Category: Preston

Preston Venues 47 to 48

As you follow the No 23 bus route through the suburb of Plungington and then onto Adelphi Street you reach a batch of retail units just prior to the dramatically improved large roundabout outside the University complex. Contained within these establishments are a batch of takeaways and also the Equator Café. My old pal Rick Clegg is an aspiring comedian, and the café was the site of his first ever stand-up performance, so time will tell if I attended a moment of history!  

Opposite the café there has always been a public house. It first opened around 1850 as the Hearts of Oak and like many of these vintage pubs with a long history, it has its own tragic tale. In the 1860’s Elizabeth Taylor, wife of the then resident landlord committed suicide by throwing herself out of the bedroom window into the back yard. In 1909 it was owned briefly by George Bruce Todd, who was an ex-Preston North End footballer.

Equator Cafe with reflection of the pub in the windows. Image Credit sailornattiecrafts.wordpress.com

When I first started visiting pubs in the mid 1980’s it was still named the Hearts of Oak but was not a place I visited regularly as pubs were quite often tied to breweries in those days. The owning brewery at this point was Bass, same as the nearby Adelphi pub, and their house beer was the abysmal Stones Bitter!

In 2013 it became the Preston Variety, before after a brief name change back to the Hearts of Oak in 2017, it then morphed a year later into its current guise as Vinyl Tap. The current version of the establishment doubles up as a café bar and a record store/vinyl style jukebox where you can choose which record you want to play, and they also have live bands on their schedule. On their opening night they had a local funk soul band The Templeblys performing.

The owner of the Moorbrook and the Running Pump in Catforth, Richard Fisher Goodwin was behind the project and is thankfully a keen advocate of serving cask ales.

The pub in the Heart of Oak phase. Image Credit Flickr.

When on a pub crawl with some friends on Easter Sunday 2013 we were walking past and decided to make a visit. The place was unexpectedly packed with the emphasis on the younger brethren. The reason for this ‘friends and family’ gathering became abundantly clear as a band called Rock & Public sprung into life on the little stage in the corner, and I recall they were young, enthusiastic, and good fun. However, I can find no evidence of their ongoing so they must have had a short-lived existence as a band.       

Near to the famous Preston bus station on the corner of Lord Street and Tithebarn Street was the Tithebarn pub. It was originally called the Wagon and Horses and located next to Cardwell’s Brewery in the 1950’s before in 1961 changing its name to the Tithebarn. It was always a battered old boozer and not a regular haunt and last I heard I think it is still just clinging on as a working pub.

The Tithebarn with the Brewery behind pictured in 1960. Image Credit blogpreston.co.uk

There is an area of green space behind the pub by the side of the Guild Hall which I will call Preston Tithebarn Park and I happened to be passing there one night in 2015 when somewhat bizarrely they had set up a temporary stage. I still have no idea what the festival or reason was but there was a band called Druid Rock playing and their sound was heavily indebted to Hawkwind!    

Preston Venues 45 to 46 – Withytrees

The Preston Withytrees Pub in Fulwood first appeared on the Withy Farmland around 1849 and was a thriving establishment when I first encountered it in the 1980’s, so much so it used to have its own taxi rank outside in those days for punters heading into town. I remember visiting in the late 1980’s prior to watching the Superbowl on a Sunday night and the place was packed to the rafters!

It was owned by the local Matthew Brown brewery, and it had two distinct rooms and I recall being in the vault area in 1985 watching the culmination of Live Aid before walking home to watch Neil Young appear on the Philadelphia leg of the shindig. They subsequently refurbished the pub into a large single open space room.  

It was within fifteen minutes walking distance of Preston North End via Moor Park, and I have watched a few World Cup matches and other sporting events there. PNE players used to periodically frequent and David Beckham whilst on a loan spell at the club was spotted there. The local boxer Tyson Fury when during one of his darker periods was also spied boozing in there one drizzly Tuesday afternoon.

Withytrees Pub in 1979 with Matthew Brown brewery signage with the edge of the taxi rank in bottom left. Image Credit Flickr.

Our last property in Preston before moving out to Manchester was in the Fulwood area and situated about 200 yards from the pub, and we lived there between 2006 to 2017. On our first night in the house, we visited the hostelry, and the place was thriving but about three years later the landlord and his staff departed, and the pub began its slow decline until it’s very sad final closure in 2019 and the last I heard is that the site is planned to be converted into a Muslim Girl’s school.

There was a chap who lived on the next street who we labelled ‘Mr 5 o clock’ as that was his daily arrival time for a pint or ten, he must surely have mourned its subsequent closure! On the night of the legal landmark of opening hours first being extended beyond 11pm we made a visit to raise a glass to that small piece of history.

Two streets away was the locally famous Hardcastle Road Chinese takeaway which I visited regularly; it is unusually situated between houses on a residential street but remains open to this day. On the other side of Garstang Road (A6) Checcos Italian restaurant opened its doors in 2009 and Gill and I had some fine meals there over the years. The restaurant and pub became advocates of each other until the restaurant suddenly closed its doors in 2017 without any warning.  

Very occasionally the pub used to have live bands and I saw a local acoustic singer called Daisy play there in 2011 and another local band with the quirky name of Hybrid Flower Monkeys perform there five years later.  

Withytrees Interior. Image Credit tripadvisor.co.uk

To the rear of the pub was the biggest beer garden in Preston which had been built on the bowling green that was originally located there. The only local beer garden I can think of to compare size wise would be the Red Lion at Withington. We spent many a sunny summers afternoon perched on the numerous benches located out in the garden.

In September 2016 they decided to utilise the Preston Withytrees Beer Garden space and hold what I am sure was the only ever occurrence of the Withyfest. It was an all-day charity event, and they were thankfully blessed with wall-to-wall sunshine. I could only attend a small portion of the festival, and I witnessed a band called Kathy and the Hornbeats play who featured my old school chum Mick Duffy as one of the guitarists.