Some rum customers drank in the Shakespeare Hotel
THE Shakespeare Hotel was not the most salubrious of hostelries.
It closed due to the ring-road construction of the 1960s and 1970s. But several readers still have memories of the place.
Norman Mellor went there around 1953/54 on the evenings he and his chums attended Charlie Frost’s dance rooms : “Where lovely young ladies did their best to teach us to dance.”
He says : “I believe it was the first pub I went in for alcohol. No-one asked how old we were and so it turned out to be our Saturday night watering hole for a while.’’
Philip Aylward also had his first pint in there when he was invited to play for the Old Collegians football team in the Red Triangle League.
“They had about five teams and that was where they met. I was about 16 and can’t remember whether I had the pint before or after playing.
“I think the landlord then was Fred Hicks who went on to have the Spangled Bull at Kirkheaton.”
Dr Bill Armer says : “Reading about the Shake brought back many memories of a misspent youth.”
He started drinking there in 1968, slightly underage, when he was working in the then Wholesale Market.
“The Friendly and Trades Club and the Shake were the locals for many of us.
“It is fair to say the Shake saw a crosssection of Huddersfield society mixing in the Tap Room. The clientele ranged from downright underworld denizens to respectable working class, with all shades in between.
“Certainly a lively place, but by and large everyone rubbed along.
“My memories are largely of a sporting bar, with darts and dominoes predominating. Stakes were usually modest, ranging up to a pint, which cost a little less than 10p in those days.
“As ever, remembering one former pub leads to others : I spent many hours, and much money, frequenting the nearby Northgate, known as the Bucket of Blood, because it was a haunt of men from the nearby abattoir, Fox and Grapes, Fitzwilliam and Broadway. Largely happy days.”
The photograph of the pub, on the corner of Northgate and Brook Street, was supplied by Rafael Morris for a local history project being undertaken by Chris Marsden, chairman of Huddersfield Civic Society.
Chris is still looking for a photograph of the Poet’s Corner pub on Chapel Hill that closed in 1944.