First visited : July 1985
So now we're on the Halifax-bound bus ( number 27 I think ) going under the railway viaduct and the Red Lion is just the other side of it. Although the building itself doesn't look that old there has been a pub on the site since at least 1626 and there are records of auctions, inquests and shareholders' meetings being held there.
Now this is a tricky one to write. The Red Lion was my regular haunt between 1985 and 1997 and as you can imagine I saw a lot and heard more in that time. I'll have to judge carefully what's verifiable before posting particularly as the landlord is still there.
The Red Lion first came to my attention while I was still at school either 1982 or 1983. The recently-installed landlord was prosecuted for selling drinks to underage teens and one of my schoolmates was a witness ( for which he received a rare lifetime ban from the premises ) . I later learned it was notorious for this ; the joke was that it was the only youth club in Littleborough with a licence.
I first went in in the summer of 1985 after one of Rochdale's pre-season games possibly the 7-0 thrashing by Burnley although that seems a little too neat a story; I think it may have been the one before. Anyhow the brief visit revealed that it had my favourite cider ( Gaymer's Original ) on draught so that made it my local. It also had the advantage that, being separated from the town centre by the railway it never became rowdy and the regular clientele seemed civilised. It was quite pleasant in an old-fashioned way inside but always seemed slightly shabby.
At first there was one drawback ; it was also the regular of the Giddins's a huge Catholic Preston-supporting family , the younger lads of which had given me a ribbing throughout my later school days. This continued for a bit when I began frequenting the pub but gradually it turned into football rivalry and we started to become mates. The process culminated in October 1986 when I was in there on a Sunday night with my old Travelling Society cohorts Mick and Sean ( a weekly rendez -vous ) and the former walked out because Sean and I were talking too much football with the Giddins boys.
When Sean subsequently stopped going in there regularly I transferred to the pool room where the Giddins lads sat and gradually got to know the other regulars in there. I had problems with one guy who lived across the road from the pub but even he became OK after a while. I wasn't one of the better pool players in the room but won enough games to be taken reasonably seriously. Sunday nights at the Red Lion became Friday and Saturday nights too.
Of course becoming a regular there I made the acquaintance of the landlord Dave . He was a rum character often contradictory. He was notoriously mean but seemed to like me despite the fact I hardly spent anything there; sometimes he'd badger other people in the room to drink faster without bothering me at all. He was a big guy, of saturnine appearance with his black beard, drove an SUV and had a monster dog yet sometimes revealed interests you wouldn't expect. His general mode was bear with a sore head which many attributed to his wife about whom I'll apply my old headmistress's maxim - if you can't say anything nice .... There were some scurrilous rumours which can't be repeated but one thing is indisputable; they re-engaged their bloody awful singer as soon as he got out of clink for sexual offences. On the plus side there were one or two nice barmaids a girl called Charlotte who was cute in a student-y way and a girl with glasses whose name I can't remember but whose tight black T-shirt/ no bra combo I certainly can.
In 1988 I was invited into the squad for the Littleborough pool league. I was rarely trusted to play in the actual fixtures but invariably got a turn in the money games played afterwards. Through that I made the acquaintance of the Giddins patriarch Frank, a really nice guy and unflappable ( which was a good job for someone who'd had 12 kids ) . I just mooted the idea of a quiz team to him one night and next time I saw him he'd enlisted his old boss and his wife , squared things with Dave and we were off.
That autumn I played in both the Littleborough Quiz League and the Rochdale Pool League on the same night which was usually do-able. However there was a problem brewing with the latter - Dave's sandwiches. Now nobody died or got food poisoning but the Red Lion didn't do food and his trays of stale ham barms with the occasional corn beef one for variety reflected that. It started to become awkward paricularly after a fixture at Gulliver's in Rochdale where we were faced with a sumptuous buffet we were almost too embarrassed to eat. Eventually one of the player's girlfriend offered to do them herself but Dave refused and the team decamped to The Wheatsheaf instead.
Dave didn't hold me accountable for any of that and approached me about a Wilson's quiz league on a Sunday night. Frank was on holiday at the time but was volunteered by one of his lads. The team was filled up with my mum and Sean. Dave took a proactive interest driving us to away fixtures and acting as scoremaster; his roadhog driving over kerbs and mini-roundabouts was an experience ! Frank didn't want to do the next Sunday season so we replaced him and Sean ( who'd got himself barred for swearing at Dave in an argument over a fruit machine ) with a couple of seasoned quizzers from the Littleborough League. We won a couple of trophies over the next two years but the Wilson's league eventually collapsed.
By that time Frank and I had decamped the Monday night team elsewhere - essentially it was the sandwich issue again. We were the only team in the League who sent round a football card to cover the costs and one other team in particular were making a fuss about it . Also at long last my social horizons were beginning to widen so my visits to the Red Lion became much less frequent. The last one I can recall was in the summer of 1997 when I took my fiance in basically to show her off and I think it had the desired effect ! I was though subsequently disappointed when all the people we invited to our wedding reception from the old Red Lion crowd declined ( except the one I'd engaged as photographer) . It was in Accrington but that was hardly a million miles away. I don't think I've been back in the Red Lion since and that's probably not a coincidence. It looks just the same though.
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