Bridge Hotel, Horwich

UPDATE 2020. A refurbishment has recently been carried out which requires a re-assessment. Please note - the photos are therefore out of date and the description is one written before the recent changes.

Imposing three-storey pub of red brick and terracotta on a corner site rebuilt around 1900 with good decoration in stone on the ground floor. It retains a largely intact plan of lobby bar and three (originally four) rooms and many original fittings including colourful dado tiling. The entrance lobby on the right has a Victorian tiled dado now painted over in brown and inner twin doors in a floor to ceiling screen. There is a large island bar but it is only some ten or so years old. An open plan on the street side has new fixed seating but old draught screen with a stained glass panel in the top. The dado panelling in the left area is old indicating two rooms at the front in the past - what is a door on the exterior is now a window.

The main left-hand entrance lobby has a Victorian dado tiling (now painted brown) and a twin inner door in a full-height screen. A passage runs to the staircase at the rear and has a dado of colourful Victorian tiling which continues up the stairs. The front left small pool room has a doorway, bare wood floor and retains the original bench seating all around and some bell-pushes, and has a black painted wood surround fireplace (now blocked).

Further down the passage a doorway on the left leads to another small room with fixed seating in four semi-circular bays - two each side - with carved arms, also a good marble surround fireplace with a modern interior. The tiling continues around the walls to the toilets at the rear right and to the right-hand entrance lobby. The front-right small room has a doorway, original fixed seating, a wood-surround fireplace painted black but now blocked. Apart from this room, all others have a decorative cornice. The tiling is in dull yellow and patterned relief tiles in alternate claret and dark green topped by a row of relief tiles with a circular pattern.

Go upstairs and you will find more dado tiling around the walls of the passage throughout the first floor which has a small bar on the left (all modern fittings) and a large function room on the right with a good cornice. Note the dumb waiter with two ropes to move the cage. The tiled dado even continues up the staircase to the second floor. There are good newel posts on the ground and first floors. Toilets on the first floor have 1930s fittings but the tiles have been painted over. There is an active bowling green at the rear.