Home > Yorkshire > Bradford > BD1 > Boy & Barrel Boy & Barrel
Date of photo: 2007	© Copyright Betty Longbottom and licensed for reuse under this Creative Commons Licence
The Boy & Barrel was situated at 60 Westgate. This pub closed in January 2021.
Source: John Yeadon
According to 19th century local historians, James and Cudworth, there was an old public house called Bacchus, named after the God of wine. Often represented on signs as a chubby infant on a barrel, hence the name. It was licensed by the 1770s when the landlord was a Richard Mortimer. His daughter Nanny, married William Scholefield, who took over towards the end of the century. In 1874 Richard Mason Scholefield, a wool broker sold the Boy and Barrel and with a neighbouring beerhouse to local brewers Wallers for £5,000. The building was probably rebuilt in the early part of the 19th century. In 184, a petition was organised against the pub by the local vicar and others about the concerts held there, to which, it was alleged, ‘hundreds of young persons both male and female’ went. The following year the licence was refused because of disorderly company and prostitutes on the premises, but renewed the next year to a ‘new and respectable tenant', who had closed the concert room. In 1853, a man bit off part of another man’s nose in a fight and two years later four soldiers created a disturbance, breaking glasses and assaulting a policeman. The town’s shoemakers had a club room there. The Boy and Barrel was converted into a gin-palace style pub about this time, with large external window and lavish interior fittings. This didn’t extend to the toilet facilities as in 1918 the magistrates only renewed the licence on condition they were improved. Karaoke came later. According to one new landlady it retained into a new millennium,a ‘reputation for disorder’. She claimed it had ghosts, perhaps landlord Walter Waters, who cut his throat in October 1833 while his mind was disturbed when suffering from scarlet fever. In 1959 the pub featured in the film Room at the Top. And in 2012 the pub featured in the controversial Channel 4 documentary Make Bradford British. It was refurbished in early 2020 but closed again and the owner sold it to another pub company and once again put up for sale by June 2022. Later the Boy and Barrel was used as a cannabis factory and more than 500 plants were found on the premises worth more than £520,000 with a predicted yield of at least 52 kg. Albanian national Anduel Rupo was jailed for two years for the offence at Bradford Crown Court.
Paul Jennings (June 2022)
Do you have any anecdotes, historical information, updates or photos of this pub? Become a contributor by submitting them here. You can also make email contact with other ex-customers and landlords of this pub by adding your details to this page.