HISTORY OF BATH HOTEL

My ankle felt like I’d been on the receiving end of a tackle from Ron ‘Chopper’ Harris – pictured here in 1971 trying to halt Manchester United’s George Best UB historian Dave Green has supplied even more information about The Bath Hotel off Manchester Road that used to overlook Slaithwaite Spa.

It’s now a private house and owner David Faulkner has been trying to discover its past.

It closed in the 1960s - the last landlord and landlady were Percy and Hilda Beech.

Linthwaite United FC used the cellar as a changing room and the Beatles once called in the pub for morning coffee on their way home to Liverpool.

Dave says the A62 from Thornton Lodge to Marsden was constructed in 1824, opening up the Colne Valley for travel.

The Spa baths and pleasure gardens opened in 1825 and Dave says the pub appears to have been built about 1840 by Thomas Parkin, who was also responsible for building other pubs in the Colne Valley, such as the Coach and Horses, the Horse and Groom and he was licensee of the Star Inn and Brewery, which became the Bull and Dog.

The Carter family ran The Bath Hotel for the first 25 years. It became part of Benjamin Ainley and Sons of Ainley Top and passed to Bentley and Shaw in 1928.

That company was subsequently taken over by Hammonds and later by Bass Charrington in the 1960s. It closed in 1967.