Pub sign photo study Ring O Bells Middleton Manchester

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This pub was built on land bought on a 999 year lease in 1806 so it could potentially remain in business until 2805, though it was originally just a house, only opening as a pub in 1831. A 19th century landlady, Alice Worsley had some offbeat but enterprising ways to draw in customers. When a giant locust was captured nearby, she bought it and put it on display in the pub. The success of this led to her find other curios to display including a portrait of Napoleon made entirely from butterflies. This is allegedly still at the pub but no longer on public display. The pub was always a tavern as it could offer no overnight accommodation or stabling for horses, just food and drink. Rumours abound that the pub has secret tunnels under its cellars connecting it to the nearby Saint Leonard’s Church, whose peeling bells give the pub its name. It was claimed for many years that an English Civil War Cavalier died in the tunnels and that his skeletal remains are still down there, causing his spirit to haunt the pub until he gets a decent Christian burial. A farcical media circus was built up round a psychic investigation and digging operation to find him, but nothing was found. The sign shows the bells almost with a life of their own tearing through the sign-board in a circle around a crude image of the church tower. It is quite a striking image in a pub full of curiosities and mysteries. Arthur Chappell