Quote:
Originally Posted by Bob Dobson
A posting about the Alma, Bash mentions The Blockade, King Street. and suggests that it was Crimean war-related.The Crimean war was in 1850s. I have not looked up the relevant dates, but I was under the impression that it was named after a famous incident involving two railway companies near Manchester (Middleton?) about 1840 in the course of which a blockade of the lines occurred.The close proximity to the railway may have brought about this suggestion. This pub was owned by Bentley's Brewery of Milnshaw Lane, and was sold with the others in their empire, to John Smith's in 1924
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That explanation does take a little jump in imagination. There was certainly an incident in Middleton involving a blockade, but it was much earlier and involved our old chums the Luddites....sometime during the Napoleonic wars, if I vaguely recall and because it was cavalry who eventually cleared the ground it could well have been another Peterloo..except it preceded Peterloo.
Anyway, I suppose we would agree that the building is 1850's/1860's, so excepting the Crimean link - which is what I always believed it was - there is one other contender, and that is the naval blockade of the Confederate ports in the US civil war, 1861-1865. This did, of course, lead directly to the Lancashire cotton famine and an effect on the local economy far worse than in the 1930's. There is a belief that depite the trials and tribulations of the local populace, the majority of cotton mill workers were anti-slavery, and so supported the blockade...so maybe someone thought of naming a pub to commemorate the local stance? I dunno... It would be nice to see some hard documented evidence.