Home > Lancashire > Rochdale > Gibraltar Rock Gibraltar Rock
Date of photo: 1927	Picture source: Neal Buckley
The Gibraltar Rock was situated on Dye House Lane. This pub closed in the 1820s with the licence transferred to the Bay Horse on Halifax Road, Smallbridge, Rochdale, and the building converted into apartments.
From The Rochdale Observer, 1927
In those days the old building pictured above was an inn and its sign read "John and Rachel Crossley, Gibraltar Rock, 17--". The two last figures in the date have passed out of memory, and , therefore, cannot be quoted here. Within the low-roofed taprooms, with their sanded floors and settles, there gathered each evening a bluff, hearty, and often very noisy company. There were colliers from Smallbride Colliery and neighbouring pits, sand kitters (who are remembered in the name of Kitter-Street, Smallbridge), and perhaps a few moorland farmers. John and Rachel Crossley were husband and wife and the latter was a daughter of John Binns, who was referred to in the "Old Buildings" article which dealt with Barns Hall, Cronkeyshaw. Some time later Gibraltar Rock ceased to be a public-house, the licence being transferred to the Bay Horse, Smallbridge. The interior of the building was divided up into different livings, and the tenant of one of these opened a sweets shop therein. Thereafter a room that had heard many a wordy argument, backed at last by fist or clog-toe was enlivened by the chatter of children, while outside other round faced youngsters flattened their noses against the glass of the window in their latest observance of the good things within. In those times wrapping paper was unknown in cottage shops, and whenever a pub at the village school had filled is or her copybook there was a race "down the rocks" as they called it, to exchange the book at Merrimans for sweets.
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