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!