Pub Sign Study The Traveller’s Call Bredbury Stockport Cheshire

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Dating from 1834 Address – 402 Stockport Road, Bredbury, Stockport SK6 2DT A large landmark pub, which is difficult to miss. The pub provided aid to angry protesters in a trade dispute in the 1840’s when hundreds of workers marched on Stockport to challenge the practice of hiring extra hands from the mills of Stockport and Manchester, rather than paying the local people more money. Many of the marchers stopped off at the Traveller’s for sustenance during the protests. In 1847 a Volunteer’s Brass Band passed through Bredbury on parade, and their major treated all the musicians to a round of drinks in the pub after their performance, before they marched on to perform in Brinnington. An early landlord, John King, had a rake of bad fortune in the early 1870’s. Already reeling from hefty fines for serving drinks after hours, he was further dismayed when his prize pig wandered onto the railway tracks and got run over and killed by a passing train. Around 1900, the pub briefly changed its identity, becoming The Wrecking Hotel, but it reverted to the Traveller’s Call in 1914. In 1933, a bus and a tram crashed into one another on the busy road junction right outside the pub. Though there were no fatalities, passengers were treated for their injuries in the pub until ambulances arrived to ferry them to hospital when required. The pub caught fire in 1939, almost certainly due to an air raid attack, but the fire was extinguished quickly by quick thinking ARP wardens. The sign depicts the golden age of horse drawn coaches in a rather romanticised elegant style – the people waiting to board look elegantly dressed in their Sunday best, wealthy and comfortable, for what could actually be a rough ride, over cobbles and rugged roadways. Arthur Chappell