the Royal Hotel which opened in the 1860s, and the owner, Henry Bowden, argued that he needed a full licence as his was the nearest licensed premises to Weaste Cemetery.  He described how women who fainted at funerals there would have to be carried 430 yards to the Swan Hotel on Weaste Lane for a reviving glass of brandy, and a year later, he was rewarded with a full licence [1]!

Royal Hotel, Eccles New Road, Salford (right). (c) born into a steam ear. 1939. at flickr.

By the early 1900s, Hardy's Crown Brewery owned the Royal and despite their plans for a new hotel being rejected many times before after the war, they finally were granted permission to rebuilt the pub in the 1930s.  The new, bigger pub had passed to Bass North West by the 1980s and they enlarged the lounge during a refurb.  In the mid-1990s the pub was renamed the Widows Rest but it only lasted a few years and was derelict from 1999, being knocked down at some point during the mid-2000s [1].  As ever, since the demolition of this pub, nothing has been built on this corner.

1. www.flickr.com/photos/61756486@N05.

2. Salford Pubs - Part Three: Including Cross Lane, Broad Street, Hanky Park, the Height, Brindleheath, Charlestown and Weaste, Neil Richardson (2003).