Pub Sign Photo Study – The Shambles – Dobcross, Greater Manchester

Tweet

This pub and sign capture the sadness of pub closures perfectly, especially remote village pubs. There has been a long English tradition for families taking a weekend drive from the cities to the countryside to enjoy lunch and a few beers or wines in a county pub. Economically, many country bars depended on this to survive as local nightly trade could not sustain a pub when breweries want bigger profits and there are endless crippling overheads. Sadly increasing drink-driving laws stopped drivers wanting to escort families to a pub and not drink themselves while the anti-smoking law also hit pubs and breweries hard. It is pubs attracting lower populations that get hit the hardest. This pub in Dobcross, Saddleworth, North West England was known for over 200 years as The Woolpack, which is perfectly understandable in a town providing sheep wool for the masses, but its last landlord changed the name to The Shambles as part of a desperate last ditch effort to save it. The gambit failed. The pub closed for the last time in 2010. Shambles pubs are generally in busy chaotic market towns, with York, Chester and at one time, Manchester having bustling, thriving Shambles shopping zones. Shambles also ironically refers to well-intended plans coming to nothing – ‘it was a bit shambolic, or a bit of a shambles’ being the operative phrases. The Shambles / Woolpack pub is no more. Many other country pubs are perishing too. Arthur Chappell