Pub Sign Photo Study - The Jolly Nailor - Atherton - Lancashire

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A helpful sign in that it bears the opening date for the pub right there on the image, 1909, though it represents a much older history, albeit rather incorrectly. Nailor is a colloquial Northern spelling for nailer, applied to someone who makes or works with nails. It can also be slang for one who talks of others behind their backs but here it very much refers to nail-making, an industry many men in the Atherton district of Chowbent were engaged in. Before machine production and automation, nails were made by hand, a skill carried through from feudal and medieval times, with Atherton central to their production. The nail-makers were fierce men, who joined in the Roundhead pursuit of doomed Royalist Cavaliers in through the town, in 1648 armed only with their work tools. They gave similar angry pursuit to Jacobites in the town in 1745. The sign does not depict a nail maker but a shoe-maker, or cobbler, using nails in making footwear, and he looks pleasantly concentrated on his craft rather than jolly, and the nails look far too big for the shoes being made. They would come right through the sole into the foot area. It is still a lovely reminder of Atherton’s key part in our national history. Arthur Chappell